Posted on 07/03/2015 11:24:11 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
This is one of the most remarkable wildlife interactions that I have come across in my time. The photographs are amazing, but it’s the touching behaviour of the animals involved that makes this story so unique.
Photographer Evan Schiller and Lisa Holzwarth were on a game drive in the northern Botswana’s Selinda Camp when they came across a big troop of baboons charging through the bush.
“30-40 baboons were heading in our general direction making a lot of noise,” Lisa recalls.
The baboons were obviously frightened by something and they all scampered up trees, shouting, alarming, and making a big scene. It quickly became clear what the problem was: two large lionesses came out of the tall grass and rushed the baboons into the trees, soon joined by two more lionesses.
“Between the baboons shrieking and the lionesses communicating with deep guttural roars, it was a mad scene,” Lisa says.
But then the real chaos began! One brave baboon descended the dead tree and tried to make a run for it… but got snapped up in the jaws of a lioness.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.nationalgeographic.com ...
Wow!
Just wow!
and the lion shall lie down with the baboon?
It’s a snack, for later. Just keepin’ it fresh...
Yep or keepin it so the cubs can practice the kill bite. :-)
..probably use it's peanut shaped head for dental floss"
That reminds me of when my Mom told me not to play with my food.;-)
My favorite big cat.
The picture is so cute, but it’s a good thing the baboon troop got the baby back. I saw a TV show about a lioness that “adopted” a baby antelope...the little antelope was scared to death, trembling, and began to starve. I couldn’t watch it after that.
Baby got back!
i hate stories like these. i want to believe that the little fella will be ok somehow, but that’s not the way nature works. not sure how the baby baboon will survive without its mother to feed it, even though the lions didn’t make a meal of it this time.
Unless another mother takes it in as an additional baby. But baboons don’t often have multiple babies in a litter?
While in Kenya last fall we saw,early one morning,three lionesses hunting.The guide pointed out some sort of gazelle(can’t recall what type he said it was) not that far in the distance.All of a sudden the gazelle bursts off at top speed.The guide said that it must have smelled the lions who didn’t give chase,he said,because they knew they’d never catch it...it was too fast and had too much of a head start.
The male baboon took the baby back, but he can’t nurse it. I suppose the baby dies unless another female adopts him. Don’t know if that happens with baboons....
Wow. That must have been a great trip. I have always wanted to go to Africa.
That was pretty dumb of me to forget the male couldn’t feed the baby, either...sheesh.
I couldn’t find much information, but it seems the little one might be accepted by a female with her own babies.
I suspect that Big Daddy lion will have a say so here...and in due time, when the baboon crows up and out of that “cute”stage, he’ll go “that’s it”....and do what a lion usually does to a baboon.
That was pretty dumb of me to forget the male couldn’t feed the baby....
(((
Oh, it’s okay. You and I are probably going to be written up as sexist or sumpin’ for saying the baby needs a mother....
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