Safari Live - Day 340 | National Geographic

This program features live coverage of an African safari and may include animal kills and carcasses. Viewer discretion is advised.

A very good afternoon to you all far and wide from the Maasai Mara here in Kenya. We have a lioness over there. My name's Lauren and I do have big James on camera today. It's a very hot day; the lioness is feeling hot, I'm feeling hot, and I'm sure James is too. A nice 29 degrees Celsius and 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now believe it or not, this is a shepherd tree, and this lioness was sitting perfectly up in the tree for about 30 minutes. And of course, just as the show was about to start, she decided to clumsily, I think she landed with quite a bang on the ground, and she's much more comfortable lying on the cooler soil. So today we're going to stay with her for a little bit.

But please do talk to us, send in your questions and your delightful comments using the hashtag #safarilive on Twitter or indeed on the YouTube chat stream. Now we're having a bit of a discussion about who this lioness is, and we're actually very close to our camp. We're not too far, and we are in the region of Olololo territory.

So the Holololos have made a kill a way up the escarpment, down the hill, and they're actually feasting on a zebra. So this lioness could indeed be part of the Olololo pride, but we are still trying to figure that out. We had a lovely view of her bottom earlier, and it is just now we are really starting to get a look at her face. So still not confirmed exactly who she is, but we will get there.

She does appear to be completely on her own. There is not another lion in sight, only herself, who was very comfortably perched up this tree and obviously decided it was not good enough, and she decided to come down. So it was amazing to see this lioness up here because it’s normally leopards you see up a tree and not lions, so it was a fantastic start for me and it's great to be with her.

So we're going to stay a little bit longer and figure out who she is, but for now, I'm going to send you across to David.

Yes, it's quite interesting to see a lioness go up a tree, but I think it's more, you know, interesting to see it also come down because lions are not designed either to climb trees or come down.

And hello hello everybody, uh jumbo jumbo a very warm welcome to this other side of the Mara. We are in the sausage republic. My name is David, as you sure know, and filming me on camera is Bungay. Definitely, Lauren has told you everything, but just as a reminder, don't forget to keep interacting with us, I'm talking of comments and questions and as usual, hashtag #safarilive.

Well, we do not have a lioness but we've got two elephants and buffaloes, maybe about six buffaloes, two of them are standing up and about four of them that are laying down, and my guess is these are two different species: buffaloes and elephants, but my guess is all of them are males.

But more so to the elephant facing the right, you see that one there? No question about it, that one is definitely a male. Now either he is interested in some female somewhere and not sure the one that's on her left is a female. I always want to believe it's a male, but we are going to investigate him much closer.

But you can definitely tell he is looking for some male somewhere. Now I've always looked at all the animals that I know of in the African wilderness, but I think the elephants have the biggest penises, so we're gonna have to wait. He just turned the other way; we will not be able to have a look at it, and they were a lot of kilos.

I'm trying to remember how much one would weigh, but it was a lot of kilograms, and he could be looking for some females elsewhere. To the far left of those two ellies, nostalgia, you can see three little dots there, and I'm trying to imagine those ones, they could be some sort of pigs. Yes, those are warthogs. Excellent! Those are warthogs. So in that one small area, we got warthogs, we got buffaloes, and we got the ellies, and the three different species of animals have been brought there by one commonality: that area is very green, it's very lush, and also there's a spring of water.

So what I've always said, water is life, and it's water that has put these three different animals that are not related together. Well, to the far right, Bungay, there's another huge herd of elephants. Thank you for that, buffalo. And I think that one male elephant should go, because I would believe in that particular herd there could be some females, but whether he's going there or not, so long as there's no female valve that is in stress, it will not help.

I agree with you, and just look at the beauty of the Mara triangle. Apart from the animals, there's magic. Why don't you look at that landscape? I mean sometimes when I look at the Mara, I just go, wow! I mean, seeing three different species of animals all spread out and co-existing very peacefully, it's wonderful, isn't it?

It's so quiet where we are. I'm looking at about being a mile or so away from where all these animals are. And as you know, Lauren said we've got pretty warm temperatures. I mean, when we talk about over 85 degrees Fahrenheit, for me, it's quite warm, or 29 degrees Celsius, that to me is quite warm.

But the long rains in Kenya have started and humidity being high, temperatures going high, it's nothing out of the ordinary this time around. And what you've seen the last few days is like every afternoon we have gotten some showers. I personally feel a bit of, you know, high humidity, and maybe rather late at night, we might have some rain.

Well my plans today, ladies and gentlemen, is to look for lions, and which lions am I talking about? Hi, Alia said I am in the sausage republic, and definitely I'll be looking for the sausages. Well, my silver and Lauren with the Mara triangle in Kenya, Steve is in Juma, and I'm sure he would like to say hello to all of you.

Good afternoon, everybody! Welcome down to a nice sunny warm day in Juma where the temperature is 32 degrees Celsius and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. My name is Steve, I'm joined by David on camera. Sorry, we just reversed back there to frame up a red-billed hornbill. There he is; he's busy calling, doing his very interesting little up and down motion.

The red-billed is easily identified from the southern yellow-billed by, well, the red bill. The southern yellow-billed has got a very nice yellow bill, also known as the flying banana, and this guy is well affectionately known as the flying chili pepper. As yesterday we had the yellow-billed hornbill on the school drive, busy doing pretty much the same as this, sitting in the shade doing a little bit of preening in the heat of the day. He's talking, or she's talking to her girlfriend somewhere nearby.

We can hear them calling. When they do their territorial sort of demarcation during the breeding season, the two of them will stand together and do that up and down bobbing motion with their wings normally a little bit more open, and it adds a little bit of sort of depth to the call that they make.

I don't really know how it works, but what about the look that they put on is supposed to scare off intruders, but it seems to be the way of the hornbill. Monique, most certainly not the hornbills are some of the most common of the birds we find around here. The two most common being the southern yellow-billed and the southern red-billed hornbill, this one being the red-billed, and, well, their breeding successes are very, very good because they actually hide the female away in a hole or cavity in the tree and actually cement it up with mud and also some fecal component from the female, and there's just this little keyhole split like that that the male is able to come and feed her.

So they are very successful in their breed and they can have between one to three chicks, and if the season is a good one, they'll successfully raise three chicks and we see many, many hornbills around. Next to starlings and dubs, hornbills are probably the third most common birds around. It's got a lot to do with how they breed.

Now it all comes to be successful. They don't migrate, and they've got very, very good abilities to switch their diet from insects to fruit to whatever else they feed on; insects and fruit being the primary sort of driving force. They also land on the floor and scrape through the elephant dung looking for any grubs and insects that might be growing in there.

I think this might be his friend over here in the tree or is that a roller? That might be a roller, in fact, another very, very common bird, or am I seeing something completely out of place? I think I'm seeing a log. Oh no, there is a bird there. Oh, Darby, it was a dove.

This has gone now. I thought I saw something that was not that, but anyway, if it was a roller, they're also quite common; we do see many of them around, but they're not as prevalent as the hornbills.

