Safari Live - Day 27 | National Geographic

The whole thing, the grass, everything, so it's going to change rapidly once we get that rain, particularly with temperatures like this. This is great temperatures for the growth of vegetation, but they need water for that to happen. At the moment, there is no sign of any rain; it's not a cloud in the sky. It seems as though, unfortunately, it's all sitting over the Atlantic Ocean and the southern side of the United States.

So for all of you that are in Florida, if you are watching, I hope you're staying safe and that you're all okay. That side is where the hurricane starts to move that way. It really is a scary prospect when you look at the size of it, and the fact that there's another one following it, which is not so pleasant. So hopefully, you all stay safe. For any of you that are on that side of the world, we get the similar, if not as catastrophic, those as and as big as those, but we do get similar effects here.

Our summer rainfall is actually a result of tropical storms; we call them tropical storms down here, not hurricanes. They come off the Mozambique Channel, so we're just too far inland for it really to survive very well. Sip, can I ask you just to put the camera on that big ball in the tree there? I'm trying to see what that actually is. I wonder if it's not a potter wasp nest.

Potter wasps build these clay-type nests in a tree, sometimes under sort of hangs and branches that people could see. But it looks like a potter wasp nest. The reason they're called potter wasps is because they collect mud, and then they build this clay-like structure on branches, so that's what it seems to be. I might be wrong; there's just so much glare, and it's quite far away at the moment, making it difficult to actually make out what substance it is.

It could also be a result of some sort of insect that's fed off the branch, and it causes the tree to send a growth hormone that expands it, and you get what's known as a wood rose on a tree. It could also be that, but it's very difficult to make out exactly what it is. Maybe binoculars will actually be better; I'm not quite sure what it's actually made out of.

It doesn't look like growth of the tree itself, and it doesn't look like my D.E. It almost looks grassy in its texture in places. I'm not sure; actually, it's a bit too high to climb up there and have a look properly. But it's some sort of, I would say, mist or something like that.

It's not a potter wasp; what a wasp you would see would be a very clay-like structure, and that's a little bit more fibrous. So interesting; I'll have to try and watch that and see what happens with it and whether or not it grows. One of those mysteries of the bush, like I say, it's just a little bit too high to actually be able to go and feel what the consistency is because it might actually be quite spongy, in which case it would almost resemble a massive youth.

From a praying mantis, but you shouldn't see youth occur at this time of the year; it's a little bit early for them. We generally see that youth occur, which is the egg casing from manti; they grow; they're normally in summer, you know, early to mid-summer that we see those.

I also came down this way just to check if there's any sign of Shadow and her cub. That's less; no tracks that I've picked up yet, and we're nearing the end of the new road. But earlier, I was talking about Steve, and well, he's up and running. I believe he's already got into some luck with some lions.

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Masai Mara, specifically the Mara Triangle. I am Stefan Tubulin, and I'm going to be doing this afternoon's draw for everybody, which is unusual. I don't think I can remember the last time I was in a safari or PM Safari with all of you, and I'm looking forward to it greatly.

On the camera today, we've got David, and you wouldn't believe it if I just told you, but right in front of us, we've just had the whole Langontia pride. All of it— all the moms, everyone— walking across this grassy plain towards us and to black rhino. They’ve disappeared two minutes ago, and so that's our plan for this afternoon.

We're going to see if we can hold out the Young Gamez from the thicket that you're looking at over there and see if we can see if we can’t, you deserve it. It does; it's been a mighty frustration. Let's see if we can bring the black rhino to you as well; that's good.

So that's a mom and a calf—a very old calf. Oh, by very old, I mean probably less than five, probably older than three. There’s every hope that that female is pregnant at the moment. Wouldn't it just be lovely? In the Mara Triangle, there are about 12 black rhinoceros, and black rhinoceros are some of the rarest large mammals left in Africa.

There's a very healthy population of them here, and we're incredibly lucky to see even a brief glimpse like we are at the moment. Even, it's so far a distance; it is very, very lucky and very rare to see black rhino in the wild in Africa. And on the escarpment, the reserve, here such good conservation policies and practices that these rhino are left to fend for themselves, although they are looked after from Pharr by a gentleman named Brian, who’s the warden of the Mara Triangle.

And his team of conservationists take their job of looking after these rhino very, very seriously, and it's showing itself to be absolutely successful. See how far away it is now, a massive mountain that you have on the lid on the left-hand side. That is part of an escarpment called the Euler escarpment, which is a feature of the Rift Valley. The African Rift Valley is basically just one big fault that is busy splitting a chunk of land away from the African mainland.

A couple of hundred million years from now, you'll be able to bar beachfront property right where we are right now, and the animals that you are busy having a look at on these plains are just very numerous and lovely at this time of the year. This is sort of in the aftermath of the migration; what you're looking at now is a topi, and in the far distance, there are zebra, and they enjoy the short grass that is on these plains, these alluvial plains.

Now, another thing that enjoys the short grass, another one of Africa's first mammals, and my friend Scott is on the other side of the Mara, sitting with some of them right now. Can you believe how lucky we've got? We've managed to find the musketeer coalition of five male cheetahs again. They've literally just woken up; they are looking hungry, and they are surrounded by wildebeest—there are many, many wildebeest caching in on these short open green plains, and these cheetahs I'm fairly certain are going to try and catch one at some point this evening.

Great stuff, and also great that you got to see a black rhino with Steve. The Safari has got off to a wonderful start. It sounds like my name's Scott Dyson; I’m teamed up with Manu on camera, and we are looking forward to taking you on an adventure with these five male cheetahs.

Now, let me just turn around, and as I turn around, you'll notice the wildebeest dotted all over these short open green grass plains. We're going to get you some great two shots of the cheetah, and the wildebeest are so action in imminent. Very good; it looks like the boys are just going to spend some time doing some scent-marking, and we are very, very lucky that since Safari Live arrived here in the Mara, these boys have been spending a lot more time in this area that we traverse.

We're in the National Maasai Mara National Reserve, and they only came into this general area in December last year. They ordinarily would spend more time there, some more scent-marking. They would ordinarily spend more time in the surrounding community conservancies to the north and east of the park. But now, as you can see, they are laying claim to this area as their territory. There, you'll see all the wildebeest in the background.

Awesome stuff. Each time I spend with these five cheetahs, I fall more and more in love with them. They're an incredible bunch, and they are just the coolest animals to follow, especially when they are looking for a meal. What an incredible scene! Interestingly, this area was a yellowy golden brown about a week or so ago, and there's been rain in this area.

You can see hundreds and thousands of wildebeest scattered off in the distance. Unfortunately, Scott's got a few gremlins still attached to his car, so I'm sure they will sort those out and we’ll be able to get back to the cheetah. But it seems as though the boys in the Mara are having a wonderful afternoon already; lots of things happening that side, which is fantastic news.

Just thought I spotted a track, yeah, and I did spot a track, yeah. But now, is it a hyena or is it a spotted leopard? Shrek looks liquidy, doesn't it, Sim? Doesn't that look liquidy to you? Yes, it is a leopard track, so it looks like a male leopard track. I don't know if it's that fresh; maybe it's a track from when Tingana has been patrolling around. It looks like his footprint that we've got here.

