Safari Live - Day 133 | National Geographic

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

Good afternoon, good afternoon, and a very warm welcome to all of you, ladies and gentlemen, who are watching us on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. My name is Steve Faulconbridge. I'm joined by Craig on camera, and this is Safari Live. We are out in the wilderness in the Sabi Sands Juma Private Game Reserve, South Africa. Please feel free to send us your questions using the hashtag #SafariLive. Follow us on the YouTube stream. Let us know what you'd like to see.

The temperature today is 29 degrees Celsius (85 degrees Fahrenheit). It is a blustery, windy afternoon, and we are going to go find ourselves some lions, so jump on board and buckle up your seat belts. Bring a jacket, it’s a little cold later. I hope everyone's had a wonderful day. I had a lovely morning off, while the others did all their work. So now it is my favorite time. Hopefully, we will manage to find the lions this morning, and there's always excitement around. So it begins.

Oh, welcome, welcome! Unfortunately, it seems like Steve is not getting off to the best start with the gremlins. My name is Brent Leo Smith. I have the incredible cameraman, Maker of All Beasts, on camera, and you can see I'm staring at the sand to try to find you a leopard. We have a report that Shiduli, the female leopard, crossed after drive in this area, however, it's the same spot where the Inkhuma pride crossed, so there's lots of tracks all over the place. I'm just trying to decipher what's going on.

Remember, this is 100% live, and we do apologize for the technical difficulties. Bringing you wild Africa live from South Africa can be a little troublesome sometimes, but hopefully, our incredible tech team will have it sorted in no time. Now, if I see if we can find where this female leopard crossed. Otherwise, if we don't see any tracks, this is quite a busy road. We'll head down towards treehouse, as it's a good spot to look for leopards. And they say there are quite a lot of lion tracks from where the Inkhuma came in this morning.

Of course, it is Draw a Bird Day, so if you have drawn any birds, please take a picture, tweet them with the hashtag #SafariLive, share them about, pop them on the Safari Live Facebook page, and do whatever you need to do to get that bird to us. Okay, I'm going to concentrate a little bit more. I'm going to see if this leopard had a drink down here. While I do that, let's go see Taylor, who drew a very realistic bird eating an elephant.

Where's your bird, Brent? At least I drew one! My name is Taylor McCurdy, and on camera with me today is Senzo. We are on a bush walk, and that's Herbie. He's going to be keeping us safe; he's also eating an apple at the moment. So it's good to stay hydrated—make sure you have a snack when you're on a walk. Now, we did have a wildebeest, but unfortunately, he has run away. You may remember from the sunrise safari we had a wildebeest just start over there; he was standing on a termite mound. He's not migrated this way and now he's running away from us because the wind has picked up, and I think he's a little uncertain about our movements.

I can see his head popping up every now and then. Now we're going to be giving Brent a hand on finding that leopard. Apparently, Shiduli crossed in from Arethusa—not a little gallery, so we're going to head in that direction and see what we can find. This would be quite nice, and then we'll also be stopping for some of the smaller things as we go along. Because it's Draw a Bird Day, I've brought my art notebook with me so that we can hopefully get Herbie to draw a bird for us at some point today. So that's going to be quite exciting!

I feel like I also need to get in on all the action, and so that is the plan for us. What we're going to do is basically hug quarantine and sort of march south to get into the area where Shiduli is hopefully going to be. I don't want to get caught on all sorts of vegetation first, so that is the plan. Maybe some elephants would be quite nice.

Now, some of you may have seen that Herbert has got a rifle, and it's very important that we do take a rifle out on bush walks—for security, obviously. Our first point of defense is our brains. We're both trained in animal behavior, and the idea of a bush walk is not to walk up and scratch a lion between its ears—so that's not what we're going to be doing! But it does allow us to be able to view animals on foot. When we walk, we walk as if we didn't have a rifle, but you do have to carry one when you go out on a walking safari. But the chances of that having to be used are very rare.