Okay, well, we're going to be searching for some tracks for leopards and lions today, see what we can find out, and while we do that, let's go up to the Maasai Mara where Lauren has already found a lioness.

And here I have my lion! I feel very lucky to be with this lioness right now. We're still not sure where she is because look at her beautiful position, flat as a pancake, as some would say.

So we're still not sure, but from what we can see, definitely a young lioness, definitely young, and I'm just wondering if she is one of the young ones from the Olololo pride or not. The mysteries that lions throw to you, you can just never quite get around it.

But one of the good things is that the breeze is picking up on this stifling hot day, so it's giving us a little bit of room to breathe, and it also does mean that it'll start to get cooler and the lioness will indeed start moving at some point.

Now just yesterday, we also had another lioness who made a warthog kill, and we just missed the kill, and of course it was kids' drive. So I think my personal feelings are going to be a really good idea to stay with this lioness for a little while. Once she gets cooler, I believe she will get up, and you never know what she's going to do.

I like to figure out exactly who everybody is before I leave the animal, so although she's flat and probably dreaming quite happily from what I can see here, I do wonder what lions dream about. Although actually maybe it's better I don't know what lions dream about. However, she looks rather comfortable, but I assure you, once it just gets a little bit further on in the day and the conditions change, we have got some dark clouds up ahead, which I'm a little bit worried about.

But the past two nights, the rain has held off, so we hope tonight it also will hold off. And of course, I am really intrigued to see exactly what this lioness gets up to and where she goes.

Where is she gonna go? Is she going to contact call and reunite with her pride? You never know. Sometimes lionesses don't like being on their own. They will go off on their own. They'll be independent; they'll do their own thing.

But then when it's time to join the pride again, they can get quite stressed, and they can repetitively contact call, and it's not the nicest thing to see. They need their pride. They're part of a pride. It's who they are; lionesses are prides.

So hopefully, we can maybe see her reunite with some others, and then the mystery could be resolved, and we could figure out exactly who everyone is.

But for now, our social cat is not being very social, and it's just lying flat as a pancake. Now, when we first came to the sighting, you could just see the outline of a cat in the tree, and from very far away, it just looked like a leopard. It was extraordinary.

And then when we got closer, of course you could see it was a fat lioness perched right in the fork of that shepherd tree. There doesn't look very comfortable from where I'm sitting.

Oh, hey girl! Kristen's asking, do lions love climbing trees? I've never seen them do it in Juma, but out here in the Mara, it's a regular thing to see lions climbing trees.

The Olololos are famous for it. You will always see the Olololos climbing trees. Lions also love to stand on their back legs and stretch right up against the tree and sort of use their claws to scratch. Sharpen those well claws. Stretch their bodies, you know, real yoga position.

But climbing? Yes, they do. So we also saw these sausage tree cubs up a tree, was it last night or the night before? I get confused, but we saw them up a tree. So lions do enjoy climbing trees.

It's just not something that people generally associate with lions, and they're definitely not famous for hoisting their kills into trees. And Kirsten kindly reminded me it was the night before. Sorry, the days just roll out here when you're having fun.

So it was not last night; it was the night before we saw the sausages up a tree. So leopards are the ones that are really designed with those huge shoulder blades and all the power and all the muscles in their upper body to really not only pull themselves up trees but to hoist their kills as well. They are notorious for it.

But lions aren't—that's not what they do. But out here in the Mara, they just love climbing trees, and it's just fantastic to see. I'm not sure why, and it's probably because it's really not something that you see regularly in Juma.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen down there, but it definitely happens a lot more commonly out here. So David is also looking for his lions, and I believe he's now entered the sausage republic, so let's go and see what he's up to.

That's very true, Lauren, and hopefully, going to see more than that one particular lioness you saw, you're going to see if you're in the Olololo territory. That's one area you might see one of the largest prides that we've got in the Mara triangle.

Well, I stopped here just trying to investigate what you have in those trees up there, but once in a while we have seen the sausage tree pride climbing all the way up. You see those huge rocks there? There's some big rocks that Bungay is going to show you. Bungay is the one who's managing the camera today, but not necessarily today for the lions that I'm looking for.

Those rocks, we have particular types of antelopes that you call clip springers that will always go on top of those rocks, or if not they clip spring as you have seen once in a while some little animals that we call some rodents like we call the hierarchies and the rock hyraxes. They like to climb there, but before I go to where I'm thinking I might get the sausages, I thought I will stop and make sure I'm not leaving anything behind.

The last I saw on those rocks up there, it's just two small little cubs, and I guess they belong to the female called Kingtail, and they were right on top of that particular rock. Not that they could be there today, definitely they have moved. That was like way back two weeks ago, but again you never know.

So let's just move on because it won't be long before we smoke these lions out. What I've done today is to go to a totally different area—an area I have not been for a long time where our guests could be hiding.

Well, I've said this many times; it's the green season now and you don't have as much prey as the lion should want. I'm sure Lauren might have mentioned it or not, but without the Williams and the zebras it becomes a bit difficult for the lions to keep eating and to keep hunting, so they have to deal with tougher prey.

I'm talking about their buffaloes, and every time we are looking for this particular pride I'm always first looking for buffaloes. And not once, I would say eight out of 10 times, that kind of trick has helped me to locate these females. Very, very good.

So let me keep going on, and hopefully by the time you see my face again, we'll be lucky. Let's go back to South Africa to Steve.

Thanks, Gigi, good luck that side. While we are in the heart of Juma and just been following up on some alarm calls. There was a squirrel making a lot of noise; they're not the most reliable of chaps. What have we got there?

Oh, that was a really big, two really big wart hogs running through the gap over there. Those are the guys we saw yesterday that disappeared on us. Look at that. Monsters! Really big!

There's a little mud wallow just over here; that's a good place to check for signs of animals. But we were following up on some alarm calls—squirrels, not being the most reliable of alarm calls—and then we heard a couple of mongooses and a go-away bird shouting. So we're just having a little look.

It is that time of day you're not expecting to see any sort of predatory animal moving, so the most likely is some form of predatory bird hanging around. But we still gotta check around, see if there's any tracks.

A little mud wall over here is a nice place to check. There's a lone buffalo bull who's hanging around the property at the moment. I'm not sure exactly where he is, but he was seen somewhere close to here this morning.

So a good place for him to be would be ensconced in the mud wallow to the right where we just had these wart hogs. Let's just have a look. The mud is drying up really, really quickly; there's not much left to it.

These seasonal muddy pans, the runoff from above the slope or from the top of the slope bringing all of the clays and nutrients down to the bottom, surrounded by quality trees and the like—these areas sort of dot around the dry river area and in these areas are really good areas for finding all sorts of wonderful animals as this is prime habitat for deca, nyalas, wart hog, the buffalo will come in and out, and there is a lot of grass around.

So we're hoping, with the late rains that we had and possibly the lack of rain to the east, that we're going to be getting the buffalo herds moving in because you know what that brings; that's going to bring the Umkuhuma pride in the Avoca males who seem to be setting up shop in Bufusuk to the north.

