Safari Live - Day 4 | National Geographic

Viewer discretion is advised. Well, it appears as if it's blue skies with wonderful white clouds this afternoon and this is Safari Live, ready. Standing by. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... you are live. You are [Music] live. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Safari Live for our Sunset Safari. My name is Byron and on camera with me this afternoon is, of course, Craig, or Batman. Um, we also have Taylor in the tent this afternoon with Inocenta, our new cameraman/woman, camera woman. So Inocenta is filling in and helping us out in the tent this afternoon again, which has been fun. And then of course the ladies in the final control.

And then a big warm welcome to all of you! It's always nice to have all of you on Safari Live with us. Don't forget we are completely live, so send us your questions and your comments. #safarilive is how you do that, and we'll gladly answer them. Now, I'm approaching this dam and this is where Taylor managed to find Young Husana, a young male leopard, this morning. So I'm going to see, hopefully, he's still around. Now, there were apparently tracks of a female in this area too, so I wonder if there isn't another leopard around.

It's actually been a cool afternoon, so I wouldn't be surprised if this leopard did decide to move. So, we'll have to have a good little look around here. Um, alright, I think let me have a good look. I might just walk around and see if I can't find any tracks. Let's head to Taylor, so she can say good afternoon to you.

Hello everybody and welcome again, as Byron said, to Safari Live and live interactive Safari. My name is Taylor and on camera with me today is Inoca, and well, hopefully, we’re going to find all sorts of things and perhaps we'll have a look at some clips a little bit later too. Now, as you know, the tent can be quite difficult at this time of the year because there isn't really much in terms of insects and things, actually it's particularly quiet. Now, I have got something however to show you on the microscope, so if you'd like to go to the microscope, you're welcome too, and then we can investigate and see what I've got.

This is a piece of grass that I managed to find outside. I'm just trying to move it around because there's all sorts of things in here. Just bear with me, I'm going to pull it out very quickly and try and turn it around. It's very windy all of a sudden, at one point I thought the monitors were going to blow off the table and out into the bush. There we go! Now if you look very carefully in there, you'll see that there's a variety of insects. There's a piece of grass, um, it has a little spider in it now. I'm going to try and find the spider, but look at all the things that it's eaten.

There's very little life out there at the moment. One of them on the right looks like a termite, that orange thing. And if I change the focus, there's like a little midge of some sort, you can just see in the top middle of your screen. Look at those wings! But now you might be able to spot the spider in between all that sort of, well, death I suppose you could call it. You might be able to see something moving. It's a very small spider, I don't know what it is. It's beautiful though!

Let me see if I can turn it around again. You can see it's just moving over there, it's got beautiful hairs on it and it's got quite a dark sort of head and dark legs. Let's see if we turn it… I actually didn't even see it with my eyes. To be honest, if I angle it like that, what we going to get, a view, it's very difficult. And now the wind… no wind, stop blowing! Oh, there we go! I think we can just see it now! Let me just change the focus here. Yes! Okay, now I'm going to work out how to bring it closer to the screen.

It's so difficult to work this microscope! There it is, look at it! I wonder if it's not a very small hairy field spider. They're quite common out here. We see them all over the show and they're related to orb web spiders, but then its web is slightly different because what it's actually done is… maybe it's not even a hairy field spider, perhaps it's something else. It might be even too difficult to try and identify because there's quite a lot of obstructions.

It might be the size of two or three pin heads put together, that's how tiny it is! Is that amazing? And like I said, it's done a different type of a web. So it hasn't built a normal or round web, it's actually taken the pieces of grass and pulled them together and then used a very fine silk almost like netting and wrapped it around the grass, so that's where it lives. It lives inside the middle of the web, and that web will also help protect it. It will stop, um, anything sort of blowing into it, so it's quite safe in there, and then it's got all its little insects trapped on the outside.

Let me change the focus a little bit. Oh, that's so amazing! I could honestly stare at this for ages; that is so cool! I really want to try and figure out what spider we have underneath the microscope, but I might have to do a bit more playing around. Maybe if I do some digging outside I’ll be able to find some more spiders for you hopefully. Well, that’s the idea of course today, but if there's anything that you'd like to have a chat about, you're welcome to hashtag live. Let us know, and you can help me keep myself and you all entertained in the tent because it's very quiet in here, unfortunately.

And hopefully, the ladies in final control can dig up some footage for me of the buffaloes and lions, and we can have a chat about that because that's definitely been a hot topic over the last few weeks. There's also a car alarm going off! I think this is a good time then to go back to Byron and see if he's had any luck with those leopards.

Unfortunately, not yet Taylor. We are looking though, that that leopard definitely moved off as I thought it would. These young leopards move around a lot during the day, a lot more than we think, and especially today when it was so much cooler. So, we're just going to have to have a careful look around here. I’m going to check this drainage line very carefully because I think if anything, maybe he moved up into this area somewhere.

It is tricky; we know, like, even this morning with them trying to track him; they walked. They were so close to that leopard and he didn't even move. So, it's not easy to find them if they are lying down, especially when the grass is this color and very well camouflaged. But we'll have a look around there and see. Maybe, maybe we get lucky. I'm sure there are still around somewhere. I say they—if that's assuming there's two leopards in this area—check the termite mounds, check some of the trees. Maybe we... would it be great to see a leopard in a tree? I haven't seen a leopard up in a tree for quite some time.

Hope you're having a great weekend everybody or the end to a good weekend. Uh, and just a reminder, so there’s going to be a time change and it is from the 1st of August. So from the 1st of August there is a time change with our Sunrise Safari. We are going to be half an hour earlier—so half an hour earlier for our Sunrise Safari, so we are going to be live from 6:00 on. Uh! So that's 6:00 or 6:00 a.m. Central African time. Sorry Craig, I feel like rusty shocks are no longer in existence.

So that's from the 1st of August. We're still trying to work out and we’ll let you know if we're going to be changing the Sunset Safari, um, the times for the Sunset Safari, but we will let you know. But from the 1st of August, time change for the Sunrise Safari at so half an hour earlier. Come on, there's got to be a leopard on these termite mounds somewhere. To check this little pan very carefully, nice cover, um, and it's a perfect little spot for leopards to hide. Young leopards especially—but I have no idea which direction they would have gone or he would have gone.

You see anything at Craig? I can see some Franklin moving through the grass but no sign of a leopard just yet. Lovely cool afternoon! So, his leard could also potentially be lying out a little bit more in the open, maybe not necessarily well-hidden but you never know. So I'm going to be doing a few loops around here and just see if we can find this leopard. Times like this, I really wish I had my friend Judas, that I used to work with. Such a great tracker! A lot of experience and he just, uh, just had a SI sense when it came to finding leopards and tracking leopards. I have no doubt if he was with me now we probably would have had the leopard already.

Now James, as you were saying, it would have been nice to see Hosana this afternoon and hopefully he was where he was left this morning. That's what I was hoping for James, but he definitely moved away from there. So, I don’t know which direction he went. Trying to have a careful look; any signs, any tracks, anything like that. But I do think he's somewhere in that area; I don't think he would have moved too far. But you never know with these young leopards, especially this young male. Um, you know, he's independent now; he's moving around a lot more, but, um, but still exploring the area—not really quite sure what to do.

