Lion

Discussions and information on all Southern African Mammals
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Flutterby
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Re: Lion

Post by Flutterby »

Dindingwe wrote: Tue Nov 20, 2018 3:08 pm
Flutterby wrote: Tue Nov 20, 2018 10:20 am Are these your pics Dindingwe?
Yes of course ! I only post my own pictures :X:
I just wanted to make sure before nominating one of them, then I saw Lis had done it already! \O ;-)


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Lisbeth
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Re: Lion

Post by Lisbeth »

Lion digs up burrow to catch warthog

Posted on 27 November 2018 by Kwandwe Private Game Reserve in Animal Encounters, Destinations, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Wildlife

Written, and photographs, by Ruan Springorum

As a guide, I often get asked if it’s true that male lions don’t do any of the hunting, that the females do it all. That is not entirely true. The males can and do hunt, and we witnessed just such an event firsthand recently, although perhaps not in the way some might imagine a lion hunt taking place.

We had found one of the big dominant male lions on Kwandwe, and he was on the move. He was roaring regularly as he went and paused frequently to spray urine on some of the bushes he was passing to mark his territory. In the late afternoon light, it was a spectacular scene as we followed him across a large open plain towards a small valley nearby, and it was here that his behaviour changed.

He discovered a series of warthog burrows, dug into the stony ground, and we could see from the softer sand at the entrances that at least some of them were currently in use. He started sniffing at the entrance of the burrows, checking each in turn before moving on to the next.

Image

After about 20 minutes, he clearly found what he was looking for, and he began to dig. Using his massive front paws, he dug at the entrance of the burrow. It was slow going on the hard ground and almost half an hour had passed but he continued digging. It was abundantly clear at this point that he knew that a warthog was in there and he was going to get it.

We sat with cameras at the ready, we knew that action could take place any second… and it did!

A warthog, having lost its nerve at the intrusion to its underground home, tried to make a break. It came barrelling out of the burrow entrance, loose dirt flying everywhere, but the lion was waiting for exactly that moment.

Image

The moment the warthog was within reach, the lion latched on with powerful claws snagging into the warthogs’ shoulder, abruptly stopping its escape. A bite to the side of the neck followed almost instantly, and any chance of shaking free went from slim to none.

In the blink of an eye, absolute chaos had erupted! The warthog writhed around, shaking violently in the unrelenting grip of the lion.

The warthogs mouth was open as it squealed, a deafening sound at such close quarters, as it fought for its life.

The lion's grip was just too strong, and he dragged his catch to the side of the burrow.

Image

Another heave and he pulled the warthog out of the burrow entirely and away from the only, albeit very unlikely, possibility of escape.

With the tunnel now clear, another warthog could now make its escape, and came charging out!

Fleeing such a horrific scene was the only objective of the second warthog and it immediately made good its escape, leaving its unfortunate companion to its fate.

Image

Slowly the squeals of the captured warthog became fewer and weaker as the inevitable took place. The lion had his prize, a reward of almost an hour’s effort to get it. He dragged his kill out of sight into the treeline nearby, where we could hear him begin to feed.

The sun had set, and the fading light drew a natural conclusion to the drama we had been fortunate enough to witness as we moved away with the most vivid of memories and some photographs to keep them fresh.

Image


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Flutterby
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Re: Lion

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Unbelievable photos!! ^Q^ ^Q^


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Richprins
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Re: Lion

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\O \O \O


phpBB [video]


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
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Lisbeth
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Re: Lion

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=O: =O: =O:


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Re: Lion

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lol


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Re: Lion

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Snaring has become the greatest threat to African lions

Snaring indiscriminately kills wildlife throughout Africa, including both animals that lions prey upon, and the big cats themselves.

BY RACHEL NUWER

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anim ... at-africa/

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 29, 2018

IN MID-JANUARY, RANGERS and researchers in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park made a horrific discovery: the slumped, emaciated body of Naturinda, a lioness they knew well, trapped in a snare.

The noose-like wire had worn away Naturinda’s fur and skin, leaving a gaping neck and facial wound that had begun to fester with maggots. Protruding pelvic bones and skeletal ribs indicated that she had been trapped for some days. Yet she was not dead.

Wildlife authority vets quickly anesthetized her, removed the snare and treated her wound. After lapping up a big bowl of water, Naturinda walked away, but over the next three weeks, her condition deteriorated. After a second, nail-biting round of treatment—her anesthetized body fell from a tree but was safely caught by a strategically-placed mattress—she finally made a full recovery, rejoining her pride with a battle wound that would put The Lion King’s Scar to shame.

