Safari Live - Day 272 | National Geographic

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

Good afternoon everybody and welcome to a stormy, blustery, windy Masai Mara. We've had a massive storm that has just blown over, and there's hopefully left us for the remainder of the afternoon. What we also have in front of us is a beautiful cheetah. But before we go to the cheetah, my name is Justin, on camera I've got James, and he's a very, very warm welcome to all of you this afternoon. Remember that you can interact with us, and you can do so using #SafariLive on Twitter or at IFC on the YouTube chat should you want to ask any questions.

Now we've been sitting on this cheetah for most of the afternoon, since about two o'clock this afternoon is when we arrived with her, and she has been pelted with rain non-stop since then. It has been pouring down, and so she got herself very, very wet. Now I think it's Kenya. I'm going to help us ensure what we've seen is her bottom in a bush for the entire time. And in the last ten minutes, she’s just stood up, and she’s almost crossing this open area with serious amounts of speed. So she’s moving around quite quickly. I’m pretty sure she’s on the hunt. She’s got a quite thin belly, and so it promises to be an exciting afternoon with her. Hopefully, like I say, the wind will settle down, and it will just kind of calm itself because it is extremely windy at the moment and there is a lot of rain still hanging about. You can see some of those dark clouds in the background there. There is a lot of sort of a big build-up, and I reckon we’re gonna get a lot more rain before the end of the evening. But anyway, hopefully, like I say, it’ll just kind of keep away from us, and it’ll rain other places, and we’ll be allowed to follow this cheetah in peace without too much rain coming down. But either way, epic, epic way to start an afternoon to have a cheetah around, it's super special.

Now we're gonna have to try to catch up with her and, child of the universe, you say nice work finding the cheetah today. Well, child of the universe, I would love to take credit for this, but in fact I have nothing to do with any of this. This was David that found this cheetah this morning. He was the one that was able to catch up with her. In fact, she’s not the only cheetah that’s in the Triangle at the moment as well; there’s another female with three cubs. We don’t know which female it is. We weren’t able to ID who it was yet, so this female is one, and then there’s another one with three cubs which is super exciting. So any time we got lots of cheetah in the Triangle, it's really very nice. And it’s probably to do with the fact that we have this huge section that is so short. The grass is so short at the moment and that’s because this is the area that was on fire during sort of I think as July, August, somewhere there. And so it’s the perfect habitat now for cheetah to be roaming around and to be looking around for food as well as to stay safe. They'll be able to spot things like lion and hyenas and the various other predators quite easily. You can see she’s a little bit jumpy with all of the wind that’s blowing around at the moment. It's not easy for her to... Yeah anyway, we're gonna keep up with her; we're gonna see where she goes.

While we do that though, Prince Leo Smith down in South Africa, well he’s kicking off the South African portion of this driver to a rollicking start with the big cat of his own. Big cats is, of course, the Inkhuma pride who are a portion of them there are snoozing under a tamboti and under gray skies. Good afternoon, my name is Brent, Jasmine, I have my friend Dimpled Dave, the objectified dish on camera for the first time since he's been back. Come back from leave and it looks like he had a good leave. I think he had to come back to work to get some rest and we are with the Inkhuma pride. From what I heard, they were eating a zebra this morning, and at the moment they are lounging. We're not gonna stay out too long ‘cause I’m pretty sure they're not going to do anything this afternoon. I think this is what they’re going to do. I have a feeling they’re going to snooze unless some poor unsuspecting critter stumbles upon them. So we're gonna just thought we’d have a quick look at the Inkhuma's and then we're gonna dash towards the east and see if we can find Tandi and Kolamba again. They’ve been having such a great time... been properly spoiled by their antics.

The end, a bit more rain last night, so excuse your lion, it was a little bit of feline flatulence there, thankfully we are not downwind. Those feline flatulence are horrid. David is wondering if there’s been any updates on Inkhuma or Talamati males? Not for a while, not since I think the Inkhuma was chasing the Talamati. There has been no sight of them. We did have one set of their lion tracks and went straight through and into the west, so they could be in the west with the missing Inkhuma female. Missing adult female, the one with the hip scar and the former male and some of the other sub-adults. But the female Inkhuma sub-adults are starting to look quite big; maybe these girls have decided to take a break from those boys and team up with the Inkhuma's for now.

There’s a cap glassy Starling wandering towards the lions. Is him there on the ground? David, of course, he goes behind the only stick feeding in a patch of elephant dung and that is about the most action we’re going to see around these lions. Talking Starling, particularly noisy birds. Starlings, whether particularly or not, the most pleasant singing voice. I’ve got away from you David, of course the Lions pose no real threat to the Starling; small and get out of the way quite quickly.

Okay, well as I said, we’re going to move on and see what else we can find while we do that. Let’s send you across to Jamie so she can bend you a Fonda.

Hello, hello, hello and a very good afternoon to those of you joining us. It is marvelous to have you on board with us once again. So we've stopped to have a look at this female Impala. I’ll explain why in a moment but first of all introductions are in order. My name is Jamie and this afternoon Craig, also known as Batman, is on camera with me once again. So it’s not uncommon in this, I wouldn't call it chilly actually, but in cloudy temperatures with a bit of wind and a bit of rain. It’s not uncommon to see antelope lying down. But because it’s that time of year I just wanted to check to see whether there was any sign that this Impala was actually thinking about giving birth.

Although looking at her now that she stood up, I think that has already happened. I think we’re barking up the wrong tree there; she doesn’t look particularly pregnant to me, or if she is, it’s still not ready to be born. Might be one of the late lambs, you never know, but it was important for us to just have a look and just double-check. Now that Impala is not pregnant at all. Okay, no babies from her, in fact she looks a little bit under the weather. Tenchi, quite an old lady who has been hit hard by the rigors of the dry season. Obviously now that the rain has fallen, the leaves are starting to go green. There’s a lot more for browsers and all the mixed feeders like Impala to eat, but in her case, she just looked like she just got a bit tired there.

But it always pays to check. I don’t think we’ve had a live birth this year unless something happened while I was on leave, but I’m pretty sure I would know about that. Whoever noted live birth this, yeah, it pays to double-check. I can’t believe we haven’t seen at least one baby that’s the very beginnings of its life. Now for the moment, I think I’m potentially limited to where I can go just due to some technical issues, so at the moment I’m doing loops within loops around quarantine. And the rest of the plan for the afternoon is to pay a visit to the hyena den. And of course, I’m still desperately trying to do what I need to do, and at the same time, of course, I’d like to catch up with Corky and I’d very much like to see pretty no I have not seen in a very long time.

Ah, there’s about to stop at the Wahlberg's, but the drongos ruined that for me. They have chased away the Wahlberg's, which seems a little bit unfair, given that this is where the Wahlberg's nest is. I mean, it’s one thing when the little birds chase them away out of, you know, sort of defensive behavior. But given that this is where the Wahlberg's nest, I feel as though they’re sort of entitled to sit on that tree. Now that tiny little bird attacking the large raptor is known as a fork-tailed drongo and they are full of attitude and cheek. Look at it go. It knows that it’s more agile in the air. Think of the Wahlberg's turning its head back to snap at the bird, completely futile because there’s no way on earth it’s going to catch us. Oh, angry, very angry indeed. Awesome camerawork from Craig over there. He’s done a fantastic job of keeping up with them.

