Life for the animals living in the wild can be particularly harsh at times, when survival depends on fighting off predators that need to eat to secure their own future then every fight is a tense affair that can only one side can win.
These hyenas hunting hippo were spotted by Henry Olckers on the S25 road at the Kruger National Park. Henry caught the scene on camera and sent the footage in to Latest Sightings.
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The hippo was reportedly their first sighting of the day, but the hunt made it an exciting, if sad moment to witness. The hungry hyenas needed to eat, and the hippo’s calf was, unfortunately, easy prey.
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Circling The Scene
Initially, it appeared that the adult hippo was alone, and the hyenas might even have been trying to hunt it. The difference in size and strength between the two animals made this unlikely, but the hippo calf was so small that it was difficult to notice.
Predators typically target prey that’s not able to fight back, and this means the old, the infirm, and the young. This hippo in particular appeared to be easy prey, as Henry said it “appeared injured and weak” and “would get up, walk a few steps and fall down again”.
For the hyenas, this would be an easy meal if they were able to get beneath the protective umbrella of the mother, and they were circling the two hippos, figuring out their best angle of attack before actually going for it.
A Calculated Attack
The hyenas knew that they didn’t have the strength to fight an adult hippo. Even if the rest of their clan was there, hippos are so big and strong that they likely would have avoided the fight unless they had no other choice.
But there were two hyenas, and only one hippo that could resist them, which gave them the advantage. One of the hyenas distracted the mother hippo, while the other performed the gruesome requirements of the hunt.
Henry said while one ran interference, “the other would bite and grab the baby’s tail, often succeeding in dragging it a few meters before the mother could react”. Despite the mother’s best efforts, the hyenas were drawing her calf away from her.
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An Uncertain Demise
Things weren’t looking good for the hippos, and if the calf had already been injured then its survival was uncertain even if the hyenas eventually left it alone.
Henry said that “possibly this calf had problems from birth”, instead of the hyenas already having injured it, which made its survival uncertain even without the hunt.
The hyenas continued harrying the hippos for half an hour before Henry’s group began to lose sight of them in the distance and vegetation, but Henry reported that the “last we saw was the calf getting up and stumbling towards the mother”.
The survival of the calf remained uncertain, but the hyenas were unwilling to give up. For the safari goers, it was an exciting sighting which tugged at the heartstrings, but was a scene which had played out before, and will do so again.