Life in the wild is fraught with risk. A hunter can spend a lot of effort bringing down their prey, only to have other scavenging animals come to investigate what’s been going on.
Often, these scavengers are just looking for an opportunity to dart past the defenses of other animals and steal portions of their kill. This forces high stakes sightings where predators must not only expend the energy to hunt their prey, but also to protect their meals.
Coming To Investigate
Animals can often hear the sounds of a hunt from far away, especially if that hunt is a loud, drawn out and chaotic affair. It’s unknown if these lions had made much noise or not, but they’d certainly drawn a crowd.
It’s a very real risk for predators like lions that they put in all of the work bringing down their prey, only to have something else steal it at the last second, before they have much of a chance to eat it.
The vultures were relatively easy for the lions to keep away, but the hyenas that were coming to investigate would be much more of a problem, and there were several of them coming at once.
Famous Scavengers
Both vultures and hyenas are animals that have reputations for scavenging from others. Hyenas are often misrepresented in this way, as they are just as likely to hunt live prey as the lions themselves.
However, they do also have a habit of keeping an eye on other hunters in the area to see if they might get the opportunity to swipe some food from them when they’re not being careful.
It’s possible that it wasn’t the sounds of a hunt that had attracted the hyenas, but that they were instead following the big cats, waiting for an opportunity to benefit from the effort that the lions had put in.
A Daring Heist
There looked to be only two male lions that had brought down this buffalo, which meant that both the hyenas and the vultures outnumbered them greatly.
The vultures were little more than an annoyance, and it only took one of the lions charging into the group of birds to scatter them effectively enough that they didn’t pose much of a threat.
But while the vultures distracted the lions, at least one of the hyenas managed to tear a large chunk of meat out of the buffalo carcass and gleefully escape before one of the lions could catch it.
Get our Best Sightings as they Come in
Putting In The Time
Because they frequently try and wrangle a free meal, lions take a dim view on having hyenas nearby. Unfortunately, now that one of the hyenas had proved that there was food to be had, the others weren’t going anywhere.
The lions were going to have to put in a lot of effort into keeping the hyenas at bay long enough for them to give up, while also making sure the large number of vultures didn’t swoop in when they saw an opening.
At the end of the footage, the lions were still the owners of the carcass, but their status remained in dispute, and it’s unclear how much longer they would defend it. It was an incredible sighting with the hyenas displaying their tenacity, the vultures their agility, and the lions their power.