Right and now the Wahlberg's has seen, has been seen off. It’s now flying away from its nest. Let’s see if the drongo decides to go. I’m keeping track of it. It doesn’t even come back to the tree. It’s terribly, I feel that’s really terribly mean. The nest is up there; it’s up in the middle of that knob thorn tree although we haven’t seen much Wahlberg's activity from in that nest this year. Great scandal of course was the fact that typically each and every single year it’s the same Wahlberg's pair that we see, but this year has been a little different and one part has been replaced.

Okay, right we’re going to carry on. It appears to be raining, Craig I stand corrected. I should not have said it was not going to rain. I’m just going to cover up some things, yeah, just to make sure that they don’t get too damp. One of those things, we’ll have to struggle on. I don’t think it’s going to be a huge amount of rain. I think that we can just cover ourselves up and then we’ll be fine. Okay while we do that and while we sort ourselves out to waterproof ourselves, let’s go across to Tristan in the Mara who is fairly familiar with dealing with the rainy afternoon.

Well, we have got a cheetah but she’s got the crazies, so she’s running around like an absolute hooligan at the moment. She’s now crossed off the burn section into the longer grass, and I actually think she feels a little bit more comfortable in the longer grass. I think she can hide away a little bit better. When we were watching her cross direction, trying to get away from her, I think, you know, even though the promise that she’s running around, kind of just... I don’t know what she’s doing. She’s just chasing birds and all kinds.

Oh, hello. We are so sorry that we are going to take you on an adventure. Anyway, I am Trishela and we are currently looking for Hosanna. So we’ve heard that he was seen around the cut line area, which is where I’m trying to go right now. Sorry, these roads are bumpy. We’ve got these rain covers on because the weather is not looking... I’m hoping that we don’t have a repeat of last night. Now I’m also quite excited to maybe... I mean, I’m really getting into this bird, these birds, I must say. I think the more I see them, the more I’m absolutely loving it. I have a look out there. It’s actually quite much clearer, but they’re awesome.

What do we have here? Let me just reposition. I wasn’t just talking about birds. Now they look a bit like some vultures, I can tell because they’ve got this hunched look that I quite like. Now that pole that you’re seeing in your screen is of course the rain cover that I spoke about before just in case we get showered upon. Blessings. There we go. I can’t get a really clear view, but I think that’s a white-backed vulture, the most common one we see around here. And the most common type of vulture we see around you. This poor guy, I’m not even sure if he even got into the air today, given the way he’s been able to get a thermal or not, but the fact that he’s hanging about there and especially in a dead tree, like a kill around there.

And we did hear that the lions had a kill. Well sorry about that, guys. It seems as though there’s a lot of gremlins around. Unfortunately, with storms on both sides of where we are, it’s creating a little bit of havoc and so you know, these things do happen, unfortunately. And when South Africa gets rain, it generally is those big thunderstorms, which means unfortunately a lot of lightning and lightning is always detrimental to electronic equipment. So I do apologize about... I'll take you back and hopefully it’s going to work out okay. We are back up and running, and some theorists apologies for the break in transmission. All sorts of things are happening. I can only think to blame the rain.

This morning we ended up in a very strange train of thought; we were talking about the... about eating brains, whether or not the lions would be eating brains because we were thinking of humans this morning, and they were eating a zebra, and we discussed whether or not they eat brains. We then ended up onto a sort of zombie discussion which ultimately ended us up with somebody who’d eaten a brain by mistake in Spain. Which of course led to a reformation of the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain, and as an end result ended up talking about a zombie Pygmalion or my Fez zombie, as it was eventually called, stuck with me all day. I can’t shake it. I’ve been trying to think of the different songs in My Fair Lady rewritten for zombies. You know, it’s basically like the reformed version of Pride and Prejudice, only a little bit different. Always thinking about going to fetch our roof at this point. I’m trying to decide if it's drizzle has set in or not and decide whether or not the irritation of the roof, but it does restrict us in certain respects. We’ve got to be very careful with our vehicle positioning and the poles ruins the beautiful shot of a leopard walking or whatever it is that we’re going to see this afternoon.

So I’ve been trying to debate in my own mind if it’s going to stop or not. I, of course, in the world’s worst weather predictor. As I said, if I were any worse at predicting the weather, I could be a meteorologist. I am absolutely appalling at it, are really not sure at this point. I have to circle around quarantine and it’s raining. Hey, let’s see what else we can find. This is now my second circuit of quarantine. Let’s see what we can find. Perhaps we would like to do... note the rattling, so sticky ler flew away. Perhaps we would like to look at... What would we like to see? I'm sure that we can find something for you on this great vast empty open area of nothing. It must be at least a bird, although most of them are now sheltering.

We’re having a little problem with one of our receivers, which is why although Bren dashed off to Torchwood, he probably will struggle until they manage to sort that out. Okay, I’m gonna do my second loop of quarantine and probably go and fetch my roof. Let us go and see whether or not Tristan is still with his cheetah and how things are going there.

Black Jayme, hope it doesn’t rain too much on you and I hope that you get to arrange a roof before it does. Now we are struggling, it seems, with gremlins as well, and the rain is not turning and coming back on us as well. And for some reason, Kenya wants to just walk straight into the rain. I don’t know why she’s passing all kinds of prey animals. But what she’s doing is very, very interesting. She’s kind of going and they’re just trying to get two different shots here for you. One is the beautiful sunset that we’ve got in the background and the other is an ostrich that’s with her. She keeps going past all kinds of things and she got to all these little kind of bushy areas and she tries to then sort of look around inside the bushes, so I think she’s looking for something like a scrub hare or maybe a little dik-dik or something like that.

That’s maybe what she’s trying to kind of find, but how beautiful is that? Is that not magical? The sun setting in the background and a female cheetah posing ever so nicely in the foreground. I think that’s a wonderful shot. Well done James. James is bringing us a sterling image there, which is very, very nice. It’s obviously so nice to spend time with cheetah again. It’s been a long time since I’ve spent any sort of decent quality time with the cheetahs. In fact, the last time I spent quality time with the cheetah was the last time I was here, which is obviously quite a while ago. And so it’s really nice to kind of see cheetah in and to have had a sighting with Kenya today. That’s been really quite pleasant. She’s been very playful, and you can see... look, there she goes! So she’s trotting off now.

She’s not hunting anything; she’s just almost as though she’s got a bit of a lease of life because of the rain. She’s just kind of running about and is doing her thing now. What was interesting earlier is when she was sitting getting pelted by most of the storm, she was sitting there shivering. Shame. She was so cold and I wonder if maybe this running around under the hood... yeah, a bit. You know, it’s sort of serious hunting. She actually tries to go after anything. I don’t know, but it looks as though she’s definitely looking for something in the little sort of pockets of grass and thickets, and I would imagine that would be have to be something like scrub hare.