I can't even remember the last time we saw the Umkuhuma pride. Well, someone is out as well with me this afternoon. I think he's trying to follow up on some tracks of a female leopard. So you know who he is. Let's go say good afternoon.

I am, I am out and about, and well, at this point, a little on the frustrated side, which I know is early given that we've only just gotten started, but we've kind of been following on tracks, and I'll explain why it's frustrating shortly.

But before we get into all of that, my name is Justin, and on camera I've got Senzo this afternoon, and it is very nice to have you all aboard on a very warm, very pleasant—sort of, I don't want to say summer because it feels like we're not in summer anymore—the weather is changing, so let's say autumn afternoon.

Now, the frustration has come in because we were sitting at morning meeting this morning, and we heard alarm calling monkeys and squirrels, and we kind of ran out of camp, and Steve spotted a leopard crossing from the power lines towards sort of Gallagher's side.

So we came out and found the tracks, and they go straight to the pan, but the problem is I can't go any further because there's people that are in Gallagher at the moment sitting watching the pan, and I think they're having, I mean, maybe even sunbathing; I don't know what they're doing, but they're there right where the sort of deck is close to the pan, so I can't go there for now.

I have to wait until they're done, so I walked around as much as I could on the sort of western side of the pan, and Klalumba has been having an absolute blast. I say it's her because the track is quite small, and she's been all over the place inside there.

I'm pretty sure that's where the alarm calls came yesterday, but none of them are coming back this way are from today. Just heard tracks going down towards the water point, and then the last track I had was maybe 20 meters from where the pan is, and I had to turn around because that's the edge of the kind of thicket, so we'll have to go back there a little bit later if we are to try and track her down.

The thing is, if it is a little Klalumba and she is kind of in one of those moods, she could be long, long gone, and the alarm calls that Steve is hearing could very well be her.

So we're going to try and just kind of see what we can do like we're going to do a few loops further north, maybe up towards before the dam area, and then come back once the guys get mobile where we can actually properly kind of finish tracking that and see how far we get and where she is.

I think she must have found some shade and somewhere close to the pan. It's been a hot day today, and, you know, when she saw her the sun had just broken through because it started off quite cloudy this morning, and then it just broken through and we're starting to get quite warm.

And after a drink, often leopards will go and find a place where they can just lie down and rest for the vast majority of the day.

So let's see how we go, but on other leopard news, it's very exciting that little—I say little—Klalumba has got a new cub that was seen for the first time today, which is very, very cool. She's very, very cute; she's tiny, tiny, tiny. I say she; I don't even know if it's a boy or a girl; it's too small, I think, to tell, but super cute little thing, got tiny ears, and it's still very small.

I would probably say maybe only three or four weeks old, so that's very exciting that there is a leopard with a cub; they are on very far east of Torchwood, so we unfortunately don't get signal where they are.

But cool that they're around; maybe they'll push a little bit further to the west, and given that we are going into winter months, the signal on Torchwood should start to improve a little bit as the vegetation dies back.

Good, so that's the plan for the afternoon as we're going to do that; we're going to bumble about and see what's kind of happening. I'm sure waterholes will be the theme of the afternoon. In the meantime though, let's send you back across to Lauren who's had no such frustrations this afternoon and is already sitting with the 20 colored cat.

So indeed we're still at a loss of who our girl is because she really hasn't moved much at all, but we are getting different updates, and the Olololos are definitely really not too far away with Isabella. I'm afraid. So that puts a little bit of a spanner in the works, but we're still trying, do not worry.

And of course, lion prides do have home ranges, and within the range they have their territories depending on what their needs are at the time. So there will be a core central area for the lion's territory, but when I think as a human, we often box things in and we think that's a territory, but of course they are dynamic and they are fluid.

So the boundary lines do move from time to time. It isn't static, and that is just where we're at at the moment, so my gut is telling me Olololo, but I will conform. I always do. I will revert back, but that is just what my gut’s telling me at the moment.

So obviously, lionesses do generally work as a team because it's much easier for them, so they sort of can work together. It's easier to get rid of older lions and their domain keep hyenas at bay, which is obviously the main competition out here for lions. So that's much—oh we're having a little bit of a roly-poly, wow! Doesn't that look extremely comfortable?

Tim is asking, does she have suckle marks? Very good question, because she has a huge fat belly, but I do not see any suckle marks. And obviously, she just gave us a great glimpse of her belly before turning over to the other side, and I did not see any suckle marks.

She does appear to be a young lioness. Sorry, that position's rather comical to me, obviously comfortable. I don't know why that's making me laugh. There's no actually particular reason for it. This lioness has brought me many chuckles from the minute we met her. I did get a great photo of her jumping down the tree, though, so I will post that soon. You can see it all in action, but she just keeps getting herself in the most amusing positions like this one right here.

But it is obviously comfortable. So yes, thank you, Tim, great question, but I don't see suckle marks, and I do think—was that a sneeze? Oh, girl! Oh yeah, you are comical!

And now we're back to pancake position. They do love their yoga! Lions! I don't know why that was funny. Excuse me. Sometimes animals just do things that just crack me up when I actually look at them.

Now, I know she's flat, and it's not the most exciting thing to see, but I really want to get a better view of her, a better look at her face, and I really want to see where she heads. I want to finish the story. So of course we are going to stay here with her, even though I'm very jealous of her at the moment sleeping like that. I really wish I could nap like I used to when I was at university, but those days are long gone.

Could be the coffee, could be age; most likely coffee. He is saying she’s lying like my dog is lying on the couch.

Oh yes, my beagle would lie exactly like this as well for hours on end, and I always talk about my own made-up non-scientific term of the biscuit tin effect. And that is you will think your dog is absolutely snoring. She will not respond to her name or his name or not respond to any noises, but the minute you open the biscuit tin, we are awake! It's like magic; don't know how it works.

Lions are the exact same; as with leopards, as with all the cats, you will think they're in the deepest of sleeps, and they probably are, but any movement or any sound that they need to be alert to, they will jump up straight away.

And I term at the biscuit-tin effect, but obviously, lions probably would not jump up for biscuit tins; however, it's the same effect, and it is just utterly fascinating. And lions do have a terrible reputation for sleeping almost all day—some papers give it up to 18 to 20 hours a day, which I'm sure they're absolutely capable of doing—but that's not always the case.

So lions are known to hunt out here; we see it often in the Mara during the day, even under intense midday sun they will also hunt at night, and it just depends on what they're doing, I guess. It just depends on their daily schedule.

Lions can use a lot of energy on a hunt, especially a buffalo hunt that can take hours. They will expend a lot of energy; it will be very exhausting for them, of course. They will need to recuperate and sleep at some point, and that is exactly what they do, especially mothers if they've got cubs. Yes, they are exhausted, and they often need to catch up on those little cat naps themselves, so they can sleep most of the day, but they can also be active for lots of parts of the day as well.