He's still very young; he's only about a year and a half old, almost a year and a half old. So still young! Usually, this is the time that, um, that females would probably leave their cubs once they get to a year and a half old—that's usually the average age for leopards to reach independence. But in the case of this young male and young female Hosana and Shila, um, their mother left them a lot earlier—almost just—or I think they were just over a year old. So that's quite young! But they've done well for themselves; they've survived, which is wonderful.

And I mean, we saw this young male, um, this morning. We watched a clip on it too! Ellie found him wrestling or kind of wrestling or playing tug of war with a hyena over an impala carcass! So he's clearly not really afraid of much. There’s one impala back there and sometimes all it takes is just driving very, very slowly and scanning. Stormy sea, you asked if I can check on the Genet for us later. I will indeed, stormy sea! I wonder if that Genet is still in the tree. Would be lovely to see that little Genet again, one of my favorite little nocturnal creatures.

Definitely a Genet! Speaking of nocturnal creatures or animals that are active at night, last night, um, I was lying in bed and heard these footsteps outside and, um, thought it might be Batman heading out on his nightly watch. But it wasn't Batman, it was a hyena that, uh, was walking through our camp. Came to see if the dustbin was out. I had to chase the hyena or... FL that I'm just trying to check very carefully to see if I can see any tracks around there. But nothing yet! It's interesting when this leopard was a bit younger. When this young male was younger and the female would often leave the female would often leave um Hosana and Shila or Kula would leave them and they would often lie on top of termite mounds.

Now leopards enjoy lying on top of termite mounds; it's a little bit more comfortable than just lying in a tree and also gives them a nice vantage point to have a look around and see where, um, or if there are any animals around or just a nice little spot to lie. But they haven't done it for, or I haven't seen him lying on a termite mound for quite some time. See, I haven't seen any tracks along the road. So that just makes me think again that that this leopard must have gone and walked up the drainage line possibly. I suppose it could have walked up or down...

Speaking about that hyena raiding the dustbin, you ask if it's safe for the hyenas to eat or for animals to eat from the dustbin? So ideally no, um, you know, it's not a good idea for them to eat from the dustbins, but the hyena scavengers, they eat just about anything. Um, I've seen a hyena chew through a steel kettle that you, those stainless steel kettles you put on, uh, on the fire when you go camping. I've seen a hyena bite through half of that, um, incredibly powerful jaws and they'll eat just about anything! But, um, but no, technically not, so that's why we try to put the dustbin in the um, in the kitchen during the evenings just to try to keep the hyenas at bay. But they don't come in every night; that hyena, I haven't heard or seen a hyena um for quite some time.

But I heard it last night and walked out and there it was. [Applause] I really hope I get to find this leopard for you! Just going to take a little drive down here quickly just to scan this area. I'm not sure if he is down here or not. It's a nice thick area here, so it's perfect for this leopard to hide in. So keep your eyes peeled everyone! That's why sometimes it's amazing and it can get a bit frustrating at times. You can drive around and come around the corner and bump into a leopard right in front of you. And then other times, you can drive to the spot you last saw the leopard hoping that it would be there and there will be absolutely nothing.

And then you can search for hours and not find them. See, I was hoping he would have moved into this area somewhere just off to our left. And this, uh, substrate or this soil around it is actually very hard—this is almost like a mud clay or clay-like soil, so it's very, very hard! Um, it wouldn't be easy to see tracks on this. Actually, hold on a second, I just want to speak to Rexen so I'm just listening to update from the other guides quickly. Good afternoon mobile stations! Um, Byron here. Uh, Henry and, and Rex and I'm just at Tree House Dam at the moment trying to follow up. No sign of that animal just yet. I am checking the area quite carefully.

Sounds like maybe one or two people might be interested in coming to have a look around to see if they can see this leopard or find this leopard with us. Alright, well Taylor's still in the tent. Well, she's going to be there all afternoon, so um we're going to have a look around here. Let's head back to Taylor to see what she's got planned for the afternoon. I haven't exactly got anything yet. I apologize. I'm on... I'm now sort of look quite short, don't I? I'm not on the chair, I’m just down on the ground. I'm trying to reopen everything that I had open; unfortunately, I had to do a massive reboot just now. I don't know what happened, all my feeds started disappearing. And… okay well we won't be able to do that now then, we'll just have to close all of this. Um, yes, I would really like to talk about lions versus buffalo today at some point, um, just because uh it's one of the that I actually prepped for the tent, um, going into depth and hopefully looking at some sightings that we had last year with, well, incredible inas as they were known at one point when we used to see them every single day.

Remember I think it was 100 days of cats? Doesn’t that sound familiar? Remember how fantastic that was? And that of course was because the buffalo were back and were around and now we're waiting for them. But we will, we'll get into that hopefully, if we can dig up some uh, some of the many thousand clips that we do have. What we do have though, we can have a look at the microscope. I managed to find... no, that's a gate! I heard a high-pit squeaking noise this time! It's not anyone playing soccer. Sure! Let me just turn... Shantel's voice is very loud in my ear today! So have a look at that; it's a little pod. Now, it’s from a monkey pod centre. You may remember yesterday Byron had that beautiful sighting of the go-away birds and also the crested barbets, they were feeding on the beans! Now this one is slightly rotten and looks like something that actually started eating away at it.

Now I'm not exactly sure what it would be, um, but it definitely must have had quite a strong mandible, um, to pierce through that. It's not big enough for it to be damaged from a bird. It's just a tiny little spot, so I think it was an insect of some sort! But isn’t that absolutely beautiful? Look at all the tiny little hairs that are actually on that. Let me see if I change the focus up slightly what else we can get—no, that's already it! Let’s see! It's completely hollowed; it's completely ed out now! You can come back to me and we can have an actual look at one! I just broke the rotted part off.

It's quite an interesting little pod! I get quite long and down over here now. There’s quite a few C species in the country that are not actually supposed to be here, but we have a couple that are alright! Well, the birds don't seem to mind them because they're providing nice fruit, delicious things! Now, I don't know if you can even eat these—I’m just trying to think. I've never heard of anybody being able to eat them, so we'll have to pop it into the interweb to have a look, see if I can get one out! Looks very much just like a pea! Let’s see! Oh, they’re quite small, so it’s quite difficult to sort of handle! Sorry, I have something now tickling my throat.

Look how tiny that is! So that is the entire little bean that you can see, and that is what the go-away birds and the crested barbets are actually going after. You can imagine you need to eat quite a few of those to be able to get any sustenance! I’m sure they’ve got a decent nutritional value to them, so it’ll be quite healthy for the birds and for anything else that’s really feeding on them. Now I've got something else we can even put under the microscope! Let me quickly change it; this is quite cool! Should we have another look at the microscope?

There we go! Look how cool that is! That also makes for a great screen saver! Yesterday we put up the goal of a silver cluster leaf! Now this is a guari leaf that a caterpillar has got hold of! You can see it's not any fresh damage; this actually happened quite some time ago. You can see how dried out the dead parts of the leaf are now! But it's just amazing! And I think let me change the, uh, change the height of it so we can get a better view! We should have changed the focus!