That would be pretty much what she would go for. Or she could be going off to small birds or some Franklin’s and things like that. Cheetah will go after those from time to time too, but I would imagine it's mostly scrub hares and small antelope, maybe little baby antelope that have been hidden. It’ll maybe Tommy's or baby impalas or something like that that might be hidden in these little thickets. That’s probably what she’s looking for.

But if we kind of come out, you’ll see that the rain is starting to come too. So from the sort of escarpment side, what’s happened is the rain is shifting now around us and is gonna come along. You can actually see the escarpment is starting to disappear a little bit; it’s kind of losing its shape because of the storm that’s sort of heading back in our direction, which is not ideal. It went sort of north and it’s not turning back again. There’s a bit of lightning and stuff, so hopefully it’ll kind of just blow over the escarpment and we won’t have to worry too much.

Kenya, though, she seems to be wanting to take us right into the middle of the storm, so we’re gonna have to follow her as she does. I don’t know where she’s off to at the moment. It’s quite far north compared to where we had her during that time when she had the cubs in Lauer's last year. She had cubs and that was far south towards the Tanzanian border.

Now, Lego brothers, exactly how fast or cheetah are very fast is the answer. In the wild, I think the top speed that they’ve ever been clocked at is like in 93 kilometers an hour. It’s 93 or 95 somewhere there, whereas in captivity, they’ve gone a little bit faster, 115 I think is the fastest in captivity. But I mean, they really are quick animals; there’s no one else that really can go as fast as they can. And 90k an hour is going some, particularly across terrain like this. It is not an easy feat to travel at that speed. So they are incredibly fast, and I’m quite happy that she’s not running at 90 kilometers an hour because to keep up with her over this terrain would be almost impossible. You have to try always winged cheats are hunting, position yourself in a way that they’re gonna run kind of parallel with you and sort of cross from one side to your other and hope that they intercept the prey animal before you kind of get to you. So that’s the hope; it’s often cheetah when they hunt, they end up disappearing so far beyond where you are that it’s quite tricky to actually kind of keep up.

But I definitely think she’s off to something particular; she’s looking for something because you watch how she walks now and she’ll go and she’ll look in all of these little patches you see. Yeah, and she’s almost as if she’s kind of... I don’t know what it is, but she’s definitely got a bit of playfulness in her today because she’s bouncing around like that all over the place and this has been the way she’s been since she woke up from the rain. She has run around like this constantly, so she stops, she looks around, she kind of plays, and then she’ll run and then she stops and then she’ll go to these bushes and she’ll sniff about and then she runs again. And so she’s quite busy this afternoon, and it’s been a delight, like I said to Heather, as busy as she has been.

But I’m gonna try just catch up with her once again because the problem with her is she takes ten strides when she runs like that, and she leaves us way, way, way, way, way behind and takes us a bit of time just to catch up with her once again. I want to start trying to give her quite a bit of lead space and not get too close to her for the simple reason that if there is something that she wants to hunt, let’s say something like Tommy's or Grant’s gazelle or something like that up ahead of us, then I can split off quite a way away and just go around and stop kind of where the prey animal is and say I’m not actually affecting her and the animals aren’t watching, sort of the car. They’re able to just sort of both sides have got an even chance of hunting.

So when she sort of looks as though she’s intent on something or we spot something, then we give her as much space as possible, and I don’t want to kind of follow her too closely. But you can see how she’s kind of hitting it slowly returning into the rain. You mean to stop for us finally? That's very nice of you! She's a beautiful animal, and she's obviously quite famous in this part of the world. She's not nearly as famous as what Malaika or the five boys are, but she is fairly famous in the Triangle because she raised four cubs to adulthood successfully. So she had a litter which was Neria, Saria, and two boys, and they were raised successfully. And then she kind of since then has had not had too much luck, but it was deemed to be an incredible feat for a female cheetah to have raised all four. She only had four, and she raised all of them, as far as they know. And that was deemed to be quite incredible. So she’s quite famous because of that reason.

Shannon, I’m not a hundred percent sure I need to go and just double-check. You know these kind of things have escaped my mind since the last time I was here. But I’ll go and have a little checkup. We do have an age for her, so I was just going to double-check how old she is, but as far as I remember, she's not a hugely old cheetah, and if you look at the years and her general sort of appearance, she's not tatty in any way whatsoever. So the ears are in good condition; her sort of general body's in good condition. And so as far as I remember, she's quite young. So I think she's somewhere around six to seven, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Like I said, I’ll have to double-check it. Maybe some of you have an answer for us. I know James... you often will know the cheetahs of the Mara quite well. So maybe you can help us out with that and see if we have an age for her.

But she's old enough to have had obviously in a caesarean and Neria for them to have braided, and then she's had obviously multiple litters and hasn’t had too much success with them. But it’s really nice that we’ve kind of caught up with a cheetah, given that it was International Cheetah Day a few days ago. So it feels like it’s a good thing that we’ve caught up with one quite close to it and that we can kind of celebrate the fact that we still see these animals. Of course, they are having a tough time around Africa. Their numbers were depleted, and they then kind of responded quite well. And they were repopulated even though it was from such a weak gene pool that it left them to have a little bit of a susceptibility to various things. But you know they’ve done quite well in certain areas and other areas not so well, and so the general numbers are a bit of a worry with cheetah, and they obviously are an endangered species.

You can see she’s watching an ostrich at the moment that’s way off in the distance, and she’s walked past that ostrich twice already. So she’s not just looking to hunt it, I don’t think. She’s just kind of watching and moving about. And you know, and then here in the Triangle, it’s an interesting thing because you know that the cheetahs of the Triangle are not nearly as consistent as the Cheetahs on the other side of the river in the national park area. And it’s probably many reasons for that. I think probably the terrain and then the shortness of the grass here influences the numbers of cheetah that we see. If you go onto the other side of the river, it’s much shorter in a lot of the places, particularly towards the northern boundary where we see a number of different cheetahs hanging about. And so probably is it to do with that. The cheetah here probably struggle a little bit more to see other predators as well as to find food. Anyway, we’ll see how she goes. We're gonna keep up with her like I said.

Let’s stay with her most of the afternoon. Meantime, let’s send you back across to T’Challa who’s got a zebra carcass, I believe.

Yes, I do! I mean when you drove up here, you could barely recognize what it was apart from the obvious black and white stripes. It is what’s left of a zebra. I think that's utterly amazing; it’s basically a bag of bones now. Look at how cleanly all of the ribs have been cleaned out. Each bit of flesh has been removed. It’s actually such an interesting thing because it’s going through stages. First we know that the lions got hold of this animal, and we know that they clean it as much as they could, the parts that they like. Then we know that the vultures came down—the white-backed vultures got what they could. The bigger poles. Then we had the hooded vultures come down, take out these little bits. And now we have flies even coming through to have a bit of flesh to clean up the last bits of scrap. That’s something I really appreciate about the bush; everything has a cycle. It goes to dust in no time. And after this is done, I very sure that hyenas will come through and drag what they can from here.

