Education in Africa

Help the cubs or care about yourself?

Sometimes you can observe how «cat» family with its full complement or the male with cub are moved to the African savanna, but, in fact, the male has not been placed the role of father. The only function that he performs – this is production of food. The female is preparing the cub for adult life and is teaching him the basic principles of hunting.

But once we saw the adult male and female of leopard did not respond to an attack hyenas on a small leopard. Rather, in this case, they purport to own security, which was more important for them than their cub’s life. Also, we have seen how the male leopard was playing with his cub, teaching him creep to the victim, and attacked him by carelessness, which is very alien to them. Perhaps, this male even killed his cub.

Is the wildcat feral domestic cat?

No! This is true with the accuracy of the reverse. Rather, the domestic cat is domesticate wild cat. Wild cat is wild. It has dark stripes at the paws and tail, as well as several light stripes on the body. This cat has red ears and a more elongated body than domestic one. These features may be lost after interbreeding with domestic and further rearing of getting breed. According to Egyptian zoologists first African wild cat was tamed around 4000 BC, after which domesticated cats have been distributed worldwide. The European wildcat is very similar to an African, but with shorter legs and long body, so it could easily become part of the Egyptian population of cats.

Cats store the prey, is this true?

Rather no than yes. All cats necessarily eat their prey immediately, of course, provided that they have not had long to hunt for it or to get from difficult of access place, or to feed the cubs, which are far from prey. Depending on the size of prey, predator may spend a lot of time and make huge amount of effort to eat it. Strong and healthy lions prey on large animals such as buffalo, giraffe, hippo or an elephant, which sometimes takes them 10 days to finally do away with the victim. This, in turn, can not be described as their reserve. Rather – it is the absorption of food whenever as far as possible and attempt to spend the least possible energy to do so. We can not say that they do not leave the prey, until they do not eat it until the end, even if the meat during this time already has been corrupted.

Leopards are also more likely to stocks. But stock of food at certain times it is difficult to call. They carry the prey to a safer place, often hidden in the trees or stone edging. Leopards do it that more powerful individuals are not robbed of their food. The advantage of such behavior, of course, is that they have the opportunity to eat up victim for a longer period and keep it, without worrying that it’ll be stolen. In the Sabi Sands Reserve in South Africa we have seen how in the successful night leopard managed to catch as many as three antelopes. It put each of them on different trees in a distance of about 1 kilometer from each other. But the leopard began to eat only the latest prey and never returned to the first two.

Many believe that the lion-males are lazy and shiftless hunters …

But in reality it is not. Despite the fact that lions are not always food getter for all pride, they never lose their ability to hunt. One of the mistaken diffused opinion is that many males are living, eating food hunting by a lioness, and almost never try to bag anything themselves.

Once the cubs grow up, females are taught them first hunting skills and help to gain practice. Watching the older lions, growing males gradually adjust to adult life, and gain experience, leave the pride, united in groups of singles, where they have to hunt themselves, or to die from hunger.

In addition, males often spend time away from their pride, visiting the surrounding area and the protection of females and cubs of the pride of the attack. Several times we have seen, like a lion alone attacked the approaching wart-hog, antelope, impala or zebra. Similarly, we observed a single large male, losing eyes in previous fights, pounced on the antelope, and one paw he could break the neck of his victim. This was particularly struck us, because the lion does not have binocular vision.

A distinctive feature of the males is that they have a massive mane, which makes them less agile and faste and far more visible, especially in the daytime. During the night hunting turmoil are often created among the dense thickets, in the fact that a herd of antelope are usually run in different directions, but in the end, isolated from the herd victim will inevitably fall to a trap, previously placed by dispersed areas lions. Lionesses outnumber males, therefore, they grabbed the caught beast, after that the male rushes to them and captures prey. That’s why many seem that lion-males are lazily watching the ongoing battle, and then simply steal prey from females.

But we are ready to contend with this. To prove to our opinion, we want to give an example. Twice we saw a male, which punish with heavily prey without the help of females, while the lionesses retreat. Young lions at the age of about 3 years are fighting for the prey, after which the winner could regale trophy to share with the rest of the lions of his Pride, which is especially surprising because the prey was small(impala).

Another feature of the males is that while hunting, they spend much more energy to achieve the goal. Thanks to great weight and great strength they are able to kill quite large and dangerous animals, such as young elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes and giraffes, although sometimes they shift this hard work for females.

In the end, they have other responsible work. They have to constantly inspect the nearby area, taking part in dangerous fights to make sure that the females and cubs of their pride are safe.