For example, I’ve been in the bush for just over seven years, and I've never, ever had to shoot an animal or anything like that, or even had one or two close calls, which is, of course, natural when you are walking often. Otherwise, you're probably not going to need it, so don't worry about that.

One of the very favorite things of Brent's is to do a bit of tracking, and he wasted no time. He's looking down at the ground. We found Shiduli's tracks coming to drink at that small pan, and then she went off into the bushy area. We're just trying to see if she pops out on the road as we slowly head towards Treehouse. Yeah, those lions came down here as well. Some of them are a very popular entrance point for cats today.

Now, we're looking for Shiduli. It's always wise to put one's eyes up into the trees, and she does like to rest up high in the trees—more so than our other females. Unfortunately, we haven't got any tracks of Shiduli just yet—lots of lion tracks up and down around. So those who were watching the sunrise safari will know that the Inkhuma and the Torchwood pride had a slight altercation. I watched a video of it from someone who was there, and it wasn't too serious. It was actually pretty meek. In my experience, it was a bit of growling, a bit of slapping, but nothing too serious at all.

The one thing that was quite funny was the little Inkhuma male charged in and started roaring, thinking it was a lot bigger than he is. So yes, nothing much. Hello, Kudu! Are you going to stand still for long enough or are you going to run off? Nice big adult female Kudu, and there's a little baby behind it. I just caught a glimpse of it—just see its ears.

Now, it's good to know where the Kudu are because, with this wind, it's very good leopard hunting, especially once it gets a bit cooler. The gusting wind is going all over the place, so there's a good chance that the leopards might be up and on the move a little bit earlier than usual, on the hunt. Knowing where the Kudu are, they are quite often very good alarm systems, and they’ve got a very deep, loud bark when they see a leopard.

Wow, I'm not seeing any tracks of Shiduli just yet—I’ve just looped back up past Lion tracks. She might have changed her mind and gone back towards the northwest. I'm keeping a good lookout in the trees for a dangling kitty tail. We spend a lot of time tracking cats.

Yes, Wolfgang, we are able to tell the age of tracks in quite a few different ways. A windy day like today, actually the tracks might be a little fresher than you think. The edges would have been rounded by the wind and what animals or little insects and stuff have walked across them. If there are any nocturnal animals that have walked across, so yes, we are able to age tracks and work out which ones are fresh enough to follow and which ones aren’t.

Now, after all the rain we had two days ago, three days ago, tracking is a little bit more difficult because the rain compacts the ground and makes it a lot harder. An animal as small as a female leopard—often you're just tracking the slightest little mark, so it can be quite tricky. But fortunately, we get lots of practice, so we're quite good at finding them.

I know Taylor is also heading slowly into the area to see if they can find Shiduli on foot, but it seems she's been distracted by a bush on the way. We're trying to march on, and sadly, I've been shaking all the senses around the water, on the round leaf teak, and that got me today, but no insects. I don't know whether—oh, I can see little grasshoppers jumping every now and then, but they blend in so well with the ground.

Then once they've jumped, ah, here's a bee fly! These are quite cool things! I don't know how close you can see, but basically, it's there somewhere. I don't want to go too close because I never go too close. Maybe if you want to stand over it, I don't know, then you might be able to see it a bit better. But there's a beautiful bee fly there—they're like fluff balls, like cotton balls, with a long proboscis.

You see it flying and buzzing around where it can land. There we go—no, it's… yeah, and you see it. Okay, sorry, this is always the hardest part! No, I've lost it. Insects being difficult today. Okay, now I've lost it. I think it may have flown away. Anyway, it was quite cool just seeing more and more of them buzzing around. Oh, it's quite nice! I’ll try to get another one, one that's more cooperative—not in the long grass.

It's exceptionally windy today, so I feel like a lot of the insects are going to struggle to hold on to do anything. Now, this is not great when you are on a bush walk. You don't really want to do bush walks when it's super, super windy. A lot of times, you actually end up canceling them when you're walking with guests. Obviously, with us, it's a little bit more different. We're in a small group. I'm a trained guide. Herbie's at ranger and Senzo’s been on and off bush walks to just about be a trails guide as well, so he knows what to do.