Absolutely amazed. Now if you watch this morning's show, you would have seen that there was a lot of the sample left. Now that’s interesting. Obviously, I have James Henry on camera here; he’s taking direction very well. And I said to him, I’d love to show you guys this hoof because you can really get the opportunity to see what the hoof actually looks like. Oh, in any case, what a track actually looked like, or the foot that makes the track looks like. We always see the track, and I like to see this because we can actually see this is the shape and size of it. I think very cool. And we know that shape from when we’re tracking him; you can see the soft butt in the front. We often don’t get to see; we only see that kind of... I don’t know what you see, like shape, almost. Obviously, the smell is horrendous, but for you guys, I will tolerate it.

Those flies do look massive, Matome. What a lovely name—those flies are massive. I think those are flesh-eating flies. It would make sense since they seem to be eating flesh, and they are massive, but I have seen I have seen bigger flies in the bush! You see all sorts of flies. Flies just everywhere, but even they have their place and they’re doing their job! Shannon wants to know if there is a big difference or any difference at all between a horse hoof and a zebra hoof. And they are pretty much the same! I mean, you can have a clearer look there—I mean, it's missing a shoe, obviously—but it is pretty much the same. It's called a frog, I think, in that shape. Life under Todd! I’m working on frogs, but they’re pretty much the same, losses, especially after all the rain. The zebra hoof is walking on frogs! Yes, I think that’s fascinating the way it all comes back full circle.

This was an entire animal, but now just a bag of bones that'll provide nutrients for the rest of the bush. I think it's fascinating, #SafariLive! Tell me what you think! In the meantime, while I move on, so we're gonna make me have a look at the Lions. I know that they're down there by the pen, but while I do that, let’s go to Jamie and see what she’s got for you.

That sounds like a good idea, Trish. Otherwise, I'm going to go to those lions, but I assume that's where they're heading today. So we do sincerely apologize for the level of breakup you’re experiencing with our vehicles. A lot of the time, it’s purely because I haven’t plugged myself. There appears to be in some lightning damage to one of our repeaters, which is a bit of a disaster. But as you can imagine, it's sort of tall and straight up in the air on a mast. So as a result, that is going to be a potential problem with lightnings. These Impala—what if they were looking at me right? Sorry, I'm just looking at the Impala. So if you are hearing a little bit of a strange or experiencing a strange breakup, it’s not our feed, it’s a problem with the eater, so our apologies, there’s nothing we can do and I can’t drive around quarantine for three hours. I’ll go mad!

I guess it’s me that they’re looking at; I can’t see anything else, and they're not in any way alarm calling, letting out sounds of warning. If they had, they would if they had spotted a predator, I suspect that the male lions are somewhere around here. The males that were with Inkhumas until more, up until as far as we know this morning. Oh, my feelings are that when the Inhumans went hunting last night, they said to the boys, "Okay, you go that way, off you go! We’ll be right behind you!" And then immediately dashed off in the opposite direction as quickly as possible to avoid sharing their meals. And of course, it’s all happening in my head, but I do think they might—there’s a strong possibility that the males are around here—the two male Inhumans and the Talatamati males.

I’m looking for Husana, by the way, I’ve started on the west; I’m going to work my way east. We’re going to see if we can figure out where he’s disappeared to. Okay, Miss, carry on! They’ve relaxed again; it must have been me. Okay, we’re going to continue onwards, see what else we can find. Fearless, gloriously gloomy afternoon. Now we’ve put our roof on, the rain has vanished, as is inevitable. Tristan doesn’t have a choice when it comes to a roof, but he does have a cheetah, Duke. It’s been a while since I’ve heard of too many updates from him. I’m sure he’s been getting seen; I just haven’t seen much of him lately. We’ve heard much of him, like I say, so I hope that Jamie does find him. He is such a beautiful leopard; it would be so nice if that he did make an appearance for us, I think so, anyway.

But as you can see, Kenya has found herself a little throne to stand up on and to delight us with! She really is looking so regal up there, isn’t she? It’s a beautiful, beautiful kind of sunset in the background. It’s faded somewhat since we kind of saw you guys, but still very, very pretty, and it’s nice to kind of get a nicer side profile of her.

You know, obviously with these guys, a lot of the time we don’t actually get to see them in that place. They kind of move quite far away from us, so it’s very, very pleasant that she’s decided to grace us with her presence and sits on top of a nice mound while we kind of enjoy her company. I have thoroughly, like I say, enjoyed having time with her today; it’s been absolutely wonderful. Now, I’m not sure what she’s looking for though. She’s been kind of scanning a bit, and she pokes her head up every now and then. And there’s been a sort of... there was a blackberry bust that was here a little bit earlier that she looked at for a while. And then she ignored that, and then she perked up quite a bit and she stood up dead straight and was watching, like she is now. But I have no idea what she’s actually picked up.

I don’t know what she’s seeing, if maybe there was some sort of animal in the grass that she’s decided is a worthwhile kind of food source. But it’ll be interesting to see where she goes from here, as to whether she kind of moves a little bit further northwards or if she goes up towards the escarpment area. It’ll be very interesting.

Sky: Do the cheetahs leave the Mara during the migration and head towards Tanzania? So, no, not really! I mean obviously, we know the five boys; they stick around. They hunt a lot of the migration, but what is interesting, as I was having a chat with some of the other kind of guides out here that were acting, gone by, and they were telling me that often what they see with the Cheetahs is that during the migration period, if they've got young Cubs, they may tend to move away. They don’t like staying here, and it’s normally because during that phase with small Cubs is that the stampeding of the migration often leads to death within these cheetah clubs, apparently.

And, and so, I mean, I haven’t seen this first hand but they say that that’s what often happens is when their mothers have very small Cubs they tend to move away from the migration and then as the migration sort of turns and changes, then they start to come back into those areas. And it would be, I suppose, make some sense in that we haven’t seen much cheetah action around, and I’ve been asking David and Steve, and they said they haven’t seen too much now that the wildebeest have disappeared.

Remember, the wildebeest have only disappeared in the last sort of three weeks or two to three weeks, and now we are starting to see kind of Kenya, Becky, another female of three cubs. There was that unknown male. So there’s been a lot more cheetah sightings over the last orbits, and maybe there’s some correlation with the migration being but hectic pu-jeetah, and so they decide no, they’d rather kind of move off and find somewhere else to go and spend time. But it’s certainly an interesting topic and one that I’m sure there are many theories on. I would imagine that many people have some sort of theory on where the cheetahs go and why they move around during kind of migration periods.

I would hope that it’s got not too much to do with the migration. I don’t imagine it is a food source for adults but maybe with Cubs that, it makes sense to me if there's Cubs around then. Sure, I would imagine that that would be the case! You know, they try and kind of keep their Cubs safe and go, but you know, it’s either way, I’m not complaining. It’s good nice that we’re seeing cheetah moving back into the Triangle and seeing them a lot more with that big burn section where we found her. It’s going to be a good place, I would imagine, for a cheetah for the next little bit. It’s going to stay nice and short; there’s a lot of game on this—you see a lot of zebras there, we see a lot of Thomson’s, Grant’s, Elearn, Topi; there’s a lot of food sources for cheetah on those open areas. And then they come in to see any predators coming and so I think the only reason we didn’t see her hunt on that burn section earlier is primarily because of the fact that there were hyenas around.