That is just absolutely amazing! Now if you look at the size of a caterpillar and the damage that they can do to trees is pretty amazing, don’t you think? And they do create beautiful sort of patterns. Something I will do is I'll go outside and see if I can’t find a leaf that has been attacked by a leaf miner! Now they make all sorts of interesting patterns too, but they sort of seem to do it inside the leaf. They don’t actually break the outer layer of the leaf at all, so it’s almost like they create little see-through parts, tunnels through the leaf itself. So, that’ll be quite pretty!

So I'll have to go and explore and see if I can find any of those! I'm also trying to dig out an antlion so that we can pop it under the microscope and hopefully have a look at the antlion at some point, but I thought that was quite nice! What else have we got here? We've got some bark which I'm collecting but I'm not going to talk about the bark of various trees just yet because I'm still trying to make a decent collection! The most common trees that are outside the tent are silver cluster leaves, guaris, and there are some square raisins, and that's really it!

That's around here! A couple of bush willows so I might have to do a bit of exploring to go and get some marula bark, maybe some knob thorn bark! I might have to actually walk out onto quarantine to go and grab those things and hopefully we'll find some! I'll also try and turn over a couple of logs because it is a little bit cooler! We know that the insects aren’t necessarily too active and what I'm hoping to find when... Oh, that's so loud! Um, hopefully I’ll be... Sorry I just had to turn that down quickly before I pierce my eardrum! And hopefully I’ll be able to find a scorpion! Wouldn't that be nice to have a look at a scorpion under the microscope? I think we could be lucky if we peel back some bark and we turn over some big logs!

But we're going to go back to Byron; he's searching far and wide for leopards, surely Hosana couldn't have gone too far! He is a sneaky cat though, it seems as though he's taking after his father! But let's go back to Byron and Craig!

We are indeed, James! Great to have you with us from the Mara! Hope you're having a lovely day up there! Um, Husana has now gone and he's laid down a little bit, but again, just look at that camouflage! I mean, look how well he blends in with that grass! I honestly think if you were just scanning through here you wouldn't see him at all with the naked eye! Look at that! Very difficult to spot! This is such a nice treat, and especially because he's moving around now, this morning he lay down and those of you who were watching this morning's Sunrise Safari, he was on his back and almost fast asleep, resting paws up in the air, at one stage was resting his paw in the log, and he was lying next to…

Such a lovely afternoon! As I said, there's still a cool temperature; there's a bit of a breeze, can hear some birds calling in the distance there—a few Cape Turtle Doves! But the, um, the leaves are rustling at the moment and the dry leaves are wrestling in the wind!

Cack you asked if I've ever seen leopards... I'm just listening, hold on a second! These birds are going wild! I wonder if it's because rattling cisticols alarm calling at the leopard while he's walking! Now we might see what they often do!

I can still see him there, just moving through there! What they often do is when these birds alarm call at them, the leopards occasionally lift their tails up! Now he's not quite doing it at the moment. The reason for that is there's a very clear white marking under the tail. So when these birds alarm call at the leopards when they're walking through the bush, they lift the tail up to make themselves more visible.

And the reason for that, well, the theory behind it is that they're showing that they're not a threat, they're no danger, they're just passing through. So they lift their tails up, making themselves more visible, to hopefully stop those birds from alarm calling at them because what happens is then they draw a lot of attention to them, which they don't want! But it is interesting! You'll often see it with leopards walking and they lift their tails immediately! There he comes! Not sure if he's seen anything again!

Tam, you say leopards are so mysterious! Yes, mysterious, um, elusive; they really are! Really are wonderful, wonderful animals! And you see how he's constantly scanning and checking the area! And Jesse, you asked, have I ever been frightened by a leopard?

Um, I told a story the other day, actually— we were tracking a big male leopard down in the south on Londolozi, and this leopard, we walked around the car for about 5 minutes; we couldn't see where the tracks went. And as we took two steps off the road, he basically burst out of the bushes in front of us! He was lying there the whole time hiding and, um, and as soon as we took steps towards him, he then gave a growl! But, like, he didn't actually charge us; he just ran out and around to the back of the bush again!

Um, but we got... both myself and my tracker that I worked with, Judas, my friend, he—him and I both got a fright! The guests laughed at us; they thought it was quite funny! So I've been… I've got one or two frights from leopards before! To see where he's going would be wonderful if we saw some impala up ahead, or any small antelope! It could be quite interesting!

But again, just look how well he blends in! Soon as he starts walking behind these trees... now you can see him quite nicely, um, because of Craig's great camera work! But for us sitting here, it's actually quite difficult. Once he goes through that long grass, he disappears! Oh, did he see something there? He saw him just run; he just had a little little dot at something! But he stopped again!

It could also be a little mongoose—oh! What's he seeing? What's he seen? Hold on, I don't want to lose him; uh, Craig, I'm going to try to squeeze through here quickly! There he goes! There he goes; still got him straight ahead of us! But let’s just see! He's straight ahead of us, but let's just see and scan if he has spotted something up ahead. The way he darted off, he—like I said, it could have been— it could have been Franklins, um, although the Franklins probably would have made a noise!

Ooh, Bobby! Interesting question! You asked if the leopard's fur is smooth or coarse? Now, Bobby, I've never felt a leopard's fur, um, but I believe that the leopard's fur is actually very soft! Very smooth! Very soft! Now the other big cats, lion and cheetah are very coarse— their hair is very coarse! I've felt cheetah before and, um, I’m just going to stop here again so I'm giving him a bit of space; I don't want to disturb him too much!

Um, so we're quite— we're quite far from him now, but he's still just ahead of us! Also, I'm driving off-road so that I don't lose view of him! I'm just checking out in front of him to see if there is anything! But look at— look how well he disappears in that grass! Look at that! Isn’t that camouflage incredible?

So, Bobby, yeah, so I believe that the leopard's fur is quite soft! He's probably going to come out on that road again! Um, and maybe that's why I stopped to look around, just to see if he decides to expose himself out into the open!

That nothing is there to potentially see him! Well, while we wait for Hosana to expose himself, let's go to James and hopefully he doesn't expose himself, but he's in the Mara! Let's see what my old friend James Henry is up to!

Mara, you can see the pinkening of the sky there! You can see the golden bellies of some very fat lions indeed! And, uh, well shortly we'll show you some vultures! My name is James Henry and it’s very nice to be back out in the field with you. Hello Fergus!

Hello Fergus is on camera, he is! And we're going to be out here, probably well, certainly into the darkness! I don’t know exactly how many segments we’re going to do from here, but our plan is to basically find three things. This is the sort of general directive: the one is lions, the second is vulture beasts, and the third is signal! With those three things, we're fairly guaranteed—we hope—of some action!

Well we've got lions, there they are. And then, well, beyond them by about—say—300m, you can perhaps see a line of what probably look like little black ants. Those are the vulture beasts! But I'm not sure that we have a great deal of signal where those vulture beasts are, so I'm not sure!