He's followed all of us. But when you're with guests, it becomes a little bit different. You can't hear very well—I'll never hear an elephant feeding off of a marble lapua or even a buffalo as it walks through the leaf litter. I'm not going to hear a thing, and that's no good! Also, because it's so windy, those animals are going to be on edge like we saw with the wildebeest. That's normally fine with us from the far distance away on foot; he was not having any of it. Even in a big wide-open area, he was moving away from a showing that he was really, really uncomfortable with our presence.

So we need to be on serious high alert today, and we're going to try not to walk through any dense areas. We're going to be using roads a little bit more than normal and just sort of help us out a bit. It's scary not being able to hear. You're out on a bush walk, but we'll make do. I'm just checking as we're walking. I mean, if you notice, when I'm walking, I'm sort of just kicking the ground, seeing if I can chase any insects or anything up and hope that one will jump and I'll be able to see where it lands.

What’s that little butterfly fluttering about? Thanks. Struggling in the wind today, you see them go up and then blow away? I’m trying to keep up with them. As a nominee, see there was a grasshopper goodness that jumped about a meter and a half. There's another bee fly! You see it says—oh, it's not sitting down, it's just sort of hovering. That's incredible, the way that it's desperately trying to not get blown away in the wind. But even the little insects are struggling. Where are you going to sit?

It's just putting itself down. I don't think it’s feeding or doing anything like that. I think it's actually just trying to find a spot to rest to keep out of the wind because it isn't particularly pleasant. But I'm going to scare it because I want the marula fruit! That doesn't seem to be too bothered by me at all! Look at this—this must be the last marula of the season, which is pretty cool, and it's good enough for me to eat!

Sorry, Sens, I might eat you! You want it? You don’t eat it? Okay, we'll save it for just now halfway through the walk, and I'll have a little more. That's going to be delicious! No one? Hey, we can share it! Okay, Sam's on. I may be sharing a marula fruit. If you're going to head down towards Herbie, we're going to go through Philemon's step now, so we're almost where we need to start looking for Shiduli.

So we'll give Brent a hand soon; he's obviously way ahead of us. Let's go find out what road he's on. I'm wondering how Sens and Taylor are going to share marula fruit. It's quite tricky considering its size and all the flesh attached to it. Interesting!

Okay, so we are just double-checking again if Shiduli has come up this way, and again looking at all the nice, bigger trees. As we know, she likes to nap in trees. Now, it was just after nine o'clock this morning that she crossed. She could have done a considerable distance, so we might just check down Zoe's Road quickly.

And it's still quite warm. Even though you've got this very gusty wind today, I mean, it's changing direction constantly—not too strong, but definitely strong enough to affect some of the animals, particularly your prey species. You'll find, your impala, and wildebeest, zebra, and things like that will be quite jumpy in this weather.

Okay, she has been spotted quite a few times resting, and it would be great to see her again today. Hopefully, we are able to find her. Not a lot of time—not too long a time. If she hasn't eaten, she's going to be quite active now with a strong gusty wind that's been blowing all day. There's even a possibility she might have managed to catch herself something during the day, and she's in one of these thick areas, sitting pretty with a kill.

A quick look down—yes, this one seems to be one of her preferred routes along Zoe's ride. No sign of any tracks—we'd see them quite easily on the road, but Taylor found some leopard cub tracks a few days ago. Cristina, there are not Chava's cub tracks! Chava does not move into that area; there's no way she would bring her cub into that area for multiple reasons—like Tandi would probably kill it. Herkimer, you might kill it.

So it's not a safe area, and there’s no reason for her to bring her cub into that area—an area she doesn't know and doesn't frequent, so it's almost certainly not Chava's cub tracks that Taylor had. Oh wow, we've been not having many of these around. So that quickly, let's go across to Taylor! No, we're just moving around, repositioning because look who we've got!