Naturinda is exceptionally lucky: Most snared animals never make it out alive. Fashioned from metal wires scavenged from tires, bikes, motorcycles, and even wildlife-protecting fences, untold numbers of these homemade booby traps are set to kill across a continent hungry for the meat of wild animals, known as bushmeat.

“When you drive around Africa and don’t see wildlife, the main reason is because it’s been eaten,” says Peter Lindsey, director of the lion recovery fund at the Wildlife Conservation Network.

Locals have hunted bushmeat on a subsistence basis for millennia, but demand is rising amid expanding populations and an increasingly commercial, urbanized trade. As a result, bushmeat snaring is growing in intensity and has become a primary threat to many species’ survival.

In 2017, Lindsey and his colleagues conducted 186 surveys with wildlife experts across 24 African countries and found that their subjects perceived bushmeat poaching to be the number-one threat to both wildlife in general and to lions specifically. Locals typically set snares, which are easily-made and cheap, hoping to catch large herbivores. But the wires are indiscriminate, often trapping carnivores that come to investigate the smell of snared carcasses nearby. Animals that snares entangle frequently die and begin to rot before humans even get to them.

In some worrying cases, however, lions are the target. Agostinho Jorge, conservation manager of the Niassa Carnivore Project in Mozambique, discovered during his doctoral research in 2017 that bushmeat hunters report lions as their third most-coveted species—just behind buffalos and zebras. Hunters there poached at least 80 lions from 2013 to 2017, and informants say that the killings are increasingly motivated by illegal trade in bones, teeth, and claws.

“Some of the [lion] parts end up with rhino horn and ivory leaving the country for Asian markets, and some is for an increase in traditional medicine use by Tanzanians coming in,” says Colleen Begg, co-director and founder of the Niassa Carnivore Project. “It’s quite scary because we’ve never before had a threat that’s so targeted on lions.”

Estimates of total lions trapped and killed are rough at best; Unlike elephants, their carcasses are not easily found. But what figures do exist are alarming. In 2013, for example, researchers in Zambia’s Luangwa valley found that snares snagged 11.5 percent of total adult and subadult lions over a five year period.

In rare cases, the predators get a second chance. Last year, managers and rangers in Zambia’s Luangwa and the Greater Kafue ecosystem saved 38 lions from snares, and some animals also manage to free themselves. At least three “tripod lionesses,” each with a missing limb, now roam the latter park. Their prides help them get by, as do smaller prey and young herbivores that make for easy pickings.

“One tripod lioness we know of even learned to dig up warthogs in their dens to survive,” says Kim Young-Overton, the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area program director at Panthera.

In some areas, including Queen Elizabeth National Park, direct snaring of lions seems to be relatively rare. During the year Alexander Braczkowski, a National Geographic Explorer and doctoral researcher at the University of Queensland spent in the park conducting research on lion densities and movements, Naturinda was the only snared lion he encountered.

But as Braczkowski’s initial results attest, snaring can also have chilling indirect impacts. Using a robust new measuring system, he found that the Queen Elizabeth lions travel about six times further than lions in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve—likely because excessive snaring has wiped out prey in Queen Elizabeth. As Braczkowski says, “Lions don’t move for fun.”

Less food ultimately means fewer lions, and indeed, Braczkowski found that lion densities at Queen Elizabeth are about five times lower than in the Mara.

As choice prey become scarcer, lions—which normally favor large animals like buffalo and wildebeest—also begin competing with other predators like cheetahs and leopards for smaller herbivores, says Matthew Becker, CEO of the Zambian Carnivore Program, and a National Geographic Explorer. “Species that have evolved to mitigate competition suddenly have to compete for a lot of the same stuff to eat, which has major impacts.”

Much remains to be learned about snaring’s impacts on lions and other wildlife. But in the face of crippling poverty and increasing human populations, researchers do know that solutions will not come easily. A first step, though, is acknowledging the issue.

“The conservation crisis in Africa is often so absorbed by the ivory and rhino horn trade that people overlook demand for bushmeat and the concomitant problem of snaring,” says Craig Packer, director of the lion research center at the University of Minnesota. “It’s an enormous problem that’s only going to get worse and needs to be addressed.”


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Lisbeth
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Re: Lion

Post by Lisbeth »

:evil: :evil: O-/ O-/ 0= 0= 0- 0-


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Peter Betts
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Re: Lion

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......The lion's grip was just too strong, and he dragged his catch to the side of the burrow.

Image

Another heave and he pulled the warthog out of the burrow entirely and away from the only, albeit very unlikely, possibility of escape.......
...My Back Yard ...Keeping the Non Indigenous game numbers in check


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Re: Lion

Post by Peter Betts »

Lisbeth wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:38 pm :evil: :evil: O-/ O-/ 0= 0= 0- 0-
..The African Dream being shattered


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