And zebra! Look at that! But you can see that the migration herds have now come up well north of where they have been before this year! There are many to the north of us and even with our very favored Angama pride, they are now starting to come into their territory! We saw a small group there and if this bunch don't look like they're going to get up and do anything—which I'm seriously doubting they will because, uh, they’ve certainly killed the vuls just down the road and then left it—I think that we will probably head back to the Ang pride territory as Darkness Falls and see what happens over there!

Remember, you can talk to us! #safarilive! We're just as live as Taylor in the tent and Byron in the bush! You see how I did that there? Very nice! And you can ask us anything you like! Send us any questions or comments!

We've had a very pleasant weekend here. We obviously did our TV show on F on Saturday morning and then this morning, I came out here, found these lions and, well, they don't seem to have moved more than three feet! They very nearly killed a zebra this morning! A young foal that had been separated from the herd somehow pretty much walked up to what—uh—almost about 30ft beyond the second tree trunk that you can see there and these lions could not have been more than 40ft from it! And they just sort of carelessly had a bit of a run, but they didn’t make any real attempt at cunning or stalking or anything else like that— and so, unsurprisingly, they missed!

They were unsuccessful and they’ve just had to digest the five or six meals they probably ate last night, so it is boom time or boom time here up in the northern triangle! The weather today was… well, looks like a storm coming in over the Ololo escarpment which is a little bit disturbing given the amount of time that we’re going to be out here!

And Bombo girl, you say that they are fat flat cats! They could not be better described; they are certainly fat, they are certainly flat, and uh, well yes! They’re certainly cats, aren’t they! So what I think we'll do from here is probably just reverse and try and get down into that migration herd to see if we have signal there. I don’t think we’re going to, and if we don’t we’ll come back here, see what they’re going to do, and if they don’t do anything in the next half an hour or so we’ll head back towards the Ang pride! Just in the distance, I can hear the [Music] b beautiful, beautiful vultures and stalks all over the place here!

Such a good time for them of course and I believe that Byron is having a lovely time out in the bush! He's always wanted to be known by the moniker “little Chief”, and so that is why he is following the little chief!

We are indeed, James! Great to have you with us from the Mara! Hope you’re having a lovely day up there! Um, and Hosana has now gone and he's laid down a little bit, but again, just look at that camouflage! I mean, look how well he blends in with that grass! I honestly think if you were just scanning through here you wouldn't see him at all with the naked eye! Look at that! Very difficult to spot! This is such a nice treat, and especially because he's moving around now!

This morning he lay down and those of you who were watching this morning's Sunrise Safari, he was on his back and almost fast asleep, resting paws up in the air. At one stage was resting his paw in the log and he was lying next to… such a lovely afternoon!

As I said, there's still a cool temperature; there's a bit of a breeze! Can hear some birds calling in the distance there—a few Cape Turtle Doves! But the, um, the leaves are rustling at the moment and the dry leaves are wrestling in the wind!

Cak, you asked if I've ever seen leopards… I'm just listening! Hold on a second! These birds are going wild! I wonder if it's because rattling cisticols alarm calling at the leopard while he's walking! Now we might see what they often do!

I can still see him there, just moving through there! What they often do is when these birds alarm call at them, the leopards occasionally lift their tails up! Now he's not quite doing it at the moment. The reason for that is there's a very clear white marking under the tail. So when these birds alarm call at the leopards when they're walking through the bush, they lift the tail up to make themselves more visible.

And the reason for that, well, the theory behind it is that they're showing that they're not a threat, they're no danger, they're just passing through! So they lift their tails up, making themselves more visible, to hopefully stop those birds from alarm calling at them because what happens is then they draw a lot of attention to them, which they don't want! But it is interesting! You'll often see it with leopards walking!

And they lift their tails immediately! There he comes! Not sure if he has seen anything again! Tam, you say leopards are so mysterious! Yes, mysterious, um, elusive; they really are! Really are wonderful, wonderful animals!

And you see how he's constantly scanning and checking the area! And Jesse, you asked, have I ever been frightened by a leopard?

Um, I told a story the other day, actually—we were tracking a big male leopard down in the south on Londolozi, and this leopard, we walked around the car for about 5 minutes; we couldn't see where the tracks went. And as we took two steps off the road, he basically burst out of the bushes in front of us! He was lying there the whole time hiding!

And, um, and as soon as we took steps towards him, he then gave a growl! But, like, he didn't actually charge us; he just ran out and around to the back of the bush again!

Um, but we got... both myself and my tracker that I worked with, Judas, my friend, he—him and I both got a fright! The guests laughed at us; they thought it was quite funny! So I've been… I've got one or two frights from leopards before!

To see where he's going would be wonderful if we saw some impala up ahead, or any small antelope! It could be quite interesting! But again, just look how well he blends in! Soon as he starts walking behind these trees... now you can see him quite nicely, um, because of Craig's great camera work! But for us sitting here, it's actually quite difficult.

Once he goes through that long grass, he disappears! Oh, did he see something there? He saw him just run; he just had a little little dot at something! But he stopped again!

It could also be a little mongoose—oh! What's he seeing? What's he seen? Hold on, I don't want to lose him; uh, Craig, I'm going to try to squeeze through here quickly! There he goes! There he goes; still got him straight ahead of us! But let’s just see! He's straight ahead of us, but let's just see and scan if he has spotted something up ahead.

The way he darted off, he—like I said, could have been— it could have been Franklins, um, although the Franklins probably would have made a noise!

Ooh, Bobby! Interesting question! You asked if the leopard's fur is smooth or coarse? Now, Bobby, I've never felt a leopard's fur, um, but I believe that the leopard's fur is actually very soft! Very smooth! Very soft! Now the other big cats, lion and cheetah are very coarse— their hair is very coarse! I've felt cheetah before and, um, I’m just going to stop here again so I'm giving him a bit of space; I don't want to disturb him too much!

Um, so we're quite— we're quite far from him now, but he's still just ahead of us! Also, I'm driving off-road so that I don't lose view of him! I'm just checking out in front of him to see if there is anything! But look at— look how well he disappears in that grass! Look at that! Isn’t that camouflage incredible?

So, Bobby, yeah, so I believe that the leopard's fur is quite soft! He's probably going to come out on that road again! Um, and maybe that's why I stopped to look around, just to see if he decides to expose himself out into the open!

That nothing is there to potentially see him! Well, while we wait for Hosana to expose himself, let's go to James and hopefully he doesn’t expose himself, but he’s in the Mara! Let’s see what my old friend James Henry is up to!

Mara, you can see the pinkening of the sky there! You can see the golden bellies of some very fat lions indeed! And, uh, well shortly we’ll show you some vultures! My name is James Henry and it’s very nice to be back out in the field with you! Hello Fergus!

Hello Fergus is on camera, he is! And we're going to be out here, probably well, certainly into the darkness! I don’t know exactly how many segments we’re going to do from here, but our plan is to basically find three things! This is the sort of general directive: the one is lions, the second is vulture beasts, and the third is signal! With those three things, we're fairly guaranteed—we hope—of some action!