There's been much talk about. We have the elephants gone over the last few days! We found one of them, which was quite nice! I suspect it is a bull, but he's just walking down Philemon’s cut line. Oh, here we go, there's your elephant! There’s one of them!

Now, like I said, it's very, very windy, so it's not really a great day to do approaches unless we are. We don't want this elephant to be able to smell us because he's going to get quite nervous. He'll be frustrated that he can't hear us. That's one of the primary senses that elephants are relying on: their hearing, as long as their sense of smell.

So we don't want to do that. So we'll let him see; we might even just take a gamble and view from a distance. They’ll be further away. We will try and get a little bit closer than this, though. But as soon as we go through this drainage line and up on the other side, the environmental factors are all going to change—the wind is going to be probably blowing in a little bit of a different direction.

So, we'll have to have a look. I wonder if he got nervous because that's where the lions were all walking down the road and laying on the road, and that might make him a bit nervous, too. But we'll be careful!

So we're going to see if we can sneak a bit closer. Off you go to Brent, and I promise you Brent will be there for a while.

Well, I think that elephant is probably nervous due to the gusting wind. Some elephants just don't really like it! Those lions are quite far away from there now, and I'm pretty sure that any elephants will be able to smell that.

Now just a quick update on Steve as he has returned to camp and is changing vehicles, so hopefully, Wendy will be a little bit more reliable. So he should be out shortly. It's a good spot to look for Shiduli; we can park up here on the high ground, and I can check with my binoculars multiple marula trees, and maybe we’ll get lucky and spot a tail hanging out of one of them.

Definitely, one of my favorite views on Juma is from this particular section. It's just going to look forward; we can get the whole valley. Okay, what can we see? Yes, we just have a quick look. You can see nice and far—quite a few trees would be a nice sort of napping spot for a leopard. You can see how gusty the wind is.

Unfortunately, no sign! We checked next; it’s it down towards Philemon's step from Rebecca's Road. Now, we've been asked this quite a lot in the last while. Laura, in all likelihood, Shadow has moved on to the next plain, and so has the cub. They have not been seen in over six weeks, and there have been lots of other leopards seen, and what is traditionally Shadow's territory has now been taken over by Okumuri and Shiduli, who seem to have taken over the majority of that.

So I think unfortunately, the most likely scenario is that Shadow has probably been killed by another leopard, and with the care for the cub's sake, it's almost certainly another leopard like Okumuri or Shiduli. Remember that leopard cub mortalities—over 70% of the mortalities are committed by other leopards—not by lions!

Of the known leopard mortalities, nearly 70% are committed by other leopards, mostly young males, but all males moving into an area. Wow, the wind seems to be getting stronger! Good thing I didn't wear my big hat today; I would have blown off! I said the wind is blowing gusting actually, Kate's got the biggest impact of the wind. It doesn't really affect the eyes on safari as much. Sometimes, it can make certain animals a little bit more difficult to find, and certain animals a little bit more nervous.

So, impala, wildebeest, dik-dik—all your prey species can be very, very jumpy, and birding is quite difficult in the wind as well. The predators quite enjoy the wind, so they're often mobile. The lions, leopards, wild dogs, and cheetahs all don't mind the wind. The wind is often a good aid for them in hunting and enables them to sneak up on those prey species a little easier. That's why they can be a bit more nervous.

Also, animals like elephants can be a little bit more nervous during strong gusty winds like this. From our point, it does make tracking a little bit more difficult as strong winds like this can cover up the tracks and blow the edges so that they're harder to spot, but on a positive note, it keeps us a little bit cooler.

Okay, well, let's go see what Taylor's up to!

Well, we're deciding now what we're going to do, whether we leave this elephant or we do an approach. We can't see him anymore. He walked to the road; he turned back and then went into the thicket. This was sort of the last view we had of him. But it's really not nice here today. It's exceptionally windy, so I'm thinking because Herbie is not 200%, I think we're probably going to leave it and maybe just try and move past him.