So just before we went live, we saw hyenas, and so that’s probably why sir, my name do cheetahs have territorial boundaries similar to leopards? So my Stephanie, with the males, the males will have boundaries that they will patrol and stamp mark, and females do a 2-bit. It seems to be a lot more fluid. Depends also where you are. I mean, some parts of Africa you don’t see that much of movement as you see here. And you know if you go to South Africa, the cheetah dairy territory around the Kruger Park sort of section seems to be a lot smaller than what you see here.

Although it’s in saying that you see that female that we were seeing with the two cubs, the one that’s got the missing tip to take. She’s gone all the way back up to Thorny Bush again and did a big kind of loop around. So I suppose they can kind of move. They’ve got more sort of, I would describe it as a home range rather than a fixed territory. And so the home range is an area that they will move around in that they’ll mark. But as things change and as conditions change, so they will then move off.

Alright then, well if we’re standing around apparently time to move on and to go find where she wants to go whatever it is. She is quite excited to get there. Kenya, what have you spotted? I see how she’s looking around in these little thicket areas as though this one if she’s maybe looking for even things like mice would be interesting. Scrub hares must be the prime target!

Sure, sure; I don’t see anything running when she kind of bouncing through the grasses. I get, but either way, it’s a joy to watch and to watch them kind of just sore, sort of get ever vague sort of Canton and run is an absolute pleasure. They are an amazing animal to see running, and to see one at full speed has got to be one of those kind of bucket list things for most people that enjoy wildlife because it is really quite incredible. You can’t believe how fast these guys go when you see them at full speed; it is mind-boggling as to how quickly they can cover ground.

Right, supporting. Sorry, Louise, you broke up badly there. Didn’t get all of that. I’m just trying to fix my earpiece to see if it’s that or we just lost our comms. Sorry, Louise, you’re breaking up too badly. I can’t actually hear what you’re saying, I’m afraid. I do apologize.

All it is is... every little, unfortunately for me, I’m not going to be able to hear what that is until it resolves. It’s quite tricky when it gets like that; the radio, and as we know, bits blinded when the radio doesn’t work; it means that we can’t hear you guys mainly. As well, Slade goes there, like I say, it's part of being alive out in Africa; it's a pretty special thing that we get to drive around yet and try and actually bring you guys back...

Oh, there we go! Movies like what's I've got, the comms test that didn't get any further than that, did you say anything more than that, Louise? Could be having a whole conversation about me now! It never... No, would be quite interesting. Louise has been talking to herself apparently and has been doing all kinds of things. Louise, you better not have been nasty to me! Don’t be nasty.

Anyway, we’re gonna stop, right, sure, four to six, because it’s a beautiful kind of sunset like I say behind her, and they’re pretty! There’s a reason why the Masai Mara is as beautiful as it is, and why people say it’s very, very pretty, and why a lot of people come here is because of scenes like that. That is absolutely stunning! I think so. I mean, I don’t know, there may be other people that think there are better scenes out there in Africa, but for me, I think that is seriously beautiful.

And one that kind of screams Africa to me. It’s just kind of cheetah, big open grasslands and a beautiful sky in the background—it’s probably what most of you at home thought of when you first thought of Africa. These kind of scenes maybe you would have had lions instead of a cheetah but it’s these kind of big open plains that everybody always thinks of. When we talk about Africa, and when we think about Africa, everybody always various connotation will be big open grasslands.

And funny enough, as we know, that, Jim, it's not like that at all in some parts of Africa; it’s very bushy and very thickened and difficult to negotiate. But this, because of documentaries and movies and all kinds of other things, that you know, we approach it as just thinking these ways.

And you can see, just like that, how far she covers, and she’s not even running at probably forty percent of what she could see. That’s just a little bound for her; that’s a little light jog, and she’s taken.

So it gives you an idea of how much distance she can cover and how quickly they do it—it's really quite insane to see these guys moving the way that they do. But anyway, let’s try and catch up with her because I feel like every time she just does that, we get left way behind, and then you've got to kind of bounce our way along and try and get somewhat closer once again.

It’s trying to scan around as well as we go in just to see if there’s any sign of any prey animals that she could potentially hunt. So far, I haven’t seen anything. Since we left that burn section, I haven’t seen anything. It seems as though most things on that side... you know, I suppose I think I got the break up a bit, but I think I got the gist of it is something to do with will cheetah change hunting due to weather and that’s... is that what it was? Just double check before I launch into this.

Okay, so hunting behavior in rainy weather, it's much like any cats. They are opportunistic, and so I suppose in hunting with weather, there’s... I mean, in rainy weather, hunting with cheetah typically doesn’t take place. You normally see with cheetah, when it rains, they hunker down. And they just kind of get into a ball and they wait for the rain to stop.

As the rain stopped, they then start to become a lot more active and a lot more kind of mobile, and they'll actually use that slippery ground to their advantage because they have these long sort of claws that act like running spikes and can keep them quite safe in comparison to, you know, something with a small hoof that can slip very quickly on a muddy surface.

And so you’ll find when it’s raining that they’ll hunt just after, but during rain for 90% of the time, a cheetah is literally just going to hunker down and just try and sit there for as long as possible and stay as sort of dry as it can.

It was quite funny when she, the rains first arrived this afternoon; she sat perfectly out in the open and when the rain started, she ran to this nearest little thicket. And then she just buried herself in a thicket and kind of hunched down and her head ducked down and then she was just there for quite a while, and she lay there until most of the rain passed and then she was quite happy to sort of sit still and then start to move.

So you know they typically won’t hunt too much when it’s bucketing down like you would see with even lion and leopard and both of those do do it. When it's bucketing down, you will see both lion and leopard actually try and hunt. They will do it quite regularly, particularly Lions with Buffalo you see it’s quite often with them doing it. But with cheetah not so much; they typically wait until it gets a little bit sort of... what would the word be? Dry is probably a good way to put it before they attempt too much hunting for the day, so they are more sort of fair.

Where should we call it? You’ll find that, I mean like I said, when it’s a bit slippery out there, it’s actually not bad for cheetah. They’ll sometimes do very, very well when it’s a little bit slippery because it works in their favor. They, like I say, have big sort of feet and long claws that are able to kind of grip even in the worst, where there’s, you know, obviously a lot of other sort of animals.

Yeah, like we said earlier, will slip and slide a little bit, so they do hunt a lot off terrain. I suppose also get a new lease of life when they’re a little bit kind of—what does the word be?—say they’ve kind of been rained on, so they’ve cooled down and supposes they’ve just got a little bit of energy to burn when it’s that sort of time of the day, rejuvenated, refreshed!

There we go, you’re like a thesaurus, Louise! I just... you’re a pocket thesaurus, is what you are! Rejuvenated, refreshed is probably a good thing!

It’s jokingly funny, you can be like Siri, Louise—you can adopt that kind of fame! You can be the next Siri! Which is going to be the thesaurus, sorry, instead of an actual kind of mobile phone Siri, that’s what I think it can be the case. That’s what I would imagine!