Well we've got lions, there they are! And then, well, beyond them by about—say—300m, you can perhaps see a line of what probably look like little black ants! Those are the vulture beasts! But I’m not sure that we have a great deal of signal where those vulture beasts are, so I'm not sure!

And zebra! Look at that! But you can see that the migration herds have now come up well north of where they have been before this year! There are many to the north of us and even with our very favored Angama pride, they are now starting to come into their territory! We saw a small group there and if this bunch don’t look like they’re going to get up and do anything—which I'm seriously doubting they will because, uh, they’ve certainly killed the vuls just down the road and then left it—I think that we will probably head back to the Ang pride territory as Darkness Falls and see what happens over there!

Remember, you can talk to us! #safarilive! We're just as live as Taylor in the tent and Byron in the bush! You see how I did that there? Very nice! And you can ask us anything you like! Send us any questions or comments!

We've had a very pleasant weekend here! We obviously did our TV show on F on Saturday morning and then this morning, I came out here to find these lions and, well, they don’t seem to have moved more than three feet! They very nearly killed a zebra this morning!

A young foal that had been separated from the herd somehow, pretty much walked up to what—uh—almost about 30ft beyond the second tree trunk that you can see there and these lions could not have been more than 40ft from it! And they just sort of carelessly had a bit of a run, but they didn’t make any real attempt at cunning or stalking or anything else like that— and so, unsurprisingly, they missed!

They were unsuccessful and they’ve just had to digest the five or six meals they probably ate last night, so it is boom time or boom time here up in the northern triangle! The weather today was… well, looks like a storm coming in over the Ololo escarpment which is a little bit disturbing given the amount of time that we’re going to be out here!

And Bombo girl, you say that they are fat flat cats! They could not be better described; they are certainly fat, they are certainly flat, and uh, well yes! They’re certainly cats, aren’t they! So what I think we’ll do from here is probably just reverse and try and get down into that migration herd to see if we have signal there.

I don’t think we’re going to and if we don’t we’ll come back here and see what they’re going to do! And if they don’t do anything in the next half an hour or so we’ll head back towards the Ang pride!

Just in the distance, I can hear the [Music] b beautiful vultures and stalks all over the place here! Such a good time for them of course and I believe that Byron is having a lovely time out in the bush! He's always wanted to be known by the moniker “little Chief”, and so that is why he is following the little chief!

We are indeed, James! Great to have you with us from the Mara! Hope you’re having a lovely day up there! Um, and Hosana has now gone and he's laid down a little bit, but again, just look at that camouflage! I mean, look how well he blends in with that grass! I honestly think if you were just scanning through here you wouldn't see him at all with the naked eye! Look at that!

Very difficult to spot! This is such a nice treat, and especially because he's moving around now! This morning he lay down and those of you who were watching this morning's Sunrise Safari, he was on his back and almost fast asleep, resting paws up in the air. At one stage was resting his paw in the log and he was lying next to… such a lovely afternoon!

As I said, there's still a cool temperature; there's a bit of a breeze! Can hear some birds calling in the distance there—a few Cape Turtle Doves! But the, um, the leaves are rustling at the moment and the dry leaves are wrestling in the wind!

Cack you asked if I've ever seen leopards... I'm just listening, hold on a second! These birds are going wild! I wonder if it's because rattling cisticols alarm calling at the leopard while he's walking! Now we might see what they often do!

I can still see him there, just moving through there! What they often do is when these birds alarm call at them, the leopards occasionally lift their tails up! Now he's not quite doing it at the moment. The reason for that is there's a very clear white marking under the tail. So when these birds alarm call at the leopards when they're walking through the bush, they lift the tail up to make themselves more visible.

And the reason for that, well, the theory behind it is that they're showing that they're not a threat, they're no danger, they're just passing through! So they lift their tails up, making themselves more visible, to hopefully stop those birds from alarm calling at them because what happens is then they draw a lot of attention to them, which they don't want! But it is interesting! You'll often see it with leopards walking!

And they lift their tails immediately! There he comes! Not sure if he has seen anything again! Tam, you say leopards are so mysterious! Yes, mysterious, um, elusive; they really are! Really are wonderful, wonderful animals!

And you see how he's constantly scanning and checking the area! And Jesse, you asked, have I ever been frightened by a leopard?

Um, I told a story the other day, actually—we were tracking a big male leopard down in the south on Londolozi, and this leopard, we walked around the car for about 5 minutes; we couldn't see where the tracks went. And as we took two steps off the road, he basically burst out of the bushes in front of us!

He was lying there the whole time hiding! And as soon as we took steps towards him, he then gave a growl! But, like, he didn't actually charge us; he just ran out and around to the back of the bush again!

Um, but we got... both myself and my tracker that I worked with, Judas, my friend, he—him and I both got a fright! The guests laughed at us; they thought it was quite funny! So I've been… I've got one or two frights from leopards before!

To see where he's going would be wonderful if we saw some impala up ahead, or any small antelope! It could be quite interesting!

But again, just look how well he blends in! Soon as he starts walking behind these trees now you can see him quite nicely, because of Craig's great camera work! But for us sitting here, it's actually quite difficult.

Once he goes through that long grass, he disappears! Oh, did he see something there? He saw him just run; he just had a little dot at something! But he stopped again!

It could also be a little mongoose—oh! What's he seeing? What's he seen? Hold on, I don't want to lose him; uh, Craig, I'm going to try to squeeze through here quickly! There he goes! There he goes; still got him straight ahead of us! But let’s just see! He's straight ahead of us, but let's just see and scan if he has spotted something up ahead.

The way he darted off, he—like I said—could have been— it could have been Franklins, um, although the Franklins probably would have made a noise!

Ooh, Bobby! Interesting question! You asked if the leopard's fur is smooth or coarse? Now, Bobby, I've never felt a leopard's fur, um, but I believe that the leopard's fur is actually very soft! Very smooth! Very soft!

Now the other big cats, lion and cheetah are very coarse— their hair is very coarse! I've felt cheetah before and, um, I’m just going to stop here again so I'm giving him a bit of space; I don't want to disturb him too much!

Um, so we're quite— we're quite far from him now, but he's still just ahead of us! Also, I'm driving off-road so that I don't lose view of him! I'm just checking out in front of him to see if there is anything! But look at— look how well he disappears in that grass!

Look at that! Isn’t that camouflage incredible? So, Bobby, yeah, so I believe that the leopard's fur is quite soft! He's probably going to come out on that road again!

And maybe that's why I stopped to look around, just to see if he decides to expose himself out into the open! That nothing is there to potentially see him! Well, while we wait for Hosana to expose himself, let's go to James and hopefully he doesn’t expose himself, but he’s in the Mara! Let’s see what my old friend James Henry is up to!

Mara, you can see the pinkening of the sky there! You can see the golden bellies of some very fat lions indeed! And, uh, well shortly we’ll show you some vultures! My name is James Henry and it’s very nice to be back out in the field with you! Hello Fergus!