Do not underestimate these lions, and most likely, this position is a new position. It looks very comfortable, and she probably is not going to move for some time. But we are absolutely going to stay stationary for now, but you guys are going to go all the way back down to South Africa to see what Steve is doing.

Well thank you, Lauren. I think the lion has got the right idea there, just taking a little bit of a chill this afternoon. Probably got a very nice view and maybe a nice wind underneath being high up in the tree. We're trying to pick out some parrots over here; I can hear them calling.

I can't quite see them; the reason why I wanted to show them to you is because, well, they have a similar sort of nesting to a lot of the—like we were talking about starlings before. I can hear them from the distance; they sound like a rusty metal gate that you open. And there are whole nesting species like the starlings as well as the hornbills, as well as the rollers, all nesting in tree cavities in the woodlands of the savannah.

And a majority of the cavities are created by woodpeckers in their search for grubs as well as barbets creating the nesting homes. Okay, well, Tristan seems to be on the way. I know everyone has let us know, or me on Twitter that there is a leopard on the dam cam, and also to give you the news there!

Tristan used the wrong comms now to tell me on the radio, Kirsty instead of you, that he was on the way, so there we go! Tristan's in trouble for using the wrong comms. I'm only joking; he's not in trouble; he just has to have something to drink later.

So anyway, Tristan is much closer to the dam; he has been checking around Gallagher for Talamba, while what we think was possibly Talamba. And well it's a nice time of afternoon for Talamba to come out to have a drink. Obviously, and that's why it's important for us to check watering holes.

It's not just birds will come down to drink, but many of your sort of prey animals will come down and drink them in the middle of the day, and sometimes you'll find leopards in the middle of the day if the heat is not too bad.

Talamba, obviously being much younger than her father, the duke, he waits until it's very cool before he starts moving around. She's just got a bit more ants in her pants, I suppose, and also she's probably quite hungry. So we're going to head south from here. I'm just going to poke our nose into Chitwa because it's quite warm, have a little look-see at the dam, see if there's any elephants maybe that are popping out because it'd be wonderful to see some elephants.

And then we'll see if we can follow back up on some cats. Costa, you want to know the colors are all changing and when will all the green be gone? Well, the grasses themselves, if there's no more rain, they are just going to get dry and dry and drier and go through a sort of dormancy stage.

But if there's some rain just like if you had to water the lawn in your house you can keep your grass from going brown. Last year we had a bit of late rain in April, but the trees as well, they will start losing their leaves as soon as the daylight sort of reaches a certain—there's like a daylight limit that sort of happens—and then a lot of the trees will start losing their leaves.

The trees that keep their leaves are generally those that have got very good access to the water table. So, a combination of change in daylight hours as well as change in water depth could potentially lead to the trees losing the leaves.

So when you do find trees with lots and lots of leaves and them still very green, it's a very good chance that that plant has got access to the water because essentially if you keep your leaves on, the leaves are a pump pulling water from the bottom.

But if you don't have water to pull, then the leaves are basically going to dry up, and they're going to cause damage to the plants; they're going to start pulling water out of the plant that it can't afford to lose.

So if you've ever run a pump dry, you can do it some serious, serious damage. And so when trees don't want to lose any more water, they drop the leaves. That's one of the things that they do out here.

Okay, well, we're just going to head straight down here and see what's going on at Chitwa for a little bit. We had some nice luck there yesterday; who knows what could happen today. In the meantime, David Gitu has founded the sausage tree pride.

Correct! I mean staying just close to any water hole in the African wilderness will always bring some good luck. And a few minutes ago when I was telling you, hopefully, when you're going to come back to me or going to see my face, we might be lucky to have caught up with the sausage tree pride.

And I have to clap for myself and we'll clap for all of you because we're all going to see this beautiful setting together. This is the whole family of the sausage tree pride. Well, I would say the whole family minus, of course, the boys; the males are not here.

But where we are, I have counted three females and ten cubs, and you can tell they have everything they want because the green grass behind them there has a lot of water. So if they would need to drink, that's where they'll go. They're in the shade, and it's such a beautiful spot.

Not sure whether that's where a cub won't go for a drink or where he's headed to, and thank you very much. I'm sure all of us will need to toast a glass of juice later in the day.

Look at how green the grass is! And of course, he might be going to investigate something there and maybe bump into a frog, who knows? Now I've got three females here, and this particular pride, you know, for those of you who do not know, it usually has five females, so two are not here with me, and I'm sure they're somewhere.

Now one interesting thing I have to tell you, I've been here for the last, I would say, what, five, seven minutes, and I'm smelling some carcass that I cannot see. The wind has settled down, and to pick up the exact position of that carcass, it's very difficult.

So what I've done is to stop here. I also stay in the shade just like this cup and slowly, if the wind is going to pick up, I am going to identify where the smell of the carcass is coming from. But I'm sure there must be a kill somewhere.

Well, this is very, very good news here for us in the Mara, in Kenya! But I think Tristan has even better news.

Well, it is good news. Today has been a good day so far already. I mean, Lauren's got her lions, David's got the sausage tree pride, and there's little claw lumber as well. She's decided to come for an afternoon drink, so thank you to all of you that let us know by the dam cam that she's around.

It certainly has helped us be able to find her. The problem that we have is that they are yes in the lodge, and so I can't really follow her if she goes kind of leftwards.

So we needed to kind of head up that bank towards that thicket on the other side and while she's kind of standing like that, I'm actually going to try and get around quite quickly because it's difficult for me to cross to where she is now. I've got to go around the other side.

I was hoping that she was going to drink a little while longer, but it seems as though she's decided she's had enough, and there's lots of squirrels shouting at her, and there's going to be impalas and wildebeest that are about to also shout at her, and so that's why she's going to head off in that direction.

But at least we've found her; like we were saying just now, it was definitely her tracks we were following earlier, and it was just unfortunate that we couldn't really go because of guests. Otherwise, I think we would have been able to track her all the way through and probably found her quite quickly.

But it's okay; at least we have all of you guys to help us out, and so it is a team effort this afternoon. Let's just quickly get across the wall. She's got her tail up; that's going to make kind of following her a little bit easier from a distance.

We're just going to go onto the road; she's heading straight towards the road on the other side. And from there, it's going to be probably a fairly long process to follow around because it's quite thick indeed.

James, it's true! Talimba is filling the pan pit roll that Rosanna left! Especially because it's a TV day today, so I mean you know when we did TV last time for Najib, we had Wazana pretty much at the dam most of the TV shows, and so she's filling that role.

I was saying that I'm sure Talamba is going to be here a lot this winter given how dry it is, and so hopefully that's going to be the case. Hopefully, mom doesn't push her away, and we get to spend lots and lots of time with the little princess over the course of the next few months, particularly if she's going to be at the dam cam. Wouldn't that be nice?

Now she should be here! Let's just work out exactly where she came. She might have just gone and lay in one of these worry thickets given how hot it is today.

There's the edge of the water scene, so she came here somewhere! Where are you, little Clalumba? I think she must be inside here, since there's a squirrel alarming. I'm just trying to see where she's gone because so the importance behind us will help us because if she moves in that direction, then we should be able to kind of see her.