So it's this track over there, and you can see that it's quite an interesting one because it's got a sort of three lobes at the back, and it's a typical very triangular leopard back pad. But the one toe is a little bit squished up here; its back to normal there, but this toe is slightly closer together than normal. It's almost giving a little bit of a hyena-shaped toe, and then the two left toes are all right or the normal shape. So it is a leopard track, but it is not a very fresh leopard track.

This looks like it was done maybe two days ago, so yesterday—so not a track that we're going to follow. There's definitely nothing on top of my vehicle tracks from yesterday afternoon when I drove here. So it's just interesting that I didn't pick them up yesterday. I wonder, maybe I wasn't concentrating too well at this when I drove this side yesterday. It was really quite dark, and I was using my spotlight, so… but interesting that there is a trek for a leopard in this area, and it looks big enough to really be from Tingana.

Maybe Husana was somewhere here at some stage. Hmm, interesting. Well, we’ll just drive around and have a little look and make a hundred percent sure and just double-check in case. But there's nothing on top of the vehicle tracks from last night. There I go over those tracks—so not very fresh, unfortunately.

The same two said that I doubt we're going to see too much out in the open at this stage. It's warm in the sun, so most of the animals I would imagine would be seeking some sort of refuge and some sort of shade and water. So we're going to try and hang around closer to water sources as well as the Milwaukee and the drainage sections because those, at least, provide a bit of shade for a lot of the animals, and they'll be able to then stay a little bit cooler.

But our hippo friends from yesterday is quite interesting; we've seen their tracks all over. So the one hippo went out of Treehouse northwards, Apfel Mons north to quarantine, and from quarantine, past Inga's, and looks as though it went towards Gauri Dam.

No, don't fly away! Well, there was a magpie shrike that decided just to fly away but was sitting so nicely on top of one of the trees, and that streaming tail you can just see it there in the background now. But it's got such an impressive tail—this particular one—it's much longer than I've seen on a lot of the others, really big. I mean, that tail must be twice to almost three times the length of its body, which is crazy.

And looking very nice, and I always loved them in the afternoons when there's a bit of a wind blowing, and they tail kind of booms under the magpie strike; it is really very pretty. There will be more of them here though; you'll never find just one magpie shrike by themselves. They generally are quite a sociable bunch.

They tend to hang around together; in fact, I can hear another one just two now, northern side. And so they kind of flock together, and then they'll go from tree to tree and varying insects—a typical of the shrike family that they are quite ferocious insect predators. And they've got that little hooked beak much like you would see on any of your predatory birds, and they'll swoop down from there and grab varying insects.

And these guys I'm sure are eagerly awaiting the rains as well because then it's just an absolute buffet of food items when the rains come. And the magpie name comes from the coloration; that black and white is where they get the magpie name from. They used to actually be called a longtail track, which you can see why they would have been called that.

Nice, I think we should do a bit of birding today; say what you think. I can't let you get too rusty after Byron got you going on birds, and we should do a little bit of birding as well. I feel like doing some birds today. I'm sure there's some interesting birds around, and I'm still very surprised we haven't seen any signs of Wahlberg's eagles.

It's starting to get quite late now; normally, we see them in the first beginning of September. We're already on the 11th of September—sorry—and by now, we should have had a meat scene, maybe one or two; so I'm quite surprised we haven't seen any yet.

I wonder what's keeping them slightly north of us. Maybe there's some sort of delay with certain bird species because the Wahlberg's Eagles actually follow the quail ears quite a bit, and they'll hunt the quail excessively.

You're asking if the Magpie tracks like shiny objects. Well, no, they're not like magpies; that's a different type of bird. The magpie is a bird that occurs in the United Kingdom and, I think, a little bit into Europe. I might be mistaken, but they are very fond of shiny objects.

Here in South Africa, this shrike is not the same thing, and it doesn't actually go after shiny objects very much at all; you don't find them near cities. They generally are not in these bush-felt areas in the wild sections. Very seldom seen in a city environment.

So they don't really go after shiny objects; what does go after shiny objects here are the crows. So you will find crows picking up shiny objects and hammer copes, so that's a water bird that we get here. They are often notorious to have all kinds of different things in their nests.

We do have a few water buck, which will make James very happy. I wonder how James is doing on his first afternoon on leave. He's having a wonderful time, but there the water buck are just in front of us. We are slowly approaching towards Treehouse Dam.

So very kind of expectant to see them here. They've been hanging around here quite a bit; you've got a couple of young males and some females. I haven't seen any big males around this particular grouping; it's not to say there isn't any, but I just haven't seen them.

But you can see that's the female bit lacking the horns, and they're an easy animal to identify. They've got this long shaggy coat, which is very unusual, very different from a lot of our other antelope species out here that are quite far. These guys are all very thick food coats, and you can see that they've got that little heart-shaped nose, the white chinstrap.

And then if they turn and face us, a very white bottom. But what's interesting is they're all staring straight to our left-hand side. They're not alarm-calling, but there's something that has grabbed their attention.

They're not looking at us; they're all staring deep into this drainage line. So I might just take a little drive down there and have a look. It is a perfect shady spot for a lurking leopard, and this is where we last saw Shadow.

This is exactly where we lost her the other day, so maybe she's still hanging around here. It would be worth just having a little look; you never know. Well, they don't seem too perturbed by whatever it is. It was kind of staring in that direction; maybe there's a small antelope also walking around that's making a bit of a rustling in the grass that they're watching.

But there you can see that perfect heart-shaped nose of the water buck quite clearly. I've got to feel sorry for these guys at this time of the year in winter. There must be lovely to have a nice thick coat like this, but in summer, it surely can't be very pleasant at all.

And, of course, their coat is not because they are cold; it's more to do with the fact that they're trying to repel water. So they secrete an oil through sebaceous glands on the skin, which coats that fur and repels water and keeps them nice and dry when they're trying to use water to evade predators.

It's a clever system that they've got going, and that's why they have slightly longer fur because the more fit and the more chance they can obtain dry. Right, we're going to go investigate quickly, and while we do that, let's go back to Steph, who's quite the largest of the large in the Mara.

Welcome back to the Mara, and this is definitely the land of far vistas. As you can see from there, those dots that you're seeing there are elephant—a herd of elephant, in fact, spread out. And have a look at what's in the centre of your screen there; that is a huge male lion, and this is watching the elephants go by.

And it is the target that we are aiming for right now. We've skirted around the edge of the thicket that the Ngama Pride decided that they'd walk into, and they haven't come out the other side. But what is lying on this side is a big male lion, and then you can see how far away we actually are on these males. So we decided that it did stop in this fantastic herd of grazers.

We've got zebra and an eel, and just have a look how fat and beautiful she is. One of the most gorgeous of all the antelope archers beautifully long horn in this particular, and then those zebra just adding that black and white contrast to pictures. You know, we forget how pretty these animals are in these environments.