Hello Fergus is on camera, he is! And we're going to be out here, probably well, certainly into the darkness! I don’t know exactly how many segments we’re going to do from here, but our plan is to basically find three things! This is the sort of general directive: the one is lions, the second is vulture beasts, and the third is signal! With those three things, we're fairly guaranteed—we hope—of some action!

Well we've got lions, there they are! And then, well, beyond them by about—say—300m, you can perhaps see a line of what probably look like little black ants! Those are the vulture beasts! But I’m not sure that we have a great deal of signal where those vulture beasts are, so I'm not sure!

And zebra! Look at that! But you can see that the migration herds have now come up well north of where they have been before this year! There are many to the north of us and even with our very favored Angama pride, they are now starting to come into their territory! We saw a small group there and if this bunch don't look like they're going to get up and do anything—which I'm seriously doubting they will because, uh, they’ve certainly killed the vus just down the road and then left it—I think that we will probably head back to the Ang pride territory as Darkness Falls and see what happens over there!

Remember, you can talk to us! #safarilive! We're just as live as Taylor in the tent and Byron in the bush! You see how I did that there? Very nice! And you can ask us anything you like! Send us any questions or comments!

We've had a very pleasant weekend here! We obviously did our TV show on F on Saturday morning and then this morning, I came out here to find these lions and, well, they don’t seem to have moved more than three feet! They very nearly killed a zebra this morning!

A young foal that had been separated from the herd somehow, pretty much walked up to what—uh—almost about 30ft beyond the second tree trunk that you can see there and these lions could not have been more than 40ft from it! And they just sort of carelessly had a bit of a run, but they didn’t make any real attempt at cunning or stalking or anything else like that— and so, unsurprisingly, they missed!

They were unsuccessful and they’ve just had to digest the five or six meals they probably ate last night, so it is boom time or boom time here up in the northern triangle! The weather today was… well, looks like a storm coming in over the Ololo escarpment which is a little bit disturbing given the amount of time that we’re going to be out here!

And Bombo girl, you say that they are fat flat cats! They could not be better described; they are certainly fat, they are certainly flat, and uh, well yes! They’re certainly cats, aren’t they! So what I think we'll do from here is probably just reverse and try and get down into that migration herd to see if we have signal there.

I don’t think we're going to and if we don’t, we’ll come back here and see what they’re going to do! And if they don’t do anything in the next half an hour or so, we'll head back towards the Ang pride! Allowing my question—that's in the end too

Well, hello everybody! I've been running around outside trying to find things! Well, to talk about. I don't have a foso and chief! I am the foso and chief, I suppose! I suppose James dubbed me with that and well now doing all the jobs!

Right, so I've been looking outside! I'm just trying to pick up some of the stuff that I was looking for! I've got to scoop it back in my hand now! Go! Well, that’s what I'm looking for! And if you look at just in the palm of my hand, you'll see that there's some very, very small bits of dung! Isn’t that tiny? Look how small they are!

So, I have a question for you! Can you guess whose dung that is? Whodung it? #SafariLive with your guesses and then we shall go into it! You got to be quick though! This should be an easy one, very, very easy one!

Okay, let me put it down now! There’s something else that I want to have a look at! What else have we got? So, I'm actually going to take that dung away, ‘cause we'll get back to that in a moment! Hm, look at this! Now this is a type of bracket fungi, as you can see! Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be doing too well!

It's also winter, so it's um not absorbing a lot of nutrients, unfortunately, from its host! But this one is known as orange tuft and I've actually found it around here before! It likes to grow on the knob thorns! Should we put it under the microscope and have a look?

Let me see what it actually looks like! Oh, that's pretty cool! Look at that! Now you can actually see the hairs! Now we've looked at it before when it was a lot softer than this and a lot more pliable too! Oh my goodness! All my dung is rolling around! The wind is blowing it everywhere!

And it's actually quite toxic, this stuff! I believe that it, um, it can be used to enter a trance-like state! I suppose if you're trying to contact your ancestors, it would be a good spot to try or a good stuff to try and use it! However, I’m not going to be eating much of it, but it's very, very pretty!

I'll see if I can find some other type of fungi that's out in about! There is, or there used to be at one point quite a bit of it, but I don't know where it's all disappeared! It's, uh! I've forgotten about the things around the tent! And I also tried to turn over quite a few logs, but unfortunately, no luck there!

So, any guesses just yet as to who dung it? Surely, there must be! Do you think you could read them to me please, Shantel? That's a bit difficult to grow over to the document! So say that again?! Karen says squirrel! That's a good guess! Very, very good guess but unfortunately no cigar! That is it is not from a squirrel!

Oh now Phil and Jenny animation, you say a bird? Nope, it's not from a bird, but good guesses though! Remember, if it was from a bird, you would actually see quite a bit of white from the uric acid! But you can see that this lacks any white at all! And it's very small! Any more guesses?

Another good guess! Cakstolfox you say scrub hair! It isn't but you've just given me something else to go and look for cakstolfox! That's what I'm going to go and find! Oh, another great guess from Wildfind you say mongoose! Not quite mongoose, but mongoose is similar shaped though.

But mongoose—can you believe it— is actually slightly bigger than this! Well, I think there might be one or two right answers, um, but we'll just go ahead and I'll tell you what it is! This is actually deer dung! Can you believe it? All of this stuff here! Now isn't that amazing?

Now the reason why it's not stor dung is because it wasn't buried! Typically, stalks will bury their dung and then you'll have to sift it out from the sand! So this is from the deer, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to perhaps chat about some of the smaller antelope that normally hide away in the long grass!

But now that all the grass is of course dropping down to well below knee height, we're starting to see them! And I've been seeing lots and lots and lots of d—lots of st of barta coming down to drink from the watering holes now! And you remember, because all the little pans, pretty much most of them have actually dried up!

Now, like I said, CH Pan’s completely dry, it’s just mud! They’re coming down to the dams that are full, which is exciting! I know it sounds absolutely silly, but you don't often get to see those small antelope out in the open! They feel very vulnerable! And this is also the time of the year where, unfortunately, deer and steinbock feature on the menus of the animals that Byron's looking for!

So leopards love to catch deer and stoats! You can imagine for someone or for leopards like Shile and Hosana and even Tumbel, to an extent, that would probably be a little bit on the easier side to try and catch those antelope!

My goodness, I'm feeling slightly parched! I'm going to have to have something to drink! I'm going to have to have some water to quench my thirst now and I keep— it sounds like I've got a— it feels like I've got a frog or something stuck in my throat! But without further ado, can you believe it? Byron has magically pulled a leopard out from his sleeve!

Yeah, we found him, everyone! We found him! We found him! He did move down the opposite direction! There he goes! There he goes! We'll get a view of him! He looked as if he was stalking something! There he goes! He's just moving through the bush at the moment.

As I said, the temperature cooling down, chances of finding him a bit better! And there he is, right there next to us! I'm not sure what he saw; it may have been a little d—a dike! There he is! Follow, audio! Just going to move a little bit.

It's fine, we'll sit tight! Sit tight! Oh well, this has made my afternoon! Thankfully, it was Craig that spotted him too! Saw his head sticking out in front of us! We came back down the same road again! You see, the persistence of driving around a few more times just paid off!