Did she come this way? She did! Oh, straight here! Okay, so she must be here somewhere. I just got to find her. She's in one of these little thickets, I would imagine.

Where did you go, little Clalumba? It's amazing how you can be right here and can't even see them! It gives you an idea! She's still walking! Okay, so I believe—okay, so she's still walking towards the drainage, then there's the impalas are shouting now!

So have they seen her? Yes, they have! There she is! There we go! We kind of have where she is now, which is good! The impalas are sparking which helps us be able to find her, which is that!

There she is! You're moving far too quickly for your own good year! So she's straight in front of us now. So at least we've got a view of her, which will help us.

Yes, yes, impalas, we know! Well done, you saw her! Clever impalas! It's going to try and avoid all the little tambourine inside here. We don't drive over them, of course.

Klalumba has taken the most difficult route through here! She couldn't have just gone up towards the road, could she? Still see her, since last time I saw her was walking here.

Oh, there she is! There! Okay, all right! Like I said, this should be an interesting story because it's going to be thick; it's going to be dense; it's going to be difficult!

And so while we try and catch up with her, let's send you back across to the cute little sausage overload that is in the Mara!

Tristan, I trust you very much, and I'm sure Talamba is not going anywhere because you're going to catch up with her pretty soon! Me, I'm having a ball, I'm having fun because my cats are not going anywhere, and I do not see them going anywhere for some three good reasons:

Number one, they're in the shade. No cats will want to move out in the heat of the day unless they do have to. Two, as you can see, the green grass behind them, that's a natural spring and there's a lot of water to drink from.

And of course, number three, as I said earlier, I can still smell the carcass; I can't see it yet. I've tried to reposition myself. I'm putting my nose out; I'm sure you have seen how lions or how some of the animals when they're doing what's called "gremesis" and they put their noses up just to smell the fertility sometimes of the females; that's what me and Bungay are doing, and we've been doing that for the last couple of minutes.

We have not been able to know exactly where that carcass is, but I'm convinced it is somewhere now. This particular pride have a nursery school, a natural school of different ages. We've got about 11 cubs.

Kirk came asking why are they sleeping? Well, it's rather hot here. When we started, it was mid-80s—that is Fahrenheit; and very high, the centigrade we are talking about almost 30 degrees Celsius. That is too hot for many cats—many cats. I'm talking of lions, cheetahs, leopards, jaguars in general; when it's hot they want to stay in the shade.

Now lions, because they do not climb trees like leopards, they'll always choose a place like this. But also let's look at the bellies. You can tell the bellies are full; they have had some good feed.

And of course, if you're full, you have drunk enough water to quench your thirst or to adjust the protein you've eaten—what's the next thing you do? For lions, it is typical just to go flat! But look at the cabs, up and down, pretty active and still showing they are not ready to nap just like the adults.

Now this pride I've got two males. I've got two treadmills that you call the Olwen on your pike. I haven't seen them; I do not know where they are. And there's one cub there; you see, I guess he's just being curious and trying to be different from the others.

Hello there! I tried to bite some sticks to strengthen your teeth maybe or strengthen your muscles. Possibly are you trying? Well, everybody, sorry about the technical issues you're experiencing there.

We've popped onto Chitwa to come down to the watering hole, and of course, look at what has mysteriously appeared in front of us! It looks like possibly the Umkuhuma pride, but I'm not 100% sure. I'm trying to get some nice identification features.

There's at least two young males, possibly even three young males, which is a little bit strange, but they are looking very, very full, very full indeed. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten of them, and well they've eaten quite well, and they are very hot and very uncomfortable in this afternoon sunshine.

Some of them are sporting very black lips from drinking the very muddied water that now remains of Chitwa watering hole. So you see there's a young male; he looks like the normal Umkuhuma young male, but then there's another one off to the left which also I'm not sure.

Everybody, we're going to get a closer look at these individuals and see if we can find some characteristic features. I thought on the left there, and you can see one young male, and there's another one in front that's definitely a male.

You see by the neck, and then that seems to be just by the look of it. I thought it was the manganese male, but I haven't been able to see under the tail yet. Maybe I'm confused completely, but we've just arrived in the sighting that individual that we're looking at looks like it was lying in all sorts of weird, wet stomach content or something.

Oh, in fact, that looks like a lady. That is one of the old girls. She looks very scraggly because she's been lying in either the water or in the stomach content of some sorts.

Really don't know. Hopefully, it's water because I'm sure if any of you've ever come across stomach content, it doesn't smell very good at all, at all—oh do stomach content as Hukumuri did the other day with the buffalo dung?

He liked to mask his very smelly smelliness of himself, okay? So I'm guessing it's just from what I can see, but I don't recognize that one male. The Mangani male has normally got a very characteristic sort of face to him.

What did you see, darling? Water buck suddenly realized that there's something over here. The wind is wafting over to them in that direction. Okay, so yeah, this one—okay, that is the oldest lioness. Yes, so very good. There she is with that very badly injured hip.

And still it's looking much better, much better condition than it was all those many, many months ago. So everyone is confirming it is the Umkuhuma pride.

And now when you see this hip of this female, it's always a very easy way to identify the pride. Sometimes there are some other characteristic features, but it always takes me just a few more minutes to do so.

[Music] Very good! It seems like we've all found ourselves some cats this afternoon, and these guys are enjoying a very nice bit of shade to provide the tier on the side of Chitwa watering hole, provided by a very nice big jackal berry.

Well, it seems like surprises are on the offing today, and Tristan has got another one.

It's indeed very surprising because our beautiful little girl, whom you can see, has found herself some shade and has given us a really big surprise in the form of a really big meal.

Now in the background there, you will notice there is a fully grown male impala that seems to be her kill. Now I went past the impala; we spotted it just as she was kind of approaching, and it does look like it's got bite marks on the neck, so I assume that she managed to bring this down all on her own, which would make it the biggest kill that we know of that she's managed to bring down.

There's no other sign of any other leopards here, and the fact that it's got bite marks on the neck tends to suggest she didn't just find it dead.

So it's a fully grown male impala, which is a huge, huge, huge meal and milestone for little Klalumba. Now whether or not she's going to be able to keep it, I highly doubt. I'm almost 99% sure that she's going to lose it to hyenas at some point this evening, but isn't it incredible that our little princess is starting to really grow up and is managing to catch things the size of adult male impalas?

It's a huge, huge meal for her! Well done, girl! No wonder you're hot and bothered! So the fact that she kind of walked straight back in this direction tended to suggest that maybe she had some sort of a meal. I wasn't sure, but I was thinking there could be something around here.

But the fact that she's brought something of that size down is quite something, and I know a lot of you are saying, "Wow, it's pretty impressive, isn't it?"

She really has kind of stepped up and managed to find something incredible, so I'm super happy for her. I'm glad that she's managed to get a nice big meal.

Hopefully—and I know I say this in a kind of bad way, well, as maybe some of you might say in a bad way—but I actually hope Tingana arrives.