You just see if we can see him now; see, we can't hear. Normally, what would be easy; we could just stand here on the road, and if he's gone into the bushes, we would hear where he was feeding. Where he's moved, we can't do that today, which is a bit of a nuisance. Typical windy weather!

Now, we can't see our elephants! We've been searching for elephants for ages! So that's the plan for now. Also, we decided to give the marula fruit to Herbie. He was like a kid in a candy store! He was so excited that he got the last one! He said, "I'll save it for just now."

Well, maybe we're lucky! Maybe we find two more—who knows? So as we're walking along, and we're going to stick to the road because the grass gets very tall, just trying to see through the gaps in the pockets of big bush willow trees.

We can see you—this elephant, I mean at any moment he could turn and come running back in this direction because he's got a fright. Ooh, he's picked up a new scent, so we're just going to be careful. Basically, we were walking now as to the old hyena den—remember the one with all the cinnamons?

Now, speaking openly about potentially being in dangerous situations with animals, that's a question I heard, and Eloise—I can't see, I can. You know, I've been hit and battered by a few different types of antelope, and I haven't had one on a bushwalk come charging out at me. I have, however, been rammed by an impala named BB. That was fun when I was about 14 years old. I did this thing at school, and we were in toddlers, like a survivor tug of war, and basically, there was some final council.

They were doing whoever was going to be voted off, and this impala rammed me and another girl that was on top of me. It was quite funny. In fact, when I was really young, her parents and my parents were friends; they farmed and had this big kudu bull that drove me around very gently. It was quite funny!

Well, my dad always tells the story, and those are the only two times I don't have survived. Just checking; I hope you just took a big step in like that. So maybe we'll take a big step in as well, so he was basically coming in this direction.

While you're on bushwalk, I'm going to lower my voice substantially because the wind is swirling here. It’s not coming from any particular direction, which is a problem. We're carrying still fine for now, but you see how difficult it is to try and spot him! And he doesn’t have much vegetation around him.

But even just that little bit is just enough to cover the largest mammal on the land. He doesn't know we're here, and we must be about 100 meters away from him. Hey, he heard me about 100 meters or so! I’m hoping that we have the wind in our favor, 'cause then I can talk like us and you won't be able to hear us, because he's shaking his head.

You can see the way the leaves are blowing as well—blowing off and down towards the sort of southwest. Yes, Herbie is the champion, isn't he, Andrew? Finding animals. So the bull is moving off; point tail after him.

Well, just let him go, maybe? What do you think the chances are he’s going to go to the Chia pan? Although the mud wallows, I think we're going to try and get there. I mean, ideally, we'd like to get there before him, but that's fine. We’ll let him go first. We’ll just try and take a back seat and stick behind him and hopefully get him. But he’s still got a little way to go, a kilometer or so before we get to that watering hole, but for an elephant to do that…

Well, it's okay, okay, we keep walking and try and keep up with that elephant. And since he's doing an amazing job of walking backwards, I’m pretty sure Brent's got about 50,000 stories of times that he's been charged by antelope.

Well, you gotta be quiet! I mean, you've got to really be trying to think how to put this—it's difficult to get charged by an antelope! And, of course, you don't really get charged by antelope—apart from doing game capture! You don't really get charged by antelope! Archer, very, very seldom anyway—you need to sort of corner them in offense! And even a squirrel can be dangerous if cornered; their fight-or-flight mechanisms will take over!

And yes, I'm just going to turn my radio down. Okay, I'm gonna hit the chick. Right, let’s go see if we can find Tingana in the meantime. Let's head to Steve, who sounds like he's heading into a similar area to Taylor.

Thank you very much, Brent! I'm terribly sorry, folks, for my lack of appearances so far. We've had a few gremlins on the signal front. We have since changed cars; we are in Wendy now. We’re out and about, and we have come across the largest herd of impala that I've seen in some time. You can see how a lot of them are very interested in something that's going on on the left there, and what it is, in fact, is some warthogs running through the grass.