You know, both of them are grazers, and as we pan off to the left, you'll notice that there's a swamp that comes up into the distance, and that is exactly why all these animals are here. It is because that swamp is providing the means for much better nutritious grass.

And so there you got some topi and some zebra, and then in the centre of the swamp, we have an elephant and ostrich and a buffalo. Well, is it a buffalo or a hippo? Let me just have a look. It's a hippo, not a buffalo!

So elephant, zebra, and hippo in the same frame. Now, what we're gonna be doing is sending you to the other side of the Mara River, where my friend Scott is busy with his cheetah.

Well, well done,Steph, for finding those lions and an elephant and something else I’m told! Dotted in between these boys are certainly looking active, hungry, and quite intent on finding their next meal. But at the moment, as you can see, they are just rolling about, I guess.

It can be equated to us waking up in the morning; it takes a little bit of time to get into the full swing of things. But they certainly are up and about; there are certainly lots of wildebeest around. Three of which actually walked right up to the cheetah, the ones to the right, their mana, where they were scent marking a bit earlier. Those three came up just to keep an eye on the cheetah, and it's always interesting when you see prey species coming straight towards their predators once they have detected them.

With these cheetah, they’ve got lots of options, so it would be foolish for them to rush in; they are gonna take their time, I'm guessing, to find a youngster that was probably born. Most of the young wildebeest were born earlier this year in the southern Serengeti plains, and that has been the favourite meal that we've noticed thus far.

But having said that, they can also take down larger wildebeest; they are a highly formidable team. And I'd be very surprised if, by the time the sun sets, they have not actually succeeded in hunting something or are getting more and more into the swing of things. We've got a great evening lined up; isn't this wonderful?

All those white flowers will be skull and some wildebeest, so lots of options in these cheetahs are just gonna be scanning, looking for any weaknesses, any easy opportunities. When I was gonna say that they also do hunt after dark, and we are fully equipped to be able to follow them into the darkness with an infrared camera where we can capture what goes on without interfering!

So I am thoroughly looking forward to seeing what these guys get up to this afternoon. And as you can see, this is just the perfect runway for which they can unleash their speed. They make the wildebeest look like they're standing still---I've noticed, especially in open environments like this where they've got no obstacles to cater for.

No, it’s always tricky deciding where to position oneself in order to be in the best possible spot. But I think we do need to keep moving; we don't want to be left in a cloud of dust.

Hello, book lover, you'd like to know if these cheetahs are any bigger than the cheetah that we would be seeing, or you would be sitting down on Jumma. At cheetahs, playing specifically and no, not that I would imagine I would guess they're fairly similar sizes. But then again, I have never weighed cheetahs myself for being present with one getting weighed.

I nearly crashed into that guy earlier, so I said no, you go first and get out of the way; I nearly reversed and turned. So, but I don't think so. But then again, I don't know if any cheetahs are being weighed here in the Mara and or the Sabi sands.

I wouldn't be able to make an accurate assessment on that question, but I'm guessing there are fairly similar sizes with obviously exceptions to one individual that maybe began the same.

Well, I think the lion may be on average are slightly bigger, but you will get some big lines down on Zuma as well. Okay, what I like to try and do is get on the opposite side of the herds to give you kind of a herd perspective.

So let's do that and Chantal. Maybe we can invite other people on board if you would like on other platforms because this could you hurry.

Well, unfortunately, once again, the gremlins are plaguing Scott, and you can see we are busy watching Sebastian as he's finishing his time-lapse at Treehouse dam, and it's slowly but surely coming back. There we go, a little wave from Sebastian; he was supporting the Maasai Mara team with his Mara t-shirt!

Hey, this is great for safe to get back on the vehicle, but no signs of anything around Chest time. We checked. The water buck we're looking; there was a brief little alarm call but nothing that we can see, and they slowly then started to walk in the direction that they were steering.

So nothing to be alarmed about, so now we're going to head up towards Before took them and go and see what's happening with those elephants. That's the plan, at least, from there; I can say check around for the cheetah brothers, and then it's on towards shitfire.

And at least it's starting already now; it's just slowly but surely. The temperature is easing off a little, and we're just starting to lose a bit of that bites that's been in the air during the middle part of the day. So he's starting to cool down!

Slackie, it really is amazing how quickly the temperature changes in this part of the world. You know, you want to know how we know the difference between a lipid and a cheetah track and how do we know if they're male or female, right?

Well, you know, we'd love to show you, but I lifted my tracking book at home because I was actually busy looking at some stuff today, so I do apologize. But I'll try and explain it as best I can.

Basically, with a lipid and a cheetah, the difference between the two of those, the most obvious difference that you will see is that the cheetah track will be very, very narrow. So you're gonna have a very narrow, very long track on a cheetah, whereas on a leopard, it's almost gonna be like a circle.

So you can think of a cheetah more as an oval and a leopard more as a circle kind of track. Also, with the leopard, the back part of the pad is very wide whereas a cheetah track the back part is very, very small. They both will have three lobes, but the big one that is different is that the cheetah displays claws when it's in its track, whereas leopards don't remember; lipids' claws are sheathed, so their claws don't show up in a track, whereas a cheetah's claws will show up so that's the difference between those two.

And the other side of the leopard side in terms of male and female is a size difference a lot of the time. So with the male leopard, a male leopard track is really quite a lot bigger than a female's.

If you're talking about a male leopard cub, and if you look on the back of the lobes, particularly on the front foot, you will find that as they do the three lobes in that sort of W shape on the back.

If you had to take a line and drew it and follow the contour of that, it should make a full circle on a male track. The females tend to have angular points on the edge of their back pad, whereas the males is a round point, so that's how you can tell male and female from a leopard's point of view.

In cheetah, a little bit more difficult; it's just more the size than anything else. The male cheetah's track will be bigger than the female cheetah's track. Like I said, I'm sad that I don't have my tracking book. I was busy looking at some tracks and notes that I had made when I was doing my tracking training back in the day, and I was just going through some of those just to refresh a little bit.

And I'm a bit sad that I didn't bring it because it would have been quite nice to actually show you the difference in a book, but I'll have to try and bring it on another drive. So let me know when you're watching again, and I'll make sure that I pack it in for that drive, and I can show you a little bit better.

What do you think, save? Our elephants are gonna be there! Christina said, "Am I looking for the cheetah brothers?" Did you hear that right? No, Christina, I'm not looking for the cheetah brothers. I am looking for a cheetah mother and three cubs!

That's what I am going to be searching for; she was seen yesterday on Torchwood, and her tracks were coming towards cheetah cutline. Yes, good afternoon! There was also a young male cheetah that was in the vicinity as well that they don't, we don't know who it is.

So it's one of those—any of those bunch that could potentially pop out on cheetah cutline. So it's not the two big boys but rather a female and cubs that have been hanging around.

They’ve been seen every now and then before taken over Tortured, but they haven't come to Juma. Maybe today is the day that they come to Juma with the lions, the Ngumi pride walking around on that eastern boundary of with Kruger—maybe that’s gonna push this cheetah down into Juma a little bit and we'll get lucky this afternoon—that's the idea.