And I tell you why, and Shaks, you just referred to this is that you say this is Tingana and hyena bait, and exactly! I actually wouldn't mind Tingana arriving because he would have the strength to hoist this, and you'll find that he'll kind of eat and he'll keep the hyenas at bay for a while.

But eventually she'll actually get a meal out of it far more than if the hyenas arrived. Hyenas are going to bully her off this in two seconds and completely chomp that down.

Last night, we had so many hyenas moving around in this area, and who knows? Maybe she’s been losing kills in the last few days because our hyenas look as though they have been kind of put on a sausage machine and been force-fed for huge chunks of meat because they've all been fat and full over the last two days, and we haven't really been finding carcasses.

So I wonder if maybe little Klalumba hasn't been feeding my resident hyena population, and so it would be good for her to have little Tinga or not little, big Tingana arrive to be able to hoist it into a tree for her to be able to get some sort of food out of it at some point.

Or she's going to have to learn what her brother learned in the form of being patient and waiting for a scrap or something for the hyenas to leave behind and then grab that and take it up a tree.

The problem is that where it's at the moment really is not anywhere near a nice tree for her to hoist.

I mean that kill probably weighs more than she does—almost double what she does, actually, if you think about it—so she's got a lot of work to do to be able to actually move it.

She's eating a little bit. I'm not a huge amount as yet, so I'm hoping that at least tonight she'll get a really good kind of feed out of it before she sort of loses it.

If the hyenas do come and they do sort of get to this point, the other problem that she's got unfortunately is that where we're situated is right next to a road.

We're within, I don't know, 15 meters of a road, and we know that the hyenas like to use roads as they move around in the sort of evenings.

So it's kind of a thoroughfare for many animals that walk along here, and the chances of her being able to actually keep that are going to be quite slim.

But I'm super impressed! I mean, it's a serious, serious meal for any leopard to bring down, and so she's done super well. And as she gets a little bit older in life, we're gonna find that she's going to perfect the art of killing these guys and eventually will get strong enough to be able to put them in the tree.

Now this little cat is going to probably have a really good nap, and rightly so, she's obviously been busy through the course of today.

What have you seen, girl? I don't see anything behind us, but anyway, she's going to have a bit of a nap. In the meantime, though, let's send you across to Steve and the informal pride, who are doing much the same.

Well, come back to Chitwa, everybody, where it pays off to check the watering holes, just as some of you spotted Klalumba on the dam cam. Tristan was able to find her. And when we've managed to find the Umkuhuma pride, and just chatting with someone on the radio, and it seems that the Umkuhuma pride ate a young giraffe sometime this morning, and they wasn't here; it was a little bit further away.

But obviously, they've come here before drinking, very, very good. Well, they say the sign of independence for a leopard is the ability to fully kill and take down a male impala, and well, Klalumba has done that!

It's not her first male impala that she's caught, but the sure sign of being independent is then being able to on your own hoist that animal into a tree so as to secure your food resource.

Because no doubt, in the first few male impalas that Klalumba catches, she's probably going to lose them to either her dad or to hyenas, who no doubt will follow her around. They can smell her; they know exactly who she is.

But this is great; we've got a couple of the young lions walking around. The oldest lioness, Dave, is right at the back there, busy having a drink.

Don't know why she walked all that way to go and have a drink. She's looking very, very full!

Some space for water! We thought maybe they were all gonna start leaving because two got up and started walking off. Let's come back into the shade. This is the only real shade to be found!

Mila, you want to know how tall a lion is if it stands on its hind legs? Well, I'm going to have to just double-check that for you now! There's definitely a measurement in my book that gives me sort of that; the head to tail of a lion.

I'm just going to double-check it so that I don't make a wrong mistake; I don't say it wrong here for you because it's important that the information we give you is accurate. But I've seen photos of lions standing with their paws on the shoulders of people, and they stand taller than a human!

But obviously, it's difficult to say exactly how big they are because obviously people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. But lions, for the most part, are pretty much the same sort of size. So I'm just going to double-check in my book here for you, Carmela.

367! One second! Okay, so average height—120 centimeters, so, but that's from the shoulder! That's from the ground up onto the shoulder. So, that is not, it's not in this book! My other book definitely has got a—oh, maybe not! But lots of different resources to check the actual length of an animal!

Give me one more second! Okay, so shoulder height doesn't actually give it to you in this book. So definitely a lion standing on its hindquarters on its hind legs, and its legs extended with its paws on my shoulders would stand taller than I would.

So more than six feet! They're very, very big. And they are very, very powerful. And so a lion that could stand taller than me and weighs twice my weight, you can imagine what they can do running at enormous speeds! Jumping onto very, very big prey animals!

She is a very thirsty girl! And although the Umkuhumus are looking a little bit active right now, I think it's mainly got to do with just the fact that their belly is very full.

They are waterbuck abounding in the surrounding areas. They all have an idea, I think, that the lions are here, and it wants to come down and drink.

We saw the kudu yesterday coming down to drink, and they were a little bit tentative. I don't know where the Umkuhumus have come from in the night because where we found their tracks just now was just up the road here on the way into Chitwa from the main road, Gary Main, where we come from.

But where they came from, it's very hard to say. Lions will walk quite large distances in search of food, and then they can spend a few days in that place once they have caught something just for digestion and for catching up on so much needed to sleep!

Okay, well, Lauren had some interesting interaction not so long ago with giraffe and a dead baby. I think she's got a live fully grown one in this time!

Let's go and see how tall this giraffe is.

Yes, I do! These giraffes are very, very close to me right now! We have four female giraffes that are just absolutely stunning! They were actually on the road, so we had to stop, and it's definitely worth stopping for!

There's just giraffes everywhere right now. I don't really know why I'm whispering because I don't have to. They're more than relaxed with us here, but it's just, oh, it's just wonderful to stop and appreciate these absolutely gorgeous animals.

Now, I was reading—I spoke about their spot pattern. It's difficult when I say spot pattern because it's not really spots, but that is what they call it when they refer to the apaches.

I guess you could say patchy's pattern, actually. The calves, whether they're male or female, inherit part of their spot pattern from their mothers—not the entire thing, but they inherit quite a large part of the pattern, a patchy's spot pattern from their mothers.

Isn't that incredible? Now they're really close to us! Like now sometimes giraffes can get a bit nervous with the cars, but these ones are just completely relaxed and quite happily feeding, might I add!

Oh, my father's favorite animal is giraffe! We grew up with giraffe paintings and giraffe ornaments all around the house, and I think I can finally admit that I see what he's talking about!

Giraffe girls seen the belly on that one? Yes, actually quite a few of them have huge bellies. And there's one at the back, and of course our view is completely blocked now, but the third one in that row of three, her belly is so swollen I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a pregnancy there.

Two of them have huge, huge, huge bellies, and giraffes can eat—they're said to eat up to about 34 kilograms of leaves and foliage per day! Now that is about just over 70 pounds, I think! That was my attempt at quick maths in my head!