And have you been called Siri once before? Well, I’m not surprised to be honest with you. I would think that that would be probably quite correct in that you’ve obviously are a good James Hindry. Well, that’s not a surprise in any way shape or form! I wonder how James Henry is doing, his fearless leader for our presenting department! I spoke to him and when I spoke to him a few days ago, he seemed to be in good spirits, so hopefully as well!

So James Henry apparently is with the thumb keys, not comfy! It's in Shangaan word for fish, which is what we call our dive live crew that’s joined us, we called in the fish. So he's out with them apparently, and they have very bad signal, so that’s why you guys are with us while Coquina is just sitting and watching and scanning what’s going on. But at the moment, she’s very, very relaxed, isn’t she?

She is the most wonderful kind of afternoon of playing, it seems like it would be so nice if they had been Cubs with her because I think they would have had the best game this afternoon had they been Cubs in the turf. So it’s sad that she lost all her Cubs—obviously Scott was here when we kind of before he found the den and saw those tiny little cheetah. And they meet the den watch for weeks on end, which I can promise you is probably some of the longest days I’ve spent art in the bush, just purely because it's nice to sit and—

Well, the idea sounds great of sitting at a cheated den and waiting for her to appear with her little ones, but I can assure you the reality of it is different! Off you go; carrying on. But the reality of it is different! Is that basically we spent I would say probably in excess of 12 hours a day just sitting and watching a grassy hill with no sign of a cheetah.

I saw her only once, I think, twice at the den, but I must have spent three weeks there just watching grass blowing in the wind for 12 hours, which can promise you, in these cases, it starts to get a bit uncomfortable after a while.

And right now, I believe I’m sending you back to South Africa. I must be honest; I have no idea to what they are up to, but either way, I’m sure you’ll enjoy! Here it is; it’s me and I’m driving around—are you shocked and surprised? Yes, of course you are! You know it’s interesting, I have seen very similarly. Obviously, I see Justin seeing loops; very sad.

Hey one other, in my net wars! Well I’m sorry about that everybody, we're still struggling a little bit with some gremlins, particularly down on Zuma's side of things which is making life a little bit tricky, so you’re stuck with me for this afternoon, which is unfortunate if you don’t like my blabbing. But it is what it is, so we’ll just have to kind of show you the cheetahs and you’ll be happy with that rather than, like I say, me just talking nonsense as much as possible.

But anyway, it's still sitting with Kenya; she’s still kind of scouting about. We are probably thinking, all likelihood, we’ll leave her just now when it gets really, really dark, and if she’s mobile, I’ll probably be leaving it to do her thing in, and it's not race her too much. I wanted to follow her for quite a bit this afternoon into the evening.

Just have a better idea of where to kind of start looking for again tomorrow because it’s always special to spend a lot of time with cheetah, and she is not full at all, so hunting is going to be high up on her sort of priority list at some point.

And so we can spend a bit of time with her, then we might get lucky and might be able to find hunting or see what she gets as a meal! It’s always incredible, like I say to watch her as she does all of these things.

Well, control, it's not as clear-cut as what you think. As much as cheetah is a diurnal animal, they do sometimes hunt at night! In some areas, they will do a little bit of hunting at night, so it's not huge to me; it's not a huge percentage of their hunting time, but they do do it from time to time. But essentially at nights, they sleep a lot.

So if you ask Scott, who spent the vast majority of his time with the five boys when they were kind of established, but when they first kind of spent time with him, he said that they used to move massive distances through the night. They would walk all night long and cover huge tracts of land, but as they got kind of to the point where they were more established, then you found that they would sleep a lot during the nights.

And they would just lie there and rest, and then they would be quite active around this time of the day and then early in the morning just as the site before the Sun would come up and then just after the Sun rose and then during the day they would take any opportunities if they came their way, but it wasn’t necessary all about just kind of hunting during the day – so cheetah does also run during the day as well! When it gets hot, they find a tree and they’ll lie down and just kind of rest there and take it very, very easy, but they do move around from time to time as well.

Right now, she’s... because he can to weigh from us once again. Kenya, where are you off to girl and what are you looking for? I’m intrigued; I want to know what she’s doing! I think she’s looking for any signs of scrub hares; that’s what my guess is! Or little baby animals that are hidden in the grass.

A little baby antelope and have been left in the grass by their moms to kind of just sit there and camouflage. I think that’s maybe what she’s kind of looking for. Ruth knows, so if she's looking for a male cheetah, we would hear a calling and we’d see her scent marking excessively. She’d be spraying everywhere she went, and that will be obviously even attract the attention of a male to scent. But she’s not doing any of those things. She is just more kind of moving around.

I think she’s looking for a certain type of food. Maybe she’s got a certain technique that she likes to employ, much like the five boys use each other and to be able to hunt down wildebeest and topi. Maybe she’s got in a way of doing things as well that she likes to kind of go from bush to bush and she sort of surprises things like scrub is and tries to kind of make them sort of move around. So that’s what I would imagine would be the case.

I mean, I think that’s what she’s looking for at the moment. But like I say, I’m probably in all likelihood going to leave her fairly shortly and carry on for the night. It is starting to get quite dark, Ian, and so, you know, at the end of the day, she’s also heading into an area that’s going to be quite tricky to follow. It gets quite rocky as you get over this ridge where you can see there’s a little drop-off there; that’s where it starts to get almost impossible to be able to actually follow.

It’s quite tricky to kind of get down into that area, so, you know, we’ll try to kind of figure it out and see where she’s gonna go. But either way, very, very cool to kind of follow her for as long as we have and we’ve been thoroughly treated by her this afternoon, that’s for sure! She’s spoilt us with a lot of interesting behavior now.

Nancy, how do cheetahs and leopards compare in size? Well, cheetahs are much longer animals, so it’s a huge difference in terms of length. So it’s a long animal, long tail; it’s much taller than an elephant for the most part as well, but it is much lighter. So the leopard would be a lot heavier animal, a lot thicker set, big shoulders, big head, big legs, whereas cheetah is a much narrow animal but it’s longer and taller in many respects.

And so in terms of, it depends on what you’re looking at, which is going to just kind of give you an idea of size. You’ll have, in terms of the, like I say, the females, you’ll have the kind of... I mean sorry, in terms of the cheetah, you’ll have really kind of long animals tall and then weigh very little, whereas a leopard is a very thick, heavy-set, big forearms, big chest, weighs a lot more, a lot more power.

So it’s kind of a game between power and speed. And so it depends on what you want to compare to get you an idea of how big they are, but she's kind of trotted off now and is sort of running ahead of us. She’s quite far in the distance, so we’re gonna just try and see.

I can just get one last view of her before she disappears into a horrible section; she’s gone into like a little thicket now. And if she’s gonna go interesting, at this stage she’s just straight ahead. I know there she goes; she was running open again but there’s a green thicket that she’s kind of gone into, and she’s sniffing about in there as well.

