This little leopard cub was incredibly cute, but it was also in incredible danger. Too young to be able to defend itself against larger predators like lions, its only real choice was to try and hide.
Kris Harrison from &Beyond caught the entire nail-biting event on camera at their Xaranna Okavango Delta Camp in Botswana, and sent the footage in to Latest Sightings.
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A Little Leopard Cub
Unlike lions or cheetahs, which roam in prides or coalitions, leopards are very solitary creatures that typically only come together to mate before returning to their solo lifestyles, often with a cub to raise.
Leopards even give birth to smaller litters, and it looked like this leopard mother only had a single cub to look after. Looking after this cub was about to become a particularly difficult task.
The cub was already proficient at climbing, capable of following its mom up the huge curved trunk of a tree, a skill which has served leopards well by allowing them to hide food for later and evade rival predators.
Not A Place Of Safety
High in their trees leopards are safe from attacks by rivals, and often climb into branches to avoid other animals like hyenas, and occasional lions that try to get rid of the competition.
On the ground they are vulnerable, especially the cubs that lack the experience of adults, and are unable to fight back against predators targeting them for an easy meal.
One of the leopards, most likely the adult, was down on the ground trying to hunt a herd of zebra when an enormous lioness with violence on the mind interrupted her.
Outflanked And In Trouble
The leopard’s instinctive reaction was to flee back to safety, back to her tree where she could climb to the higher branches and wait for the lioness to grow bored and leave. Back to the tree where her cub was safely waiting for her to return.
Next to the tree the lioness looked almost comically huge, and although she lacked the climbing prowess of the leopards, she was still able to bound up to the lower section of the trunk which had grown in such a way as to be almost horizontal.
Once in the tree the lioness was distracted by the meat the leopards had stashed there, but as she chewed the carcass it fell and lodged in a twist in the trunk, right where the little leopard cub was trying desperately to hide.
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No Option But To Wait
Against two lionesses, the leopard mom didn’t have many options other than to stay sequestered in the very top branches of the tree and hope that the lions didn’t spot her cub.
Only one of the lionesses managed to climb the tree, and she was so focused on the carcass of the leopard’s kill that it’s not clear if she even realized the leopard cub was there. After several minutes pawing at the tree, she eventually left the leopards in peace.
It took several, worryingly long, moments after that for the leopard cub to reemerge, climbing out of the hollow in the tree to reunite safely with its mom.