And luckily, we got to find him just in time because now he's moving even further away from the dam! Just going to move off the road slightly! And there’s a car behind us; I just want to give them a view of this leopard too!

We'll wait for him! He might, uh, he might decide to come out into the road! Let's just wait and see! There we go! There he is! He's approaching the road now! Isn’t that a nice surprise?

You see, once we found him, then he decides to walk out in the road! But before that, he was hiding in the thicket! Oh, that lovely view! Oh, what a nice surprise! Wasn't that great?!

So we'll try to follow him for a little while and see where he goes! You see, it appears as if he's… don't know if he's hunting necessarily, but leopards are always very opportunistic! So they'll have a look around, and if they flush anything, as we did while we were driving through that drainage line, we flushed a little dike!

So this leopard would be looking for something like that—a dik-dik or a diker, pos… or if he does see any! Just try and move again! Paul, you say this is your favorite big cat!

Oh, where did your favorite big cat go? PA, can you see him there? Oh, there he is! Yeah, it's amazing how they can sometimes disappear and move around quite quickly!

I once, um, was following a leopard and it was a female! She was walking down the road, and we thought we’d drive around and just wait for her basically on the corner and try to get a nice view of her walking down the road!

And, um, she… we'd lost a view of her for a split second, and she disappeared! We couldn't find her again! She disappeared into the long grass! It was incredible! Really amazing to see!

I guess that's why these animals are so elusive! But when you do see them, it is really such a lovely surprise! You can hear some rattling cysticoles alarm calling at the leopard while he's walking! Now, he might see what they often do!

I can still see him there, just moving through there! What they often do is when these birds alarm call at them, the leopards occasionally lift their tails up! Now, he's not quite doing it at the moment! The reason for that is there's a very clear white marking under the tail!

So when these birds alarm call at the leopards when they're walking through the bush, they lift the tail up to make themselves more visible! And the reason for that, well, the theory behind it is that they showing that they're not a threat! They're no danger; they're just passing through!

So they're lifting their tails up, making themselves more visible to hopefully stop those birds from alarm calling at them because what happens is then they draw a lot of attention to them, which they don't want! But it is interesting! You’ll often see it with leopards walking and they lift their tails immediately!

There he comes! Not sure if he’s seen anything again! Tam, you say leopards are so mysterious! Yes, mysterious, um, elusive! They really are wonderful, wonderful animals! And you see how he’s constantly scanning and checking the area!

And Jesse, you asked, have I ever been frightened by a leopard?

Um, I told a story the other day actually! We were tracking a big male leopard and it was down in the south on Londolozi, and this leopard, we walked around the car for about 5 minutes; we couldn't see where the tracks went.

And as we took two steps off the road, he basically burst out of the bushes in front of us! He was lying there the whole time! Hiding! And um, and as soon as we took steps towards him he then gave a growl!

But like, he didn't actually charge us! He just ran out and around to the back of the Bush again! But we got… both myself and my tracker that I worked with, Judas, my friend, he— him and I both got a fright! The guest laughed at us! They thought it was quite funny! So I’ve been, I’ve got one or two frights from leopards before!

Um, to see where he’s going would be wonderful if we saw some Impala up ahead or any small antelope could be quite interesting! But again, just look how well he blends in! Soon as he starts walking behind these trees!

Now you can see him quite nicely with, um, because of Craig’s great camera work! But for us sitting here, it’s actually quite difficult! Once he goes through that long grass he disappears!

Oh, did he see something there? He saw him just run! He just had a little dot at something! But he stopped again!

It could also be a little mongoose! Oh what's he seeing? What's he seen? Hold on! I don’t want to lose him! Uh, Craig, I’m going to try to squeeze through here quickly! There he goes! There he goes, still got him straight ahead of us!

But let's just see! He's straight ahead of us but let's just see and scan if he has spotted something up ahead! The way he darted off, like I said it could have been it could have been Franklins! Um, although the Franklins probably wouldn't have made a noise.

Oh! Bobby! Interesting question! You asked if the leopard's fur is smooth or coarse! Now, Bobby, I've never felt a leopards fur, um, but I believe that the leopard's fur is actually very soft! Very smooth! Very soft!

Now the other big cats, lion and cheetah are very coarse! Their hair is very coarse! I've felt cheetah before and, um! I'm just going to stop here again so I’m giving him a bit of space! I don’t want to disturb him too much!

So we're quite— we're quite far from him now but he's still just ahead of us! Also, I’m driving off-road so that I don’t lose view of him! I’m just checking out in front of him to see if there is anything! But look at— look how well he disappears in that grass!

Look at that! Isn’t that camouflage incredible? So, Bobby yeah! So I believe that the leopard's fur is quite soft! He’s probably going to come out on that road again! And maybe that’s why I stopped to look around! Just to see if he decides to expose himself out into the open!

That nothing is there to potentially see him! While we wait for Hosana to expose himself, let’s go to Taylor in the tent!

I definitely have a carcass now! I'm just trying to… I don't know if it's actually going to work! Because the wind has now picked up and it's just blowing everything around!

What can I use now? I need to play! What can we use to shelter what I want to do from this one? I’m sure bones would work! Let’s use that!

I need to try and just get a bit of protection over here! Is that going to work? Cuz it's a spider carcass that I want, not a carcass! Exoskeleton that I want to show you! H, you know what I’m going to have to do? We’ll do that in the next segment!

I have to lay around and unfortunately get it into a container of some sort! Quite a deep one! I think that will probably protect it from the wind! Cuz it's not going to work now! And I also need to then take away the old web!

But I won't tell you which spider it is just yet! Anyways, we have another clip which is quite interesting of lions, buffalo, and elephant!

Are you ready to watch it? Because I am! So I think let's have a look at that one; I think it's clip number one! Okay everyone, something is just materialized over here! These lions have spotted some buffalo moving! Not too far away, you look at that!

Oh, that buffalo is getting much closer! I think the buffalo—there we go, the elephants are treating! There we go! Oh wow, look at this! [Music]

This is incredible, everyone! Just—again—everybody! For those sensitive viewers, um, if you are watching, it's not always easy to see, but this is nature everybody! So just, um, just bear that in mind please! And this is interesting, let's just watch!

There are some elephants coming into the area now too! Let's see what happens! Wow, this is—oh, look at that! Managed to shake off that lioness and get away! Now with this elephant just off to the right! You might see it coming into the frame—there we go!

Oh, you see, the lioness is moving off very quickly! Wow, look at that! Isn't that incredible? The buffalo managed to get away, and the elephant just chased the lions off! You see, lions do not really like big elephant!

I'm just going to watch what this elephant does! No, no, no! Easy, easy, easy! I'm not going to move! She’s just chasing that other lioness! Don’t charge us! Hey, hey, hey! Hey! Don’t worry!

See, I don’t want to move! No, hang [Laughter] on! We're not here to hurt you! See, I don't want to make too many loud noises, and sounds like this other cat is doing. Um, a little bit upset with these lions around! This is just a young elephant there! [Music]

Right, welcome back everybody! You're now live with us! That clip that you did just see, that Byron had the privilege of sitting in that sighting! I think it was last year actually! I remember I was still working at that time!

