Playful lion cubs of the Moporota Pride (Mombo Camp, Okavango Delta) 07th Sep 2009

A few days ago I decided to join guide Simon Byron on a morning drive at Mombo. True to form, it was a productive morning and we moved from one sighting to the next as we made our way around the concession. There was very little time when we were not confronted by some or other large mammal or spectacular scene and we saw plenty of buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, lechwe, giraffe and tsessebe as well as lion.

Perhaps my favourite sighting was of the Moporota Pride with a zebra and wildebeest carcass at the Letlaka Hippo Pool floodplains.

By the time we arrived at the sighting, the lions (having killed the two animals in the early hours of the morning) had already mostly eaten their fill. The zebra carcass was largely finished and most of the adult members of the pride lay around with full, swollen bellies. The wildebeest had barely been touched though and this gave the cubs an excellent opportunity to trial all sorts of new skills.

As they climbed and jumped all over the carcass, some of the cubs instinctively practised a suffocating bite to the muzzle and throat, while others ambushed each other using the carcass as cover. Growing tired of the inanimate object some of the cubs later turned their attentions to one of the adult males while a side-striped jackal looked on. Even the jackal was not spared the curiosity of the cubs and it suffered the indignity of being charged by the youngsters on several occasions.