So they eat a lot, of course; look at the size of them! They will need to eat a lot! You can get a glimpse of that black tongue there just as they're eating. It's extraordinarily striking when you see an animal of this coloration and it's pure black tongue which contains so much melanin that was thought to originally protect the giraffe from the sun.

Of course, our skin has melanin in it as well, but it's probably just used more to make the tongue more rubbery if you like. The melanin in itself will make the tongue turn black; it’ll be thicker, stronger, and more rubbery in nature which will indeed protect it when eating sort of shrubs and bushes with thorns or anything like that.

But a lot a lot of the theories do go that it is to protect it from the sun, but I personally, and this is just my personal opinion, I definitely don't buy that one!

Eddie's saying they're such graceful creatures! Oh, they really, really are! And although, you know, they do tend to walk quite slowly, they can gallop up to quite extraordinary speeds when they want to! It takes them a little while to get going— they're not the fastest animals to get going—but once they really get into that gallop, they can go anywhere between 50 to 60 kilometers per hour, which is quite extraordinary for this animal!

And they really only have two sort of movements to gait; it's either walking or galloping. They're not really able to do much other than that, but let alone they're just fantastic!

And if our—if James is able to give us a beautiful view of this one from behind, you're able to see the way the legs come in at the knees! Now, in humans, I think you would maybe refer to that, okay, it's off again!

I swear the animals know what we're saying! Maybe this one would be good, James, this one here, so you can see the knee stains in! And in humans, a condition like that I guess would maybe be called knock knees or something like that or something along the lines of that!

And the reason the giraffe is structured like that is because it very regularly puts its knees together in squat positions! So when it needs to bend down for food, bend down for water, or of course, with females when they are given birth!

So that is why the legs do taper in like that, and it almost has a knock knees effect! Hello, beautiful! Look at your ossicones, they're lovely and unusual, aren't they? Quite unusual, they're almost joining in the middle there!

I don't know if it's just the way the wind is blowing; they fluff, if you like, or if they are actually bending in towards one another! Either way, it's stunning!

Now, I think our giraffes are very soon going to move off, and we of course have a mission! We are going to look for more lions! I won't ruin the surprise just yet, but we are on a mission!

And while we do that, we will send you over to David who actually does have his little sausages!

I am sure, I am sure, you know, Lauren will be getting possibly more lions! As I said earlier, that territory she is in, she has a possibility of either getting the Olololos or the river pride! And having seen Olololos has reminded me that I still got somewhat to do with my song to console the Olololo pride after they lost some cubs a few weeks ago!

Well, my lions haven't done much, but I have now vaguely been able to identify where the carcass is coming from, not very far from where we are! I was able—wow, what a nice play there between one big boy cub and that youngster there!

I've been able to have an idea that it's coming from my right-hand side! Not exactly that I have seen it, but after listening or just smelling carefully—not even listening, from the wind—I have been able to know where the smell coming from!

My guess is that—or this is a buffalo that these lions brought down, and my guess is it could be two days ago or three days, which would translate to them being here for the next three days.

Which is all very good news for me! The whole pride was about nine days—going to ten—since that last saw them! But three days ago, I was very lucky to see some of the cubs on top of a tree that we call the Burchan tree!

Now if they're full, they have had enough to drink! The only movement you see is twitching their ears just because of the little disturbances or irritation from the flies! Apart from that, sleep, snooze, and maybe dream of maybe not sure or know what they could be dreaming about!

Now the males haven't come to join them, and what I'd want to do maybe at one point is to try and confirm when that kill is and find out if the other two females that are not here are there! Now this pride, the last we had a count, we counted, me and Bungay, 11 cubs!

Kirk came asking why are they sleeping? Well, it's rather hot here! When we started, it was mid-80s that is Fahrenheit and very high the centigrade we are talking about, almost 30 degrees Celsius! That is too hot for many cats!

Many cats, I'm talking of lions, cheetahs, leopards, and jaguars in general; when it's hot, they want to stay in the shade. Now lions, because they do not climb trees like leopards, they'll always choose a place like this!

But also, let's look at the bellies! You can tell, and the bellies are full! They have had some good heat, and of course, if you're full, you have drunk enough water to quench your thirst or to adjust the protein you have eaten!

What is the next thing you do? For lions, it is typical just to go flat! But look at the cubs up and down! Pretty active and still showing they are not ready to nap just like the adults.

Now, this pride I've got two males, I've got two treadmills that you call the Olwen on your pike. I haven't seen them; I do not know where they are!

And there's one cub there; you see, I guess he's just being curious and trying to be different from the others! Hello there! I tried to bite some sticks to strengthen your teeth maybe or strengthen your muscles!

Possibly are you trying? Well, everybody, sorry about the technical issues you're experiencing there! We've popped onto Chitwa to come down to the watering hole, and of course, look at what has mysteriously appeared in front of us!

It looks like possibly the Unkahuma pride, but I'm not 100% sure! I'm trying to get some nice identification features! There's at least two young males, possibly even three young males, which is a little bit strange, but they are looking very, very full, very full indeed!

There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten of them! And well, they've eaten quite well, and they are very hot and very uncomfortable in this afternoon sunshine.

Some of them are sporting very black lips from drinking the very muddied water that remains of Chitwa watering hole! So, you see there's a young male; he looks like the normal Unkahuma young male, but then there's another one off to the left, which also I'm not sure!

Everybody, we're going to get a closer look at these individuals and see if we can find some characteristic features! I thought on the left there, and you can see one young male, and there's another one in front that's definitely a male! You see by the neck, and then that seems to be just by the look of it!

I thought it was the Mangani male, but I haven't been able to see under the tail yet! Maybe I'm confused completely, but we've just arrived at the sighting that individual that we're looking at looks like it was lying in all sorts of weird wet stomach content or something!

Oh, in fact, that looks like a lady! That is one of the old girls! She looks very scraggly because she's been lying in either the water or in the stomach content of some sorts! Really don't know!

Hopefully, it's water because I'm sure if any of you've ever come across stomach content, it doesn't smell very good at all! At all! Oh, do stomach content, as Hukumuri did the other day with the buffalo dung! He liked to mask his very smelly smelliness of himself!

Okay, so I'm guessing it's just from what I can see, but I don't recognize that one male! The Mangani male has normally got a very characteristic sort of face to him! What did you see, darling? Water buck suddenly realized that there's something over here! The wind is wafting over to them in that direction!

Okay, so yeah, this one—okay, that is the oldest lioness! Yes, so very good! There she is with that very badly injured hip! And still, it's looking much better, much better condition than it was all those many, many months ago!

So everyone is confirming it is the Umkuhuma pride! And now when you see this hip of this female, it's always a very easy way to identify the pride! Sometimes there's some other characteristic features, but it always takes me just a few more minutes to do so!

Very good! It seems like we've all found ourselves some cats this afternoon, and these guys are enjoying a very nice bit of shade to provide the tier on the side of Chitwa watering hole, provided by a very nice big jackal berry!

