Zebra Teasing Lions

Etosha National Park in northern Namibia is the countries flagship conservation area. It covers some 23000 km² and is certainly a proper African Game Park, with many high profile game species represented in the park.

[Image by Vernon | License]

After Christmas, we diceded to take my cousin and her family up to Etosha. They were visiting from Cape Town. Her husband had a double-cab Toyota Hilux with which they had traveled up to Namibia. We bundled her two boys and our two boys in the back, and the eight of us headed up to Etosha for two nights.

Despite being in Etosha while it was raining, we saw a lot. We saw a couple Elephant bulls on the northern side of Fisher's Pan. But we were struggling to find lions. I had almost given up when on our last game drive we got lucky and saw some lions at Klein Namutoni. It was the last waterhole we were going to visit before heading out of the park.


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A large male lay about 150 meters away form the waterhole at a clump of bushes. He had a nice full yellow mane, typical of Etosha Lions. Beside him was another female. It could be that these two lions were busy mating, though we didn't see any actually copulation.

At the waterhole itself lay a younger male, without a mane. He was fairly large and we had initially thought it was an adult female. A little further back lay another adult female out in the open.

While we watched a number of herbivores made their way towards the waterhole. As soon as they would see (or smell) the lions, they would stop some distance off.

A few times while we watched, a group of zebras would loose their nerve and bolt off. It appeared that the lions were hungry, and might start hunting in the night. The animals were more weary than usual.

We watched this scene for a while. There were a number of zebra groups now looking on from each of the regular approaches to the waterhole.

Out of the bushes behind the lions a zebra stallion broke out of the bush and walked towards the waterhole. He saw the lions and stopped for a moment. A few more zebras appeared behind him out of the bush.

To our surprise, instead of backing off like all the other zebra had done, this guy started a prompt walk, going right between the lions!

The lazy lions barely looked up. The zebra stallion walked on until he reached a group of zebras.

As he neared the group of mostly mares they trotted up to him and started rubbing against him.

I've seen similar behavior before. In fact almost any time you find lions near a waterhole in Etosha you'll find one or two zebras or other animals approaching them more than all the others. But this one just seemed to take it a bit far. The lions must have been about 100 meters apart, not far for lions, and this zebra had walked right between them. Also the fact that all the other animals approaching the waterhole held well back made it especially strange.

It was so amazing to watch. They were a bit far off, but I had made sure that my camera was ready, I was thinking 'easy meal' as he walked between them, and we all had a laugh at the reaction of the females. It was a bit too human, to Hollywood, the brave hero has all the chicks hanging from him.

Lioness Teaches her Cubs to Hunt

Guest post by Jason Whitehead.









Shortly after daybreak I got a call from a fellow guide on the radio to say that he had spotted a lioness on the move with her three sub adult cubs not far from where I was enjoying the view of a White Rhino. White Rhinos are incredible animals and I could sit an watch them for days, but they are a fairly common sight on the title="Welgevonden Private Game Reserve">Welgevonden Private Game Reserve situated in the northern province of South Africa. With a quick chat to my guests, we agreed to go and see of we could find her.

Welgevonden has a policy that no vehicles are permitted off road, this is to protect the environment and the many small creatures that you could easily crush by taking your 4x4 through the middle of the bush. I think this is excellent, but sometimes it can be a little frustrating when you know where an animal is but cant get to it. Today however was to be our lucky day, we did manage to find her and her cubs, but they were moving very quickly away from us through the bush which meant that the sighting would not last long. I decided to head out and wait at a road that she was heading towards about 5 minutes drive away. When we got there, there was a small herd of Zebra and Wildebeest grazing on the plain behind us, but right in the path of where I expected the lioness to to come out.

Sure enough a few minutes later, through my binoculars I spotted her in the tree line at the edge of the open plain. She too had spotted the herbivores and by her posture was obviously hungry. So in front of us we had the lioness hidden in the trees and an open area of around 100 meters to the road which we were on and then behind us about another 50 meters to the Zebra and Wildebeest. It was winter and so she did not have that much cover, so with my guests we watched her still within the trees move round to get our Land Rover right in between her and her potential prey. Then crouched very low she very slowly headed straight towards our vehicle, with her cubs hidden directly behind her in single file. If it wasn't for the fact that I knew that she was interested in what was behind us, this could have been rather frightening as it would have looked like she was hunting us! Even so we still had to be careful as a lion in hunting mode should not be taken lightly, and made sure my guest did not offer an easier alternative to a much more powerful and fast running Zebra.

