In my YouTube video “Incident Report: A Leopard and Cubs, a Kill up a Tree, and Hyena” I document a complex set of interactions that center around a common theme, which is a female predator with cubs tries to feed her family in the face of the cubs’ carelessness and a persistent competitor. The “Tengile Female” leopard has two young cubs and has killed an impala to feed herself and them. She took the kill up a tree, which leopards normally do if they expect it to attract lions or hyena, and we joined the sighting when the leopard family was already up the tree and feeding.
We drove in, with some difficulty given that the tree was on the bank of the Sand river and the brush was heavy. We’d just arrived and I’d gotten some video, but the angle was difficult and our ranger decided to reposition, to drive down the bank onto the sandy part of the Sand riverbed. It was to be a quick move and I made a mistake, keeping my camera in my GorillaPod and locking the ballhead to prevent it banging around. Yes, I know, I should have taken it out and hand-held it to be ready in case something happened, but I didn’t.
Just as we’d stopped, before in fact the vehicle had even settled, one of the cubs destabilized the kill and it fell. There was a hyena below, an old one with a limp that we’d seen before, and she made a grab for the kill. The female leopard jumped down, grabbed the kill, and jumped up to the lowest branch, simply because the kill was heavy, and the hyena missed.
For the moment. The branch was dead and brittle, and it broke. The female leopard and the kill fell to the ground again, and the female again grabbed the kill and made for the next branch up, but the hyena managed to grab a bite of the hindquarters that took off the tail and surrounding meat. The leopards managed to settle down a bit to feed.
It turned out that the “kill tree” was almost opposite our room on the other bank of the Sand, so when we got back we tried to find it with binoculars. As we watched, we saw some elephants moving right to left along the far bank, somewhere near the kill tree. One elephant moved quickly forward, trumpeting, and we saw he was chasing the hyena! The elephant stayed there, trumpeting occasionally, for as long as we could watch.
The next morning we got out early and returned to the tree, to find the leopards still there with the kill. We’d not been there long when the cubs’ antics knocked the kill out of the tree the second time, and again, the old lame hyena was there to try to grab some. The long-suffering mom got it back in the tree. This time the hyena got lucky because some pieces fell off and she was able to get a bite.
Mom was obviously disgusted at this point. She growled and cuffed the responsible cub, and interposed herself between the cub and the kill, to prevent him from knocking it down again. At one point, the cub tried to tunnel under his mother to get to the kill, but she held him away. Eventually the two cubs retreated and mom got to feed!