Yeah, anyway, whether or not it actually comes to fruition is anyone's guess. A little bit of luck and a bit of positive vibes, and you never know what can come out of that.

But it's interesting just driving along these shaded areas; normally, we see a few Nala and a few impalas drifting around. But today, it seems as though there's nothing.

I don't know if everything has maybe gone towards the milliwatts, to see whether it's a little bit more shade than even these smaller drainage lines. But I'm quite surprised; you normally see the odd-sized animal, corner impala and Yana drifting along, but it's been very quiet with any of those animals so far.

Even birds wise; I mean it's a little bit on the quiet side, but I'm sure it will get better as it cools down a little bit. I wonder when we're going to see the marula start getting leaves; it should be fairly shortly. The marula's are all bare and barren at the moment, and it won't be too long now, and they will start getting some leaves of their own.

And then, it really is beautiful when you get these thick canopies of the marula all across the landscape; it really is very pleasant. Right now, I believe Scott has got his gremlin sorted; he's got the cheetahs; they are hunting, so let's quickly jump across to him.

A whole bunch of wildebeest, and there's actually two more cheetah as well! So we've got some incredible prospects—a coalition of five male cheetah that are looking hungry.

And even though one just flopped itself down and the next, don't be fooled because they are slowly gonna work their way through these never-ending herds of wildebeest in the hope that they find one that looks to be like a bit of an easier target.

So I'm very, very confident that at some stage within the next couple of hours, these cheetahs are going to show us what they do best, and that is hunt down wildebeest!

Great, and I’m glad you got to see a black rhino with stiff! The Safari has got off to a wonderful start; it sounds like my name’s Scott Dyson. I'm teamed up with a manu on camera, and we literally found these cheetahs about half an hour ago.

They got up immediately and have started moving, so they're moving a bit earlier than they ordinarily would; that in terms of the kind of history that I have spent with them, which indicates that they are quite hungry.

Again, there's lots of wildebeest around; so there's no need for them to rush into anything; they're gonna ease into the afternoon. Teresa, you just mentioned what a standoff it is and what a feast it was! An incredible scene as you joined us with those cheetah heading straight towards the wildebeest.

It is a beautiful, beautiful still afternoon here in the Maasai Mara, and this area’s got a lot of rain recently, which is going to make the wildebeest happy.

You can see lots of fresh green grass shoots popping up, and about two weeks ago this was a golden brown hue. Another thing to bear in mind is it's not just a favorable environment for the wildebeest at the moment, but these short open plains are going to allow these five cheetah to unleash their furious speed as and when they need to.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff! I've been paying for a while, so it's good to see that still lots of the migrating herds in this area of the reserve; they move quite a big distance.

The migrating herds over this short, over the short time, Rob, you would like to know why these cheetah have not taken an opportunity considering how close the wildebeest were to them.

And it's foolish for predators to Russia; waste energy, get injured until they find the right opportunity. They do know at the back of the minds that it is the migration season; there are lots and lots of opportunities; this will change in the coming weeks.

But for now, there's just so much food around; it would be foolish to go in and work too hard for something essentially. So they're gonna buy their time, wait until they see an easy option, a youngster that they can separate from the herd, even though it's not very common.

Oh, there are some little Thompson's gazelle; they're a bit too quick and small for those five boys to share, and great prey for a female cheetah. But these guys, I'm fairly certain we're going to overlook that opportunity.

Now, something also to remember, Rob, is that that's not easy for them to kill wildebeest without the other wildebeest actually turning on them. We got some incredible footage late one evening as dusk was breaking, and that light drizzle was falling of one of these cheetahs getting completely balled off a young wildebeest that they managed to bring down.

So all the wildebeest came in and absolutely thumped it out of the way! So all these things they'll be factoring into the hunting equation, and as you can see, they're just spoiled for choice at the moment.

What a classic scene this is! Now, because we had no idea what was going to happen as these cheetah were approaching that herd, we thought we couldn't let up the opportunity to invite you guys on board.

So we will be sure to invite you back as and when these five get up and going. I'm certain in the next few hours that they are going to show us how they hunt, so if it’s something you'd like to see, try and clear up some space in your schedule because, like I say, it’s just a matter of time until these guys try and catch themselves some wildebeest, and nine times out of ten when they try, they succeed.

For now though, we are going to say goodbye. Wait for these guys to get up and moving again; be sure to keep following closely for any notifications of us going live again, and we will see you all a little bit later. Goodbye!

So I believe we are live, which means that we are busy looking around down in the Milwaukee because I just got tracks for a male leopard walking in this direction. It looks like maybe Husana's tracks from last night coming from twin dams, and we heard some of Franklin's alarm calling in here.

I didn't get very far, but we just quickly checked to see—I can't find the Franklin's anymore, and I can't hear them anymore—but the last track I had was just on top of the bank walking this direction. They were driven over from this morning, so I'm not sure how far he's ended up. But just with the Franklin's alarm calling in and the tracks heading in this direction, I thought it would be a good place to quickly come and have a little look.

Alright, nothing there since—I didn’t see any tracks coming down here; it’s a great place for a leopard to sit; it's very, very cool and nice and shady. There are some Franklin's there; they look unperturbed by life. Where oh, where oh, where are you?

But I'm surprised that whoever drove that road missed those—their projections! I asked if anyone drove there, and everyone told me—the guys that did drive there—that there was no sign of leopard tracks, but they've clearly been driven over.

So I don't know how they missed them because they're quite clear in the middle of the road! My uncle's for the Franklin; we've much further north than where I am now.

So what I'm going to do is just try to turn around somewhere. There should be a place to turn around in front. Look again—hmm, no, no sign here unfortunately. I was hoping we would come down into the Milwaukee, and there'd be a leopard lounging in the cool sand.

But while we check around, let's go back to stiff, who I believe is now doing a spot of birding in the Mora. On our way to that lion, we found you this wooly neck stalk, and in this particular vantage point, we get to see two things which are quite uncommon.

The bronzy iridescent on the wing, on the middle of the wing there, you can just see it now with the sun behind us just sticking out is a rare thing to see on this wooly necked stalk as well as the faeces that it covers its legs with. There you can see that it's been a hot day, and that is done on its legs.

And I know you're gonna be asking yourself—what is a bird doing defecating on its legs when it bombs? Obviously, there's a finer for what; it doesn't need to do that. The easy answer is that this bird cools itself down that way; it pumps a lot of blood into the skin surrounding the leg bones, and then by defecating on the legs and letting the wind blow on those skinny legs, it cools the blood down considerably.

And that way returns to the body cooler than it was, giving this bird the ability to stay cool when everything else around it is hot, albeit using its own dung. We're quite nice to see that one of the smallest stalks in this particular area.

In actual fact, I think it is the smallest stalk, and much like all stalks, they actually don't have a voice box—sound like a parrot or a sun bird or a canary or a budgerigar, which has voices that they use all the time—stalks do not, and this particular stalk is no exception.

It doesn't have any voice box; what it does do is attract mates; they do the most unbelievable dances and elaborate wing flaps and bowels to each other. And there's a courtship amongst stalks, which is quite phenomenal.