Sure enough after about half an hour they got to our vehicle and then slowly moved around it, it was a fantastic sight to see such wonderful animals so close up. Now that they were behind us she and her cubs only had the tall grass as cover, but were now only 50 meters from their quarry. Then something very interesting happened, she stopped moving and her 3 cubs came around in-front of her and continued to stalk towards their prey whilst she just lay there watching. When the three cubs got to within 40 meters of the completely oblivious herd of Zebra and Wildebeest, one of them broke cover and just got up and ran towards them. With no chance of catching the herd, the cub had totally spoilt a mornings work for the rest of the family. When it had finished half heatedly running after the somewhat alarmed but now safe herbivores, they returned to their mother, who when gave the cub who had transgressed a snarl and then a tremendous slap right across it's face.

Right beside us, we witnessed some incredible animal behavior and a lesson that I think that cub would never forget. It had been an excellent morning in the bush.

About the Author
Jason Whitehead was born and grew up in Zimbabwe. Passionate about wildlife, travel and a keen wildlife and bird photographer, he is a qualified Field Guide (safari guide) and has worked on safari lodges in South Africa. He owns and runs the Safari Holiday Guide and the Best Binoculars & Binocular Reviews websites that now keep him behind a desk most of the time, but is always looking for an excuse to get back into the bush.

Would you like to post a story on this blog. Please feel free to contact me at frantic.naturalist [you know what comes here, skipped for spam] gmail.com

Amazing story

I am not going to tell a story in this post. I have just read an amazing wildlife story that you must go and have a look at

One of the most amazing wildlife encounters that I have ever heard of.

Enjoy it, it is one of the most amazing stories I have heard from the wilds of Africa!

Lion attack

I need to tell this story. I don't really want to, I need to. I have four main reasons not to want to tell it:

The first reason I don't want to is because I am a safari guide, who hopes that one day someone who reads this blog may be interested in visiting Africa because of what I have written. This post probably goes against all that.

I also don't want to, because I don't want to give lions a bad name. I don't want to make people scared of lions.

I also don't want to tell it because the story's details are now distorted by many years. But I do believe that I still have the gist of the story correct, after all, we have been telling it over and over for more than twenty years now.

Lastly, I don't want to get into a discussion over lion behavior or why lions do what they do. I am not an expert in lions. I know a bit, and I have learned things from experience, but I am not an expert.

Why do I have to tell the story...every time I sit and think what will be my next story for this blog, this one comes up into my head. So it's a kind of cleaning, get it out of the way.

It's a bit gory. Sorry about that.

1982 I was a little kid having fun as a 'home schooled' child. It was wild times. My mom, who was our teacher, was still learning how to live in an environment where there were people at the door all the time. Thousands of people came to our house some days...the result - we didn't do much schooling. As soon as she would get caught up, we would escape. We were wild kids and life was great!

But northern Kenya was a harsh place. There were bandits, there were famines (as we would go through in 1984,) and there were lions. There were what they would call 'man eating lions.' During those time my parents dealt with lion attacks several time. Not on us, no, on the people living in the community.

There was an incident were a little boy was carried off by a lion, and dropped deeper in the bush, and survived, there were some people who got killed, and there were some that were attacked and lived to tell the tale...and who had to be rushed to hospital first, before they could do much story telling...and one of these incidence one stands out in my mind. We'll get to that.

Now, I am not an expert on this, but I want to offer my thoughts on why these things were taking place there. Lions are very instinct driven. Lions don't recognize humans as food right away. If you encounter lions in the bush, most of the time they simply run away. They don't just run up to cars or houses and eat people. It is said that dogs kill the most people of any animal each year. Lions are right down the list. I think even in Africa, where the statistics should be viewed with caution (where there are statistics,) lions still aren't killing that many people.

The area where we lived was the Kaisut desert. It's like a bowl of desert in the middle of an area of mountains on most sides. These higher areas have some lion prides, as do the dry river courses that come out of these mountains into the desert. But the good habitat is limited. Once a male gets to old for maintaining it's territory, it gets pushed out... and in areas like the Kaisut, they are forced into the less productive areas - the desert.

Here there aren't that many animals to kill, and in general the condition of these lions starts to deteriorate fast once they come into the desert. So these aging lions turn to what's easy.

...In the middle of the night we woke up to a strange noise. Very loud too. At first we though it was gunfire. The house we lived in was build from corrugated iron, fashioned into a two story, A frame building, designed to let the head rise through outside walls. The noise, in the middle of the night was from a Rendille warrior running his staff along the length of the house.

After flying out of bed from the noise my mom and dad went down to see what was going on. There was just one young guy there, completely covered in blood. This guy was sweating profusely and in an almost trance like state.

He was to zonked out to talk. My mom got out here first aid things, heated up some water, started to clean the blood off. He still couldn't talk. My mom carried on cleaning him up, looking for his wounds. There were none. This guy was completely covered in someone, or something, else's blood. And he was in such a state he couldn't tell my parents where his injuries came from.

They sat him down, gave him some tea (to Rendille super sweat tea is very good stuff.)

