Watch the Sighting:
Nicole Dangoor is a wildlife filmmaker for the Bush Camp Company. She and some other safari-goers were out on a night drive in South Luangwa National Park when they came across a pair of crocodiles enjoying a feast.
A Not So Stealthy Predator
Just then, Nicole spotted a leopard making its way over to the crocodiles, clearly enticed by the smell of a fresh kill. It approached the crocodile with the most meat in its mouth using the light of the group’s flashlight to guide itself closer and closer.
Nobody could believe their eyes as the leopard began to paw and bite at the meat inside the crocodile’s mouth — talk about a risky move! After a few attempts, it was able to grab some larger pieces of meat to eat!
This leopard seemed to have no sense of danger because, at certain points, it was yanking so hard to tear off the meat, that the crocodile’s massive head was getting pulled along with it!
A Meal for All
With one last claw, the leopard managed to grab what appeared to be the entire leg of the impala. Apparently, this portion was enough to last a while because the leopard finally retreated into the bushes to enjoy its meal away from the crocodiles.
With the flashlights tracing the leopard into the bushes, the crocodiles used the moment of darkness to find a better hiding spot to enjoy their kill in peace. They shuffled away into the darkness, glad to be rid of the leopard.
In the end, all parties slept with full bellies that night. If the crocodile had decided it wasn’t up for sharing its meal, then this would have been a very different story.
This sighting teaches us that in the wild, it pays for an animal to be brave and persevere in the face of danger. No meal is ever a guarantee, and animal never knows how long it will be before there is another opportunity to eat.
Cooperative Crocs
You may be wondering why the crocodile would have let the leopard eat its meal in the first place. One potential reason is that crocodiles often feed cooperatively together.
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They do this by having one individual hold onto the kill firmly in its jaws, while another individual tears off large chunks to facilitate swallowing. This is often necessary because adult crocodiles can take down large prey items such as antelope, buffalo, large cats, and young hippos, but these kills are so large they have to be broken apart.
Another cooperative behaviour that crocodiles use is having several individuals partition off an area in the water to concentrate fish. Often in these cooperative scenarios, there is a feeding hierarchy with the most dominant animals eating first.
It may have been that in the darkness, the crocodile could have mistaken the leopard for its companion feeding on the kill, and so it was allowing it to cooperatively feed. The other alternative is that the crocodile simply didn’t want to risk opening its jaws further to chomp at the leopard, because the leopard could have stollen the whole kill in the process.