Another thing that is quite phenomenal is the lilac breasted roller; this bird definitely has some voice box, but in addition to the voice box, it also has superb coloration. You can see they're just sticking out of the process; watching us with abeyes.

That lilac breasted roller has flown away and probably returned to the same place, enough to the same brunch just to hook an insect. This time of the year their colors are not so bright, and they don't have the tail streamers, but they're giving us a beautiful afternoon shot.

They take your screen shots; that is a lovely shot of a lilac breasted roller at this time of the year, David framing it up so nicely. Remember that we are interactive; you can ask me questions while we’re ongoing, drop live, and I’ll try to answer as many as what we can.

These are hole-nesting birds; they rely on barbets and woodpeckers to create nests for them that they quite actively defend and will often, in pairs, defend against other rollers, other lilac breasted rollers, and other birds as well, which would like to make use of their nests.

Its blue and purple color is just really remarkable. Now we are almost at these lions; I can see one lion from where I’m lying now. He’s now that big male that we saw lying with the elephant, just nice lying flat on the ground there.

We go in the center; you can see how flat a lion can get; that is a full-grown 500-pound male lion that is lying unconscious on his side with some topi water buck and zebra behind. And off to the right-hand side is the reason why he’s lying unconscious and in the Sun.

They’ve actually made a kill; we’re just gonna see—there we go—there’s the lion or lioness, I should say, not lion. The lioness has been eating, and are we gonna see if we can go a little bit more forward and see if we can show you a bit of picture than these ones I’ve been showing you so far?

This is off to me; we have got some elephant aramis deserts—actually been such a brilliant afternoon surrounding us—there's just been animals by the ton! And this elephant cow and her young calf, they’ve just been feeding with us as we’ve come down this drainage line.

Now, atilla n, who uses old as my son, is only five years old, has remarked that these animals look like they're friends with one another. And is it normal for this time of the year? So, chill! What a fantastic question from a five-year-old!

And yes, all these animals are friendly with one another; some of them eat grass, some of them eat trees, some of them eat each other, and some of them eat very stingy broad. And so on and so forth.

But they all get along with one another quite nicely, to be quite honest. There’s no big animosity, which is a big word to say that better—I don’t dislike each other at all; they’re just in a healthy sort of equilibrium, is what I'd like to use. There’s a balance between all the creatures, they’d like to eat other animals, and everything they’d like to eat the grass.

There’s a nice balance. But youngster, busy eating the grass over there, flanked by mom, which has got a beautiful set of tusks! I love the elephants in the Mara here in Kenya, the females in particular. They’ve got the most elegant ivory—almost always the same length, the same shape, and quite long for female elephants!

Oh, another fantastic shot over the trees in the back now! Chantal tells me that a few of you are commenting on the fact that it's so exciting to see all these animals here.

I must agree with you; I think it is quite exciting to see all these animals here, and I think it's going to be exciting to see what happens at this lion killed today when we saw the iguanas. They were heading in this direction but into a thicket, and I think if we are lucky, they are going to come and join their sister on this kill.

In the distance and arriving towards us is the V cars that joined like the cars that join this fantastic reserve with us, of course, it's an open reserve very much like the Kruger National Park, where we do some of our other drives as well albeit this is a public area where you can come and drive yourself in or be driven around in in some cars ads nicely.

Everyone helping one another to define their thing. Thank you to everyone; you're saying that it's nice to see me in the driving seat again. I must say I do miss it from time to time, and it's going to be nice to join you for a couple of drives over the next few days or so before Prince and Jamie get back in between when James has left.

He's on his way back to South Africa for a much-deserved break! Debra, you wanted to know what surprised me the most about the Mara; that's actually a very good question, Debra, because it changes from week to week and from month to month.

I think when I got here, the unbelievable space was what got me initially; it was the fact that you could see so far you could drive so far and you'd still be in a game reserve. Then, it was the fact that the reserve is open and that the borders are there—no physical borders.

So animals can domestic animals can enter the reserve and wild animals can leave the reserve, and how often they do it; but also what type of harmony they've got! Quite often you have zebras, buffalo, and hippos; we've even had a leopard prowling around our camp for the last couple of nights, and everything just seems sort of calm.

There’s no tension coming a bit closer now. To the smell of lions, let’s see if I can get into a nice spot where we can at least see the back of its head. Hey, is lying down over there; I have no doubt that it is really partaking in this zebra kill, and you can see that fat belly at the back there.

Another thing that's been quite surprising, Debra, is the fact that it's a calm temperature here all year round; we've gone from summer to winter without a noticeable change in temperature whatsoever, and it's very comfortable. You don't ever get too hot; you don't ever get too cold.

And I must say that I can't say the same for our friend Tristan, who's sitting down south 3,500 miles away. Definitely do have winter and summer, and where we are transitioning from the cold of winter to one of the hottest months of the year, and that is October.

I'm sure Tristan has got some news to tell you about how uncomfortable he's feeling about the department. Well, sniff, now I'm starting to feel comfortable. It’s about two o'clock this afternoon; it wasn't so pleasant; it was rather warm at that stage.

But now, it's actually very pleasant; it’s just cooled down a little bit, and there’s a bit of a breeze, and so I’m actually enjoying this afternoon bumbling around. Fortunately, no further sign of that leopard track; I just want to come up to Buff and check around first while it’s still a bit warm and see if the butterflies aren’t there, and then I'll go back to that area.

I have a funny feeling if it isn’t sana, that he may have looped and gone back down towards twin dams, and he's made me lying somewhere close to the water. Given how warm it is, I don't think he's gonna have gone too far from the dam itself, so maybe just lying somewhere in those Milwaukee bank thickets and we'll catch him later when it gets a bit cooler.

So we're just coming and checking up the side, so it's difficult this afternoon because, well, it's just me all on my own by the sounds of things. There's one other vehicle out, which is from Puffles hook, and they ride in the northeast corner. There’s nobody from Juma, no one from cheetah plains, so it's well, a lonely lonely world out here at the moment.

Seb, at this, I have you for company, save, and all of you on the back of the vehicle, which means that hopefully we’ll find something. It’s just that it’s always written there’s not as many vehicles; it’s harder because you don’t have a situation where people are spreading out, and they can help you with looking in certain sections.

You've got to kind of loop around and do all of it on your own, so it makes it just a little bit tougher in terms of actually finding things where you are. So come on, you know I can find a spotted leopard! Well, that's the idea. I think we can; we just got to give it the right timing and the right pace.

It doesn't feel leopard-y yet. I don't have the leopard feeling just yet; I think it's going to come a little bit later. That's what I feel is that when it cools down, the sun is just above the horizon, and we've got that golden light across the landscape.

That's when we're going to find a leopard stepping out, and it's going to be ever so beautiful, that's what I think anyway.

I'm hoping that's what's going to happen, but if not the leopards, maybe the cheetah. One of the two spots will find its way to us at some point this afternoon. We've just got to be patient, and we've got to be, like I say, positive, positive and patient for peace today on a Sunday.