He started to calm down and told us the story:

There was with another guy in the grazing area (about 10 kilometers form the town where we were.) The animal enclosures were made from small Acacia bushes, cut and put into a circle with the top, the thorny bit, facing outwards. Inside this circle went all the animals, mainly sheep, goats and camels.

Two warriors were alone at this site. The so called 'warriors' were often no more than kids who had been circumscribed. They would be warriors for just over a decade before marrying. These two guys were still young, the younger must have been in his early teens, the older one, who came to our house that night, not much older.

The older guy had gone out to the toilet when the lion came in. From my recollection of the account, the lion had broken into the first enclosure, and, unable to even catch sheep, it broke through to the people part and when for this young guy.

He held up his spear, but the lion had a good swipe at him. It really did a lot of damage. It took off most of the skin from his face, damaged his eyes, and cut deeply into his chest.

The older of the two boys had no real trouble chasing the lion off back into the night...probably to die.

Now there was a problem...hyenas. If the older guy left his friend to go for help, the hyenas would surely get him. He was a big guy, and decided to pick up his friend. He ran/walked with him to a water pump. Here he could lock the injured boy into a small pump building where hyenas couldn't get at him. He had already done some distance with his bleeding friend slung over his back, and now he ran to town. When he reached our house he was severely dehydrated and in shock.

When we got the full story out of him, we (me and my brother and sister,) were garbed, jumped into my dad's GMC Jimmy, and raced off to go and pick up this guy. Everyone already feared for the worst. There was hardly any reason to even think he could make it. He had to be dead...

We got to the bore-hole pump station. He was alive, but only just. My mom didn't do much in the way of first aid...we had to get him to hospital fast, and hospital was more than 70 kilometers on bush tracks. My dad drove that Jimmy really fast through the bush. My mom did what she could. For us kids, I can clearly remember that I only looked at him once properly. It was really shocking.

He was covered in blood, completely. His face didn't look like a human at all. Big sections of skin hung down from him.

When we got to Marsabet my mom went in the hospital with him. The staff didn't want to look after him. The desert nomads were very looked down on (and still are today.) And everyone thought he was dead. He looked dead at that point. Even my parents thought that he would be dead any minute. So my mom took over...she's the forceful personality in our family, just get's on and does what needs to be done, and doesn't usually stop to consider who is telling her that she can't or shouldn't.

My father, the more quiet, methodical one, went off to find out if we could fly the boy out to a better hospital. We were in luck, a flying doctor service was just on it's way. It's not geared up to be a medivac aircraft, it's mainly a flying clinic. But they didn't hesitate to fly the boy out.

His recovery was slow. First they though that he would loose both eyes, but gradually managed to save them. Lots of skin grafts and a lot of time in hospital. It was also depressing and scary. This young boy had hardly seen any sort of town, and here he was in the busiest hospital probably in East Africa. He was terrified. Couldn't understand what people said. But, with visits from my parents he pulled through. Till today he still knows my parents and his family are still grateful to have him after that incident.

That's my story about lions attacking people.

Lions and small tents

Many years ago I was doing camping tours in Namibia. We would spend a little time in Botswana in those days. In Botswana we often camped at a wild campsite called Serondela (don't know spelling???) It was a great time.

We would come from Namibia, pick up a Botswana guide before going into the park. For the new two days the guide would do all the guiding, and I would be left with my camp assistant to manage the campsite.

In the mornings we would prepare coffee/tea/etc for the guests before they would leave for game drive. They would be out for about 3.5 hours before coming back for a brunch.

After the guests would leave, we would quickly work to prep the brunch, then pack it away in a trailer (there were legendary baboons in those days - they got to everything.)

After that we would have a couple hours to kill, and we were seriously into birding (still am.) My camp assistant and I would start working our way through the campsite, looking for birds.

On this particular day we noticed that there was a small tent people still in it. We noticed that there were lion track around, but that's normal for Serondela.

As we walked closer the couple in the tent called out to us, saying we should not be walking around. It was now properly daylight and there had been a number of vehicles driving past. We told them it was fine. But they insisted. Finally we went to chat to them to find out what was going on.

It turned out that in the night a lion had been walking along the road through the campsite. A kudu had come up from the river, through some bushes on the edge of the campsite and literally walked into the lions right next to their tent!

The lion had killed the kudu and spend the rest of the night right next to these peoples small tent. In the morning it dragged what remained of the kudu away into the bush as people woke up. It took us some time to convince the couple in the tent that it was now safe to get up. When they came out of their tent they gathered it up, without packing anything - still with the sleeping bags and their personals inside, pushed it into their car, and left.

I seriously hope that they overcame that shock to return to Africa, but it was certainly an amzing experience for us, and a bit of a reminder to be a bit careful in the African Bush!!