I don't know what I had; I don't think I'd had something as exciting as that! But uh, that was just a catch-up clip! You’re back with us! Remember #safarilive with all of your questions!

This is happening right now! Now that is an amazing sighting to have, and I reckon within a space of a couple of months Byron first headed off when he had that incredible sighting! Then Jamie had a sighting where the lions were feasting upon a buffalo which they had killed!

I think it was the night before and a group of elephants came in and chased them off of the carcass! And then the elephants then investigated around the carcass and then one evening, you might remember this too, we had a similar sighting!

We'd sat with Inuma pride the whole day and little ones were climbing up on the marula trees! It was so great! It was when the cubs were still quite young! And we sat off and then started stalking the lionesses! And I said to you: we're not going to follow them! Cuz you don't want to ruin the chances of the hunt; you always want to give the animal an opportunity!

And then we heard the distress calls and David and I went racing down and unfortunately, the Gremlins got us and we weren't able to continue, but the same thing happened just as you saw there with Byron! Unfortunately, the buffalo that they caught died relatively quickly!

It must have been extremely weakened from the drought! And you saw that from that clip! You could see a lot of ribs; you could start to see the spine and all the vertebrae! Just shows you how these animals unfortunately suffered during the drought!

The predators, however, seem to thrive until the white muscle disease came about! But that’s— we’ll talk about that a little bit later! What I do want to focus on, of course, is that when something is being attacked by a predator even if it's a fight amongst the same species, it makes a lot of noise—they're in distress!

Wasn't it incredible how we always say about the animals are always speaking the same language? Now as that young buffalo bull was distressing and saying, “um help, help!” You know, probably calling other buffalo!

The elephants heard that call and they came charging in and said, “right! We're not putting up with this!” And I don't know if you noticed right at the end that one of the lions is actually just hiding away in the bushes, just standing absolutely still!

Now it's not often that we see lions sort of performing the freeze technique, which was one of the three very basic strategies that animals will use to try and evade predation! And thought it was very, very interesting to observe something like that, just sitting there waiting!

Elephant completely forgot where the lion was! Was distracted by all the vehicles moving around! What a great sighting! And handled so well by Byron too!

And I'm sure he probably still tells his story, or that particular sighting to all his other guests that he's fortunate of taking out on Safari! Now one thing that to me was pretty incredible was, did you see amber eyes? Did you see how she took charge in that entire sighting?

How she got up, she made the first run at that buffalo that young bull, and then pounced on its back and then held on for dear life! And it's very, very important! That's very, very risky and it's very dangerous for a lioness to do that because if it was a fit healthy buffalo bull, things could have gone wrong!

He could have bucked her off and she would have fallen to the ground and well, let me tell you, that's the scary thing about buffalo is that they don't stop! They come back and that's why we, on walks, always so worried about them! And that's what they do to lions!

They will keep coming back and keep horning down into the ground with those very, very sharp tips! These buffalo skulls that we've got here! Let me bring this, let me see if I can bring this one down.

Are unfortunately, uh, I'll just use this one; it'll be easier! We're quite old bulls, and if you look over here, you'll see that the tips of the horns are not particularly sharp anymore! That's not going to do too much!

I mean, it would be very sore to have a buffalo using all of its weight! Remember they can weigh up to 800 kg, so almost a ton! All that pressure pushing down on you? It would still hurt! But when they're a young football, it's not quite needle sharp!

But I'll tell you right now, it will hook into your skin; it will rip you! And if you're not careful, um, if a lion is not careful! Obviously, we don’t—we try and not bother the buffalo too much, and they'll get themselves into a lot of trouble and actually end up killing—oh, being killed by the buffalo!

So it's why they're one of the most dangerous animals in Africa—the buffalo—a force not to be reckoned with! Let me put this back now! We have a question from Bobby and that is, should I sit down? I don't know what to do now, up down, up down!

Sorry, Bobby! You're wondering can the lions paralyze their buffalo by biting on the spinal cord? Most certainly, but they're not doing it for that! In fact, the reason why they are biting on the spine like that is, uh, one of the main reasons!

You'll see they just chew, chew, chew—it causes a lot of bleeding! And when an animal like that is under stress, obviously it’s getting hot, it’s using a lot of energy! And if you make it bleed, well, then it’s going to weaken it quicker as well!

You know what, I think it's going to happen, as I feel yeah—I'm on a very unleveled piece of ground there, and I thought if I dare lean back in my chair, which you should be able to do, I'm going to topple over! And can you imagine how much trouble I'd be in from James?

I reckon he'd probably fly here in a hot balloon to come and sort me out from knocking his skull straight on! It would be a disaster! Not Aaliyah, you're wondering if her other herbivores will always help each other in a case like that? No, not necessarily!

Sometimes even buffalo go, "hang on, we may be biting off a bit more than we can chew! We're going to stand back!" And unfortunately, Bob, you're going to have to take one for the team type of thing! But where they will come to help, if they can, they will!

I've noticed though, if anything, it's normally elephants that come to the aid of various animals! Rescue! And I've actually had sightings, like I said, many different times, where elephants charge in and try and chase lions away when they're trying to bring down a buffalo!

So I don't know if anyone else has had any other encounters? Maybe we can pass this question along to Byron, and perhaps James too? Maybe they've had other experiences where different prey species have come in to assist!

I've actually only seen it with, um, yeah, buffalo and elephants! And lions, I can't say that I've seen any encounters! Of course, there's the famous encounter of, uh, the Kruger sighting where it was buffalo versus crocodile versus lions!

Versus buffalo again! And eventually that little calf got away! I mean, that's just an amazing sighting to have! The apex predator in Africa, which is the crocodile! Not only does it go after every single animal species, it doesn't discriminate from herbivores or carnivores!

They’ll eat it! But they also consider us as humans as food—as well as polar bears! You got to watch out for them! Uh, so yes! Imagine having a sighting like that, and that is the joy of Kenya! You just never know what you're going to see!

And I think everybody is so excited about the Maasai Mara and the Mara triangle and everything that goes on in it! But we’re going to go across now, not to the Mara; we’re going to head straight to—just down the road actually!

If I shouted the link out, Byron might be able to hear me; he's still with Hosana and I wonder if he's woken up from his catnap! Um, I have actually woken up, Taylor! Um, and we're still sitting with him! But, uh, I dozed off for a little bit but I am awake now!

I know Taylor was meaning referring to the leopard; he's still, he's still resting and lying down! Not interested in moving! I think, think we'll give it a few more minutes! We were very fortunate at least to get him moving around and following him for a short while before he decided to lie down!

Nice to spend time with a leopard like this! Now, I've just been listening to the radio; doesn’t sound like there’s too much else going on! There are a few vehicles; they've all just come into our sighting with the leopard!

But it doesn’t sound like there's too much else going on, but we'll drive around shortly! I think we’ve spent probably enough time with them! We’ll see! We’ll see! Maybe who knows, he could get up fairly soon