Manicure is wondering when I did my tracking training. Well, when I first started to become a guide when I was at Sangeeta, we did a lot of tracking work there and got shown how to identify tracks and how to read tracks and look at them.

And then from there, it's just been an ongoing lesson basically from all the trackers I've worked with. Every single one of them has imparted some sort of knowledge on me, and it's a kind of thing that the more you do it, the better you get at it.

You've just got to keep going, and you’ve got to keep looking and keep working at it, and you'll be able—but if you ask people like Stiff and Scott and James and Brent and Jamie, they'll tell you that with the list that they track, the more rusty they get, and the harder it becomes. The more that you track and the more you get in sync with the animals that you're looking for in a certain area, the easier it actually becomes because a lot of tracking is actually not physically seeing what's on the ground.

Don't run away; this is gonna be so cool! Stay, stay, stay there! So there are two little button quails in front of us, and these guys are so difficult to get on camera! Here they are! See how little they are?

Well, out in the open, that's about as good of a view as we've ever had of a button quail, or certainly, Yahveh—that I've ever had of a button quail! And then into the long grass they've gone, and you see how quickly they disappear? They've got the most perfect camouflage to just melt into that grass!

Well, that was cool! So it wasn’t a spot, but a little bit of a flicked little bird that was really cool. I've been trying to get them on camera for months; they are so elusive, and they tend to be very shy.

So as soon as you come along, they bolt off into the grass. So it's at least got some of them crossing the road; it was very special! Well done, Seb! It’s all about the cameramen!

Exactly; that’s exactly right. I'm under no illusion, don't worry! But back to the tracking—it’s basically a constant school that you are going to, but in terms of the actual training as to what to look for and how to identify that, was all in my ride in the beginning.

When I first started doing my training to be a guide, I spent a lot of time at Lebombo, which is a part of the Kruger National Park on the eastern side, where there is a lot of rocks, and trekking is very difficult.

So I did a lot of training there and some assessments, and back then I was still very big novice, and I didn't actually kind of grasp it that well. But it took a bit of time with some experienced trekkers, and then I started to come right from there.

Now, I wouldn't say I'm good; I'm proficient, but I wouldn't say I'm good at it. There are many trackers out there that are insanely good and way, way beyond the scope of what I can do. But at least I am able to see and find tracks from time to time.

Now there's a beautiful bird! Talking about finding things, I see it in the tall tree on the right side of the tree—is a black editorial? Yeah, the top there on that side, just went down!

Yes, yeah, same! Let's try to go around; maybe we'll find it! It’s just such a beautiful bird that it’s worth trying to see if we can find this beautiful, beautiful yellow with this black head and this beautiful beak!

Where are you now? I've lost it; it's gone. But interesting enough we can look at the tree anyway because it's quite a cool example of something. So you'll notice that there is a lead word that is growing there on the base of that tree; it's a lead word.

But if we go up, you notice there's some roots that are actually growing down, so there’s a strangler fig that is growing over the lead wood. And this is how strangler figs work: basically, what happens is they produce fruit or something like a barbet or a go-away bird will come and feed off it, and then they come in the sticky seeds on their beak and then wipe it on something like a lead wood.

And that then starts to grow, and these aerial roots start to grow down all the way along the trunk of the lead wood, and they use it as a support structure.

And over time, more and more and more roots grow, and eventually, they'll encompass that whole lead wood, go right beyond the lead wood's crown, and they'll actually suffocate the tree art or strangle it, and have to stop it from getting sunshine and nutrients, and they will then take over and it uses it basically as a host.

So that is a predatory tree, if you want to call it, and it's not one that we see that often. We don't get too many figs. Yeah, unfortunately, not enough water, but that's a nice example of a strangler fig overtaking a really large old lead wood.

Very cool to see! Not so; we might not have seen our Oriole, but at least we got to see a strangler fig! Funny enough, that's something you see a lot of it down on the big river. So the Sand River, the Sabi River, lots of big figs down there, which here doesn't seem as though we get nearly as many because of the lack of water that we have in this particular section.

Snazzy, you say some of those branches look like snakes! See! What's this a little bit on top here? This is the Gaeldon; it's going to land.

There seems to be a few of them; I just look through the binoculars as well. A little bit far off now and a bit silhouetted, they look like some of those female village weavers again that are moving around—difficult to say though; they're right on the edge of that bush willow.

It's not very pleasant! Let me try to get a bit closer, so no struggle from this distance to ID them—they're not very big birds at all.

There's also a woodpecker that's just flying! Let’s see if we can try and get that on camera, because that's gonna be a bit easier! Birds are giving us a bit of a challenge today!

So this is not Thorn here; there might be a woodpecker sticking out somewhere. Our beard, you say the button quail was number 83 for you! Well, I'm glad; that's a really good number, and we must push hard to get you to a hundred.

Our beard is going to be difficult; it's going to be silly rated, but it's at the top of that back knob thorn there. You see it bouncing around, but unfortunately, it's going to be very silly rated.

I'm not sure which woodpecker it is because it's right against the sun; I can't get the color; it looks very small, so it looks like it's possibly a cardinal woodpecker.

Let's see—it's okay, it's okay; see if it's more than good enough! You can see the black bar that goes through the eyes stripe, which I'm thinking; I just want to make 100 percent sure. It looks a bit small for the bearded though; it doesn't look like a bearded woodpecker to me.

It could be though, but doing a bit of birding is actually quite fun! It's been such a long time that I've done it, and I always love doing birding! So it’s something that I should really do a lot more of.

I get a bit sidetracked, like I say, sometimes with the Lions and lipids. So it is a bearded woodpecker. It's just fairly small, and it's a female bearded woodpecker because it's got that black bar through the eye—that's a nice one to find.

There's quite a few of them around at the moment. You hear them quite often in the mornings when you drive along these riverbed systems, lots of them bouncing around these dead trees looking for any wood-boring insects that potentially are in the dead trees themselves.

Right, well, we’re approaching Before Sook Dam now; there's no sign of our elephants crossing anywhere in this section here. So unless they went northwards and didn't come towards the dam, they might still actually have been there, or they're on their way there.

It would be quite nice if we get there, and they're all lined up at the water! But they haven't gone further west, which is good. So let's go back to Steph in the meantime with, I think, you saw with this lion!

Why can you believe it? We were showing you that wooly neck stalk, and the elephant—there was also a mating pair of lions lying just on the other side of us, but we didn't see at all!

It took us to drive past and sit and turn around to see these lions who, not even 50 paces from we actually think that this is the line that we saw just now. It’s in the same line!

And there are some elephants, and this female, she's quite restless with attending males; her body at the moment is in eustress, which means that she's having hormonal spikes every time she ovulates.

So and these go through some dips and troughs, and see this; she should elicit this male to stand up. Oh, she's beautiful! I mean, are you going?

Let's see if he wakes up—there we go! So now that is very typical of a male lion attending a female. He doesn't let her out of his sight at all! And the reason for that is that she'll ovulate a few times in all of this, and this male, who's attending her at the moment, wants to make sure that every time she ovulates, he is right there to try and inseminate every egg that comes down into the fallopian tube.

