Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

The lion is truly the king of the jungle, and you can see it in his attitude. Most animals ignore you, but it's like "Yeah, we know you're there but we choose to not acknowledge your presence" (or they try to make sure that you don't see them). But with the lion it's different. When a lion ignores you the impression you get is that you are so beneath him that he doesn't even register your existence. But when he does notice you, boy oh boy you want him to ignore you.
Take this guy: we found this guy sort of, well.... lyin' around in Chobe National Park, and our driver stopped the car a few metres from him. He just sat there and ignored us while we took pictures like crazy. There was this Korean family on the vehicle with us, and one of the kids stood up to get a better look at the lion, and suddenly the lion's eyes kind of like locked onto him, and lemme tell you, the way he was looking at that kid it made my blood run cold. I've never seen such a ... predatory... gaze (there is no other way to describe it). If looks could kill... Luckily I wasn't the only one who saw the lion taking an interest, the driver noticed and told the kid to sit down. it seems that the lions don't see the vehicle and the people in it as separate entities (luckily for us), so they just ignore the vehicle. But by standing up the little kid had broken the outline of the vehicle and established himself as something separate that made the lion curious.

Madonna con bambino

Lioness and cub, Kapama Game Lodge

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?

This guy lives in Pilansberg National Park, and he was guarding a couple-of-day-old kill. We could barely see the tip of his tail twitching as he lay in the long grass, and then he got up and turned and faced us almost as if he were posing for a picture, and gave us this very belligerent stare. It was very impressive, but iff iff iff what a smell from that darn carcass.

"Then who the hell else are you talking... you talking to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"

Lion traffic Jam

Actually getting to see a lion is not really an ordinary day-to-day thing - unless, maybe, you're a game ranger or something - for us "civilians" it is helluva impressive. So when someone actually sees a lion (or any other interesting animal) word gets passed around by radio pretty quickly, and all the tourists converge on that spot. This creates something of a traffic jam, as you can see in this picture from the Kruger National Park:We'd hit upon a pride of about six-seven lions, but after a couple of minutes of being gawked at they got up and moved further into the bush. The moved right past the cars, if someone had been brave enough (suicidal enough?) to put his hand out he could have stroked them.

No animals were harmed in the making of these pictures

This is a picture of a lion guarding a recent kill in Kapama Game Lodge. There were lots of vultures in the trees around the "scene of the crime". Every once in a while the lion would get up from the kill and move a few metres aside. Then the vulture would land and try to get near the carcass. But then the lion would see they are getting interested in his kill and he'd come back and they would fly away. Then he'd assert his ownership by eating a bit more of the carcass.

Check out more lion pictures
Next:The Hunt