And it’s funny because when you are watching the serval happened the other day, this is exactly the same technique that that serval employed as well. It would go into all of these little grassy and bushy little areas and it would look around for all kinds of food items hidden and within those, and it seems as though Kenya is going to do the exact same thing!

So I’m wondering if maybe that’s her technique—to be able to actually try and hunt using these kind of things and to be able to walk and move around and just try and find anything. Penny's hiding out here; some vehicles behind me, so they were coming to investigate what’s going on.

So just I think they were worried about coming in front of us, so James, if they want to, they’re more than welcome to come in front and carry on in the way. It’s not like we now... that’s a surprise! It sounds as if Jamie has somehow figured out a way to find some sort of stability in her signal, and so it seems you across to her while we catch up with Kenya.

Okay, we’ve problem-solved this issue sort of, so I do sincerely apologize to Trish and we've left him in the lurch; but at least he had a Kenya keeping him entertained! I’m back, I’m going to the lions! I have not—he’s stolen it out from under Trish Allah’s nose—but due to the technical difficulties we’ve discussed it with them, and I’m gonna make my way in there so that at least we have... myself and Tristan while we try and troubleshoot the other issues.

So I promise I haven’t just stolen it away from Trishola! So we’re going to go to the lions! I knew I assumed James was okay with it! I didn’t, he doesn’t seem to have called me or anything on the radio! Sighs, new, everything’s okay and good to go! Cool!

It’s too late now, I’m nearly there and I called myself into the sighting! Alright, here we go! So tricky tricky problem-solving here, bit of juggling. But we’ve figured it out, as we've gone along and we're just about to get back to the Inkuhumas circling navigation.

You know what the most irritating aspect of this afternoon is? There’s very little else that gets me very irritated, but I oh dear! Hello! Hello! James does not realize he’s live. Right! Cool!

Okay, James is just showing us that the roof was a good idea. Is what he was doing! He was just pointing puts into the air! That's definitely exactly what he was doing! He’s showing us that the roof was sensible. What is it? Okay, cool, alright! I’m giving it over to them; it’s all theirs! Which way they’re going? Nope, they’re going the other way! Alright, thank you, Doki; there’s the lions!

Marvelous! There’s no one else here, marvelous! Okie dokie! Would you look at that flat kitty cats on a gloomy afternoon? Hello ladies, would you mind if I do some shuffling around? You just because of this roof, I’m going to come quite close to you!

Hello girl! Nice and slow, she doesn’t seem to be too worried at all. Trying to reposition so that Craig can film over the front of the car rather than, well, it’s a bit of a squeeze, it’s a bit of a squeeze! We’re gonna make it! We’re gonna do it! Sorry Craig, you’re good? Okay, Craig, how’s that? Can you see there? I can’t actually see through the plastic of my monitor.

Okay, we’re good! That’s the best I can do right now, and that is how we shall stay! Maybe go sleepy sleepy kitty cats! A wonderful opportunity for you all to send through your questions on #SafariLive on Twitter or your comments.

And perhaps let’s think a little bit about what’s happening with the Inka humus and do a little bit of speculation. And it is pure speculation because they have confused us greatly with their comings and goings at present! It’s good to see them with full bellies! Isn’t it?

I don’t know the last few times I’ve seen the Inkuhumas they haven’t been hungry hungry, but they haven’t been this fat! Now we’ve got three, a row of three ginormous bellies! Absolutely enormous! They look as though they’ve swallowed a beach ball! As you can see, for our viewers who perhaps have always been wondering about this but have never had the courage to ask and we do have lots of viewers who don’t necessarily ask the questions that they want to in case you’re wondering why they are breathing so fast on such a nice cool day.

It’s only about 71, 72 degrees Fahrenheit or in the low 20s in centigrade. In case you’re wondering why they’re breathing so fast, it is because their bellies are obscenely full, which is the standard approach of most predators out here! They never know when the meal is, when the next meal is going to grace them with its presence.

As a result, they have to gorge themselves whenever they get the opportunity. Well, their metabolisms and their digestive systems are geared towards this, but the breakdown of meat does produce a great deal of heat, which, in turn, makes them quite hot, which means they have to pant and cool down their nasal passages.

I’m with them now, you can keep making your way towards Gallagher. Which side are you approaching from?

Okay, copy! Keep coming along Gallagher shortcut and take the link to Gallagher Marty. You’ll see us from the road! Here we go! Are we just helping a fellow soldier of the wilderness out in terms of finding us!?

Debra lions do snore! I have heard them myself; they had heard usually, but especially when they've got an injury around their nasal passages for some reason, the airways are obstructed, and then they do actually make tiny little snoring sounds.

It’s not quite the sort of marriage-ending sound of sort of deal! I'm glad you enjoyed that demonstration! I'm not! I wasn't even giving you the option! But it is a soft sort of snorts, ladylike snores, although I have heard male lions do it as well!

So yes, lions can and do snore, but it’s usually when they have an obstructed airway or nostril for some reason. They don’t really get many sinus problems in the same way we do! They don’t get hay fever or anything like that. Their immune systems are, in comparison to ours, well they’re actually just streaks ahead in terms of the power of their immune system, so they don’t really suffer from colds and flu and infections in the way we do.

It does happen, but it’s very rare that you’ll find a lion or a leopard with a snotty nose, but they can and they do snore. They also dream! So while we watch them, we can ponder as to what they really dream about! Do they relive their glorious moment last night when they managed to catch a zebra after putting in presumably a lot of hard work?

Do they revel in that experience? Who knows? Do they dream of other things? Who knows what they dream?! They definitely dream though you know, see their paws twitching. Do they have nightmares? Horrible thoughts of big male lions coming in and disrupting their lives, or perhaps—I don’t know—what would a lion night maybe apart from that? Not many other things that are well a threat to lions like this! The hyenas in this area?

Oh, big sigh! Hey, maybe they have crises of ID! They have a crisis of identity or purpose! Who knows? It’s doubtful though! Okay, we’re gonna have to do some shuffling! I can make your way! I'll move back a little bit!

Okay, I'm going to need to move so that there's that other vehicle can get in here, I think. I can move backwards, so one of the things that we try and hoo-hoo shuffle around, whether we're repositioning in a sighting or whether we are trying to catch up with something like a cheetah, which Tristan has done. Bravo, Tristan!

Let’s go and see what Kenya is up to next!

Well, enjoy shuffling! We’ve also been shuffling our way around! And tolki Kenya just decided all of a sudden just to flop down in the grass. She’s almost as if to say, "I’ve had enough now, I’m going to sleep!"

Pretend it’s amazing if she sits like this! You would not see her! If you were... I mean we’re close to the moment; we’re probably 20 meters, but if you were 100 meters away, there’s absolutely zero chance of you being able to spot her in this grass!

And so it’s probably... it’s a wonder how many cheetahs we probably drive past or leopards or lions or whatever it may be in the Mara system! Because in other roads, they’re quite far apart! And so you often get this situation—I mean, if she lies down flat you would have no idea that she is even here, other than those little black ears that are moving every now and then.

So you know they are around; it’s just sometimes I suppose we miss them a little bit. But she’s kind of moved and now decided it’s time just to rest and sleep.

