This little leopard cub found out the hard way that it wasn’t as strong as its mom, in footage captured from the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. It was caught on camera by a safari guide, Sabre Meeser.
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The video shows a leopard mother painstakingly carrying an impala kill up the steep sides of a tree. This is the perfect storage for these leopards, as the straight trunk and the high branches mean few other predators would be capable of stealing it.
Food For Later
Leopard’s are well-known for being the big cat best able to climb trees, and because of this athletic ability, it makes sense to use these trees for food storage.
Competition is fierce in the natural world, and hungry hyenas, lions, or wild dogs could always be waiting just around the corner, ready to steal a tasty looking kill from a lone leopard.
Without a pack, pride or clan to rely on, leopards have to find other ways to keep their meals safe from competing predators, and up in a tall tree like this is the best way to keep it out of their reach.
Having A Cheeky Bite
This leopard mother was using the high branches of the tree to store an impala kill she had made, to make sure her cub would have plenty of food to eat over the coming days.
Once making sure she’d securely lodged the carcass in the branches, she returned to the base of the tree while her cub stayed up with the meal, clearly eager to start consuming it.
The cheeky cub looked too small to be going out and helping its mom with the hunting, but it must have worked up an appetite watching her capture the impala, because it wasn’t going to wait before tucking in.
A Very Unexpected Landing
The leopard cub must have started eating the carcass with a little too much gusto, because as it was enjoying its hearty meal, it somehow dislodged the impala from the tree branch.
Even if the cub had tried to stop the fall, it wouldn’t have had the strength, so it could only watch as the heavy impala fell quickly to the ground below, right on top of its mom.
The cub’s mom was, by chance, crouching at the base of the tree, right below where the impala was hanging, and she got a very nasty shock as the heavy carcass fell down and impacted with her head.
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High Speed Delivery
It seemed like the impala was going to get the last laugh. The size of the mom’s leap shows just how shocked and surprised she was to find the dead animal hurtling towards her at a high speed.
The falling impala didn’t seem to injure her in any way which was lucky, as the cub couldn’t have been more accurate even if it had done it intentionally. After the initial shock, she actually seemed to calm right down, and hurried over to inspect the carcass.
The cub was likely in for a proper telling off, as now the mom would have to carry the impala all the way up the tree again, but hopefully this time she would make sure it was better secured.