Well, it seems like surprises are on the offing today, and Tristan has got another one!

It's indeed very surprising because our beautiful little girl, whom you can see, has found herself some shade and has given us a really big surprise in the form of a really big meal!

Now in the background there, you will notice there is a fully grown male impala that seems to be her kill! Now I went past the impala; we spotted it just as she was kind of approaching, and it does look like it's got bite marks on the neck, so I assume that she managed to bring this down all on her own, which would make it the biggest kill that we know of that she's managed to bring down!

There's no other sign of any other leopards here, and the fact that it's got bite marks on the neck tends to suggest she didn't just find it dead! So it's a fully grown male impala, which is a huge, huge, huge meal and milestone for little Klalumba!

Now whether or not she's going to be able to keep it, I highly doubt! I'm almost 99% sure that she's going to lose it to hyenas at some point this evening! But isn't it incredible that our little princess is starting to really grow up and is managing to catch things the size of adult male impalas?

It's a huge, huge meal for her! Well done, girl! No wonder you're hot and bothered! So the fact that she kind of walked straight back in this direction tended to suggest that maybe she had some sort of a meal! I wasn't sure, but I was thinking there could be something around here! But the fact that she's brought something of that size down is quite something!

And I know a lot of you are saying, "Wow, it's pretty impressive, isn't it?" She really has kind of stepped up and managed to find something incredible! So I'm super happy for her! I'm glad that she's managed to get a nice big meal!

Hopefully—and I know I say this in a kind of bad way, well, as maybe some of you might say in a bad way—but I actually hope Tingana arrives!

And I tell you why, and Shaks, you just referred to this is that you say this is Tingana and hyena bait, and exactly! I actually wouldn't mind Tingana arriving because he would have the strength to hoist this!

And you'll find that he'll kind of eat, and he'll keep the hyenas at bay for a while! But eventually, she'll actually get a meal out of it far more than if the hyenas arrived! Hyenas are going to bully her off this in two seconds and completely chomp that down!

Last night, we had so many hyenas moving around in this area, and who knows? Maybe she’s been losing kills in the last few days because our hyenas look as though they have been kind of put on a sausage machine and been force-fed for huge chunks of meat because they've all been fat and full over the last two days, and we haven't really been finding carcasses!

So, I wonder if maybe little Klalumba hasn't been feeding on our resident hyena population! And so it would be good for her to have little Tinga, or not little, big Tingana arrive to be able to hoist it into a tree for her to be able to get some sort of food out of it at some point!

Or she's going to have to learn what her brother learned in the form of being patient and waiting for a scrap or something for the hyenas to leave behind and then grab that and take it up a tree!

The problem is that where it's at the moment really is not anywhere near a nice tree for her to hoist. I mean, that kill probably weighs more than she does—almost double what she does, actually, if you think about it—so she's got a lot of work to do to be able to actually move it!

She's eating a little bit. I'm not a huge amount as yet, so I'm hoping that at least tonight she'll get a really good kind of feed out of it before she sort of loses it!

If the hyenas do come, and they do sort of get to this point, the other problem that she's got unfortunately is that where we're situated is right next to a road.

We're within, I don't know, 15 meters of a road, and we know that the hyenas like to use roads as they move around in the sort of evenings!

So it's kind of a thoroughfare for many animals that walk along here! And the chances of her being able to actually keep that are going to be quite slim!

But I'm super impressed! I mean, it's a serious, serious meal for any leopard to bring down! And so she's done super well! And as she gets a little bit older in life, we're gonna find that she's going to perfect the art of killing these guys!

And eventually, she will get strong enough to be able to put them in the tree! Now this little cat is going to probably have a really good nap. And rightly so, she's obviously been busy through the course of today!

What have you seen, girl? I don't see anything behind us, but anyway, she's going to have a bit of a nap! In the meantime, though, let's send you across to Steve and the informal pride, who are doing much the same!

Well, come back to Juma, everybody! Where it pays off to check the watering holes! Just as some of you spotted lumber on the dam cam, Tristan was able to find her!

And when we've managed to find the Umkuhuma pride, just chatting with someone on the radio, and it seems that the Umkuhuma pride ate a young giraffe sometime this morning! And they wasn't here; it was a little bit further away!

But obviously, they've come here before drinking, very, very good! Well, they say the sign of independence for a leopard is the ability to fully kill and take down a male impala! And well, lumber has done that!

It's not her first male impala that she's caught, but the sure sign of being independent is then being able to, on your own, hoist that animal into a tree! So as to secure your food resource!

Because no doubt, in the first few male impalas that lumber catches, she's probably going to lose them to either her dad or to hyenas, who no doubt will follow her around!

They can smell her; they know exactly who she is! But this is great! We've got a couple of the young lions walking around; the oldest lioness, Dave, is right at the back there, busy having a drink!

Don't know why she walked all that way to go and have a drink! She's looking very, very full! Some space for water! We thought maybe they were all gonna start leaving because two got up and started walking off!

Let's come back into the shade! This is the only real shade to be found!

Mila, you want to know how tall a lion is if it stands on its hind legs? Well, I'm going to have to just double-check that for you now! There’s definitely a measurement in my book that gives me sort of that—the head to tail of a lion!

I'm just going to double-check it so that I don't make a wrong mistake! I don't want to say it wrong here for you because it's important that the information we give you is accurate! But I've seen photos of lions standing with their paws on the shoulders of people, and they stand taller than I do!

But obviously, it’s difficult to say exactly how big they are because obviously, people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes! But lions for the most part are pretty much the same sort of size so I'm just going to double-check in my book here for you, Carmela!

367! One second! Okay, so average height—120 centimeters—so, but that's from the shoulder! That's from the ground up onto the shoulder!

So that is not—it's not in this book! My other book definitely has got a—oh maybe not! But I've got lots of different resources to check the actual length of an animal!

Give me one more second! Okay, so—shoulder height doesn't actually give it to you in this book! So definitely a lion standing on its hindquarters on its hind legs, and its legs extended with its paws on my shoulders would stand taller than I would!

So more than six feet! They’re very, very big! And they are very, very powerful! And so a lion that could stand taller than me and weighs twice my weight, you can imagine what they can do running at enormous speeds! Jumping onto very, very big prey animals!

She is a very thirsty girl! And although the Umkuhumus are looking a little bit active right now, I think it’s mainly got to do with just the fact that their belly is very full!

They are water back abounding in the surrounding areas! They all have an idea, I think, that the lions are here, and it wants to come down and drink!

We saw the kudu yesterday coming down to drink, and they were a little bit tentative! I don't know where the Umkuhumus have come from in the night because where we found their tracks just now was just up the road here on the way into Chitwa from the main road, Gary Main, where we come from!

But where they came from, it's very hard to say! Lions will walk quite large distances in search of food, and then they can spend a few days in that place once they have caught something just for digestion and for catching up on so much needed to sleep!

Okay well, Lauren had some interesting interaction not so long ago with giraffe and a dead baby! I think she’s got a live fully grown one in this time!

Let's go and see how tall this giraffe is!