And I wouldn’t be surprised, like I say, that going to be her for the night. She’s going to end up probably just taking it really very easy and maybe just sleeping. But I was wondering if maybe she was waiting for it to get a little bit more dingy before she moved back onto the dark patch.

I mean onto the burn section in order to try and potentially hunt again there. It would be a little bit easier for her to move around without being spotted because she was being spotted very easily on that burn section.

But I suspect maybe it’s just that she wanted to pay and do a little look around and loop around because she went quite far north and she’s turned and she’s run south quite a long way again!

So we’ve gone a long way back to where we kind of started! I’m not sure what she’s up to, you know, just looking around! Maybe just checking who’s around, seeing if there’s any sounds or signs, should I say, off cheetah! Or the cheetahs in the area!

So in terms of when, if she’s looking for any signs of her daughters, and see if they have been around; but there’s nothing else that’s kind of followed. I’ve been looking to see because she kind of looked over her shoulder, got nervous, and ran southwards!

And I thought maybe there was some hyenas or maybe a lion or something, but there’s definitely not! Keep looking kind of where she’s come from, and there’s definitely nothing coming behind us.

So maybe just the wind that’s giving her the crazies and why she’s running up and down, but I get that camouflage, isn’t that amazing? So you can see why if she hunted in this section could be a lot easier for her in many respects because she’d be able to move around quite easily without really being seen!

If she just gets nice and low and she kind of stalks that way, she would definitely be able to get herself into a much better spot to be able to hunt?

Who is on that open area? It would be a lot more tricky, but in saying that, obviously we know that cheetahs don’t spend a huge amount of time ambushing their prey so they don’t have to get as close. As long as they can get within a certain distance, they’re pretty happy to hunt even in the most open sections—and those five males are proof of that!

I mean, they hunt right out in the open, but they do also have the advantage of having five of them, which is always much easier when it comes to hunting!

And funny enough, if you’re wondering about the five boys, they actually have been quite busy this week; they’ve been mating with a female, and poor females, I feel sorry for her because if you look into all the kind of photos and pictures of it, you’ll find that there’s a scrum of cheetahs together, and there's per female at the bottom of it!

And males are just kind of going crazy, and a lot of the time when they actually starting to properly mate is that they’ll separate off slightly so one male will go with that female, they’ll then mate, and then they’ll kind of... the males will rejoin and that female will go off!

But it’s very seldom will you see all of them in a scrum face like that that there’s actually any serious mating taking place! It's, it’s more just kind of the initial stages and all the boys vying for position in order to get themselves a female to be able to mate with! So it’s quite an interesting process!

And I must be honest, I wish we saw those five boys on the Triangle side—it would be such a wonderful thing to see them. But they don’t come down this way at all; I’ve never heard of them crossing into the triangle. You never know though, one day they might come to this side!

But they really are in a fascinating group of cheetahs to watch and to kind of study! I think their sort of behavior is something that many of us don’t really call, never really thought possible!

And I think that a lot of the things that they do has been quite eye-opening for a lot of people! So it’s been interesting to kind of follow them and watch what’s been going on! And I mean, we at Safari Live, we had some crazy sightings of those guys: Scott’s son and even Brent and Jamie and James and Ralph and who else was up here during those periods? That’s, I think that was everybody.

They’ve got some even... Taylor—she spent some time with him too! So they got some some crazy sightings and but to see some very, very cool things! And those five boys, like I say, are definitely something that are probably gonna go down in history as a very, very special thing that we’ve had out here!

I don’t know how often it happens to see those kind of things! And Jim, how do you tell the difference between male and female cheetahs? Quite tricky in comparison to lion and leopard. Obviously, lion and leopards give you a much easier way of being able to sort of see them.

There is a size difference between them, so males have a heavier but it’s very tricky! It’s unless you see them side by side, that size difference is not always that easy! Males do have slightly bigger heads and you’ll find the best way is just to look under the tail! Really!

So testicles of a male cheetah stick out like a sore thumb typically because cheetahs, when they walk, their tail is quite straight out and kind of curved upwards and so it’s quite easy to actually see if it’s a boy or a girl! But size is one thing!

So the males are bigger than the females and definitely have a much sort of stocky appearance! What is she watching? She kind of keeps looking in that direction; I can’t see a single thing! I’ve known, and we’re looking hard in that area, but there’s no sign of anything that I can see at all!

So I don’t know what she’s seeing that we are not! Maybe something way in the distance! The eyesight is incredible! These animals see a lot better than what we do; that’s for sure!

And so maybe she spotted something way off that she’s a bit kind of nervy about and is rather just gonna allow it to come closer before she decides what she’s actually going to do! Right, we’ll sit with her! I think we’ve probably got about another 10 or so minutes that we’ll be able to spend with her before it gets too dark and we’re gonna just end up kind of shining lights and like doing the right thing!

And so before that happens though, let’s send you back across to Jamie who’s got the Inca-huma pride to it!

It sounds like they arrived! They’ve been moving from their own accord! They are up and about! Interestingly enough, it just goes to show how opportunistic lions are! A herd of Impala nearly walked right into the middle of the pride of enormous and attracted the attention of the some of the lionesses who got up and went straight into stock mode!

Now you’ll notice every now and again that we struggle to follow them—that’s of course because we have a roof on! Even though it’s not raining, I don’t want to talk about it anymore! Well, the lioness is making her way down to where those Impala were very softly! Here’s the ridge... noise too! She also wants to get involved!

Sorry about the pole, everyone! Just one of those things! It’s a bit of a tight squeeze in here! Are we going to go that way? Nope, we are going to stop right here and urinate! No, no Impala for you!

Okay. Oh shame! They’ve disturbed a hiccup; sorry, Mike—hold on—I’m just trying to see if we can see this! I don’t think we’re going to be able to! Sorry, girl! But there’s a thick knee that’s been flushed out by the lions! Can you see it there, Craig?

Or is it a bit of a messy Macy experience? That’s hind in there—there it is— that’s it over there! It’s been flushed out by the lions! We don’t usually get to see them at this time of day! They’re nocturnal Birds! As you go as the lioness here comes Amber eyes! Oh my girl! Oh shame! The cubs are so upset!

I can just hear them skulking! They’re not called the cubs anymore; they’re called the culprits! I must have a nest in there! I bet you they do! I can’t move at the moment, unfortunately! I would like to reposition because it does look like these lionesses are going to go and hunt!

Here comes the lioness that’s blind in one eye! You should not blind, actually! I don’t know if she’s fully blind! Here she goes! Oh! We were gonna ask the answer to the question about the dynamics that we have here! Yes! We have four adult lionesses and just one of the sub adults! One of the females!

Come on then, rich noise! You were the one who was the most keen! Are you going? Yes? No? Looking at us! Oh! Roof left slightly in the breeze!

Alrighty! Now it’s time to follow along! I think they're going to hunt the Impala! But there’s nothing I can do until the other two vehicles move! So we just have to sit patiently until we can... someone’s feeling not up to the hunt this afternoon! Not interested at all!

Here comes another lioness! Not another! I mean the