So all the babies are his. Now, Collar, she's a new viewer; I just want to say welcome to—so hello, Collar, and welcome to the show, and you said that you've been wanting to see a lion and are very happy that we could show you a lion right off the bat today.

That's quite nice, and they have gone super flat again! Well, that is uncommon for mating lions! And you shouldn't despair because we should be able to see them mating again in a few seconds to a few minutes as the female's body comes into or as it oscillates in a hormone spike as the eggs are traveling down the fallopian tube.

So just as we predicted, the culverts have come through the thicket. We thought they were gonna come through! Excuse all the poles—go right, right, right, right, right, right, and let me see if I can turn the car!

So it looks like we've got the Ngama pride that has come out of them, come out of the bushes, and I'm making their way through to the zebra killed—quite a story that we can see from here!

Nice pot! That gives David all the freedom that he needs to do what he needs to do! So what we've got is—we've got a—let me just see if I can see them. It looks like we do; so zebra and eland.

Show us all! That could have been my imagination, absolutely! And it's being confirmed at the moment by Richard, who is our game scout and protect on the back of our vehicle. And what he's doing is he can also see them.

So, but I'm not telling you there is the story while we're waiting for these lions to come out of the thicket. This should be our share in a second. We’ve got a male line that's lying directly in front of the car.

And sorry, Deb, I'm making you jump around; please excuse everybody that we are jumping around; there's a male line there. And while a male line in the sun on his own isn't uncommon sight, it's not very common!

We initially thought it was because he was lying close to the kill, which is common. And it's a female that is lying on that killing! And it’s also, again, not an uncommon for female and male coalitions that are mating to make it kill now and again!

Although it's not their primary concern hunting, but it would have explained the fact that there was a female lying on a dead zebra, plus a male close by. But then we've got the added complication, if you want to call it that, of another mating pair right next to us!

At the moment, probably from the same coalition of lions, they’re lying flat in the grass here at the moment. You can hardly even see that their lions are there.

There we go; that proves that there's a lion there, and you probably find that these are two males curled with one another. They are both attending females, which are ovulating, which is not uncommon in a private line, especially in an area that's just at the super abundance of food at the moment.

But now which lions from which pride? That is the question! If the angles are moving towards this area to come and join in the feast on the zebra, then it absolutely is that they are the Angama's. But if they're not, then they're from a different and adjacent pride of lion.

And like in the Kruger National Park, where you connect, it's almost like a physical barrier between lion prides. You feel like you're going into this no-man's land. Yeah, there are no boundaries between lion prides, in actual fact.

Rather than home ranges touching one another, which is what it quite often is in the Kruger, you've got home ranges that overlap and court territories which brush up amongst one another, and I actually think that the lions are in a much bigger I say they’re in competition with each other here a lot more than what there would be in Kruger for space.

Let's go backwards a little bit and see if we can get a bit more height. Now, James, you've asked an interesting question with the fluidity of the lion prides that become less so once the migrating migratory herds have moved on?

I don't think so, to be quite honest! I actually think that these prides, there's so much food around here—even outside of the migration—there's a lot of food available here, more than what there is.

And I think that that has a market effect on how these lions behave. I think huge smells of something did here, didn’t notice it on the way in.

Here it is—overpowering! So there might also be some lion dung we've managed to drive through, which is a big possibility with us driving around in this class. So James, no, I don't think so; it should be, honestly.

I think that the super abounding food here has led to the fact that there's a large number of cats spread over a very wide area, and I think because they don't have the space, I think rather than home ranges are touching one another and cats left pretty much to just roll and fend— the boundaries almost non-aggressive, non-lethal yet anyway, I think that these lions are packed inside taught that they co-territories overlap.

I think lions have a lot of trouble defending their boundaries here, which is why male lions always look like they've got their faces having means stuck in a meat grinder.

And I also think that that is the reason why lion pride numbers here fluctuate so much, in that a female that's got six babies that gets caught will, another pride of lion will very easily dodge; they'll kill her because of the cool territories that overlap here.

And of course, as soon as she goes down, if there's not other lactating females lying around, those cubs will die. And I think the cubs' numbers fluctuate in throwing the added complexity of two and a half million wildebeest that arrive and then four months later leave again.

It's not like they leave with everything; believe me, even when there's no wildebeest here, there is still a massive number of animals here, and I think that there's more than enough food to keep all these lions very healthy in the tree.

This is the lilac breasted roller that you were watching a little bit earlier, and this bird is taking advantage of this elephant being so close. What it's hoping is that the elephant chases up a tasty grasshopper. Richard will then snatch up as it flies out of the grass because these birds would battle to actually catch the grasshopper once it's gone into the grass.

And so being so close to the elephant works in this bird’s favour, though I think that that was a little bit too close for comfort.

Oh, this is a beautiful female elephant; the pet Simona hit there that David's zooming into the enough for you. It’s just dried mud; it's not her skin.

However, that secretion from behind her eye is from her skin; that's a sebaceous gland, and it's just weeping a little bit. And as it dried up in the sun, it's left that white residue there, and the reason for that is it's a little bit of stress.

It could also be an indication of a hormonal change that she's going through at the moment, and it just causes that gland to leak. It's nothing to worry yourselves about or anything like get these elephants to—100 percent perfectly normal!

And the wooly necked stork in the background! Last weekend, while away with the elephant already for lines you make, while we're waiting for those lions to mate with each other again, Odie farming has asked what the social structure, family structure of elephants are.

Odie farmer, let’s see this little baby, I think I'm gonna chase this stork that's actually quite an ask question because very similar to how you know elephant societies are matriarchal. In other words, the herd that you that we’re with at the moment will be head up by a cow, a female elephant, not a bull elephant.

Bull elephants born into a herd will between 12 and about 18 years of age separate themselves for longer and longer periods from their family to a point where they're actually not associated with their natal herd anymore.

Well, wander around until they are about 35, and then at 35 years of age, they will go into a period where their bodies actually change and they go into a state called must, where they actively seek out females that are ovulating and will combat with other males for the right to ovulating females.

Let’s go backwards a little bit, just so that for one, I can get out of the smell that we are sitting in at the moment. It is creating the back of my neck. Sorry, Deb, why was that?

Philip, you want to know if the cars can be aged? I’m just going to finish my question with Odie Farmer quickly.

Females, and I'll get to that, because Philip, your question does make sense in context to Odie Farmer’s question about the dynamics of a family.

Now, although males will then at thirty-five plus five for females and be associated with females, all the females will stay in a herd their entire life. They'll be born in a herd and will basically live in a herd their entire lives.

When it gets bigger than twelve to sixteen individuals, it can split off, with two sisters splitting off with their calves, and you can get to settle at herds forming that can actually join up again in drier times around common food sources and congregations of a hundred-plus lions.

I mean, a hundred-plus elephants are quite common in areas where food sources can draw elephants in from hundreds of miles all around it, and these particular elephants will all be related to one another.

Now, for Philip's question; do you want to know if elephants can be aged? They absolutely can! You've got to take them in relation to their moms. So a small calf with a small mom will be smaller than a large calf for the large mom.

And, although that sounds pretty, you know, reasonable, logical, it can actually complicate things. Nothing is to have a look at the teeth!

So this youngster here you’ll see has some teeth erupting out of the jaw—just started to erupt out of the jaw. And when I do that, when you can see that they dead elephant is just over a year old.

The elephant on the right-hand side—the youngster on the right-hand side—same profile; only you can't see any teeth coming out there, and that elephant is less than a year.

So elephants get them; do they get milk tusks? At about six months, you can sometimes see there are little mo tasks, sharp frail little tusks. They will fall out at about six months, and then the more robust tusks erupted about a year.

So let me give you an idea of elephants up to about a year. From a year to five years, all elephants look pretty small, and then they start to get bigger than their moms at a rate of talking about unable to fit under their moms' tummies, is actually what I wanted to say—from about three years to about seven years.

And then from seven years on, for male, for male elephants and female elephants, their size changes dramatically, and from about nine years to twelve years—female elephants just smaller than their moms, male elephants are just bigger than their moms.

And of course, onward from there, as they get to adolescence, and then eventually into adulthood around their late teens, early twenties. Now, while we wait for these lions to mate, we'll call you back as soon as they do.

Why don't you go all the way south to the Kruger National Park? Tristan’s got something to show you in the sand!

So as we thought, which is super exciting, the cheetah have come onto cheetah cut line! We've got their tracks going down the road, and you can see I've circled one for you. It is much, much, much longer than what you would see on a leopard track.

Earlier, and we were looking at the leopard tracks; they're very small, very round. But you can see the length of this track is very long, with toes that point up and then little claw marks in the front, and there's all four of them that have walked here.

So it’s the female with the three cubs that have come out! And it really is exciting to see! The problem is, is we're only about 200 meters south of the boundary, and they're heading northwards!

So they're going straight up the road like this, and I’m gonna try my very best to check! I'm hoping that they've turned west along the tire break or even the boundary and headed towards Before Look Dam.

We did check Before Look Dam; I saw no sign of anything there, but you never know. They might have been lying somewhere close, and I just didn't see them; but this is an exciting sign; it's not something we see every day!

But what I wanted to point out with these tracks is that you can still see the three lobes on the back; they're just really small in comparison to the leopard track!

So here you've got one, two, three; and then it comes up, and then you've got these toes—there’s the side toe, the two front toes, and the other side toe!

With a leopard track, we would have found that the toes would have been far more pushed up on the sides, and they would have been fairly sort of in line with one another with a much wider back pad than what we see here!

It really is very cool to see these tracks, and this is not tracks that we see very often at all! So I'm super excited; hopefully, we get lucky! But they must have come out just after we've been here because they're on top of all of the vehicles' tracks!

I don't find any bird tracks on top of them, which means hopefully they've moved here fairly recently, and we'll be able to find them! So without further ado, let's try and see if we can find these guys!

It would be so cool if we can see these four cheetah! Some part of me has got this optimism that they’re not far off! The other part of me thinks that they've already gone over, which is a little disappointing!

But let’s rather stay positive and just see; maybe we get really lucky, and they’re sitting somewhere on a termite mound here or just resting in the shade somewhere!

No, the tracks are still kind of going in a zig-zagging a lot, so they go on to the fire break, then they come back, and then fire break and come back!

So I just want to check—yes, they’re on the left side! So I thought I saw something's ears poking out of the grass! Of course, now in this, the possibility I've seen these guys, you'll find cheetah-looking things all over the place!

You're gonna spot logs and stumps and various other things that look cheetah-like! Now, this is where I want to check, because here is where they potentially could have gone!

So I'm just gonna jump out of the vehicle for two seconds to make 100 percent sure where the tracks go, because I don't see any sign of them anymore on the road!

I think they might have gone back into Torchwood! Unfortunately, we just want to quickly check on the road—yeah, there's a nice soft road!

So we'll see very quickly if they came to the side, but I don't find any tracks for them! No, that's... this... there’s just the tracks for ENY; I'm just keen to see where the leopards are go and.

While I do that, let's go across to stiff with his elephants and lions and see what's happening! We still here with these lilies, and the lions haven't even moved their hair, and one of the guards that passed us about two minutes ago said that these lions are coming to the end of their mating spree now.

And that means that we could be waiting here, anyway, up to thirty or forty minutes between mating sessions, but you know, don’t fear! It's not a bad place to be and to 8RT lions mating with this elisa!

We've got ya now; we’ve got the tea ELs—two moms with their two youngsters still around us! They wanting to cross this particular drainage on here, and I think we're gonna see this youngster hopefully cross out because the one is inside the drainage, and you can see the one baby already crossed over.

She's busy eating sort of succulent grass that's growing on the edge of this depression—this drainage line. And as they all fool, these things get in the summertime, it must get pretty full, even in this area!

It's gonna be really nice to see what this looks like in wet years to come and see what we probably won’t be able to see here!

These roads would become impossible to drive! But I think it's gonna be interesting to see exactly how deep all these drainage lines get! Look at this elephant! He's standing now to be basically on the water!

You could see they were the grasses; I don't know if that's from flood damage or whether it's from sunshine! Now Captain, you won’t even know why elephants have wrists and you're only six years old!

Where are you getting this information from that elephants have wrists? Because you’re not wrong at all; elephants absolutely have wrists! But they only have wrists on their front legs, and it's because they have a foot that looks basically like this—five toes on the front and four toes on the back.

And around that is a pad, and these bones that stick into this pad join at a flexible joint. And we're gonna see; there we go! You're looking at that right now! And you'll see when this elephant moves, you’ll be able to see those wrists!

You go! And the wrist obviously flows up to the elbow, and if you go up a little bit, you can even see an elbow skin there on that elephant! Isn't that just amazing?

So I want you to put your hand down on the floor, if you can. Put your hand down on the floor like this! Lift your fingers like this! Imagine that there was this fatty piece of tissue all the way around here, and then turn your elbow this way.

So that turning your—without turning this part of your—turn your elbow like this, and there you have an elephants’ foot. That is an elephant’s foot! Isn't that incredible that we share very similar characteristics for something that doesn’t even look even close to what we are?

And that's the same effect on the side! Isn't that beautiful? This youngster is actually very brave; actually, it's not. It's not. It is very brave in that it's standing guerrilla to be far from its mom, who's just in front there.

You can just see mom's forehead! Now wouldn't that be a surprise if he came wandering through this place not even knowing there were two invisible lions right here and an elephant that's standing in adrenaline?

I think this would be quite a surprising place, although I doubt mom would be able to get out of this drainage line quick if needs be.

And I think you could probably go and lie almost right up on the edge and watch her from close by past Nezzi. You want to know if that drainage line is safe for humans to drink from? Yes, it's nerdi!

You know, in this area with so many animals and with the water not flowing, I definitely would purify this word too somehow!

And I’d try and filter it as much as what I could, and then I would boil it before I drank it. Not good, but that's of course with the luxury of being able to boil and filter stuff.

I think if you were really thirsty and you didn't have any matches or just