But animals are very unnerved in these conditions, and when it's windy, they can't hear the predators approaching. Many times in the past, I have seen lions and leopards, as soon as the wind picks up like this, stand up and start hunting because the wind obviously masks their approach and makes it much easier for them to get closer.

So that's why these animals come together in such a tight-knit group. You think it's for safety for the others, but it's actually quite selfish; they're all trying to stand in the middle of the herd and not be on the outside. If you're on the outside, you're a target!

And even the fact that the males are starting to come into the rutting season, you can see there's not too much concern in their behavior. They were all hanging out together. Better to be in a group of this size than trying to demarcate territory on your own in these conditions.

We did see a male impala before; we didn't have signal on his own, and he didn't know what to do with himself. He was jumping up and down and looking in every direction. And the problem is, when you're constantly on the lookout and alert, you spend very little time feeding!

Even these guys in this large group are not feeding very quickly, or a lot, because the wind is making them quite suspicious—not even ruminating, you see? No one's even ruminating! So they're quite skittish. I am on Juma at the moment; we are not far from via tele-dye. You want to know if there are more impala there than on Juma. I'm not sure! It seems to me we see enormous herds on Chitwa, but maybe that's just because of the dam, you know? We see them coming down to drink.

It's quite open there, and as we've seen via tele-dye, it does not support an enormous amount of water at the moment. We're not far from that dam, and I'm sure these are the impala that spend their evenings on quarantine, the open area just south of our camp.

Okay, that's one ruminating! Matt's ruminating! You can see they're all a little bit unsettled. If I had to do an alarm call now, I'm sure that all of them would jump up, so I'm not going to do that because that's not very ethical, is it?

Well, you can see that the boys are in the middle—the boys are in the middle—still jostling with each other. Ghosts? Another impala! A pregnant one! Yes, you can see if we just took in the frontier of us, Craig, just in the road. You can see a young male just here on the right.

Here we go, this is a youngster in the middle of the shot! You can see the horns; there are a few youngsters around. They were all born in about November! That one that just came in and had a little bit of a head but wasn't there? He was born the previous November.

And the one just behind him is from November the year before, so you can see that by the size of the horns. But all the females will get impregnated in the month of May, April, May. Generally, some of them will come in too late; some of them might start falling pregnant in the early season.

Some of them will come back in August, September, but none of these are pregnant yet. The rutting season is coming, and rut will be starting in the coming weeks. The first full moon in May till the second full moon, so even as early as late April between that full moon and the next is generally where all the mating takes place!

Females come into estrus stimulated by the males doing their amazing roaring! If you've heard it before, it sounds like something wanting to come and eat you, so they're talking about animals. Impala or antelope attacking you? When you hear that, you think something is coming to finish you off, but that’s not the case.

Actually, it is the roaring! Yes, yes, can be sneaky out of the racing season, but the females are not in estrus! The estrus actually gets induced by the roaring that happens very soon! So I think it happens in red deer as well that they do a lot of roaring, and that stimulates ovulation. So it’s impossible to impregnate them if they’re not ovulating!

Well, that's how it works, and we have a little bit of an impala roadblock at the moment! But it's marvelous to see so many of them together. Now we know why we have such a healthy leopard population—all of this food!

Jostling to try to be in the middle, no one really wants to be on the outside. Macy says impala start growing their horns from the first few weeks or month of their birth! This one you see there—he was born in November, and the horns are slowly growing, and they will grow until they die, and the males only.

So they grow to a certain point; there are lots of interests in these impalas to the left. I can hear some green woodhoopoe calling, and they're not very relaxed. I think we might actually have a little look around, Jake. What do you think?

But I think it’s just the weather that’s spooking them. We were thinking of going in helping Taylor with her elephants. See if we can get the elephants with the vehicle.

Okay, well, let's go over to Taylor, who's on foot and she's got you some tracks!

Well, we just thought we'd stop and have a very quick look at this monstrous lion footprint! Put my hand in thanks to it, and my hand is completely dwarfed next to it! Let me also use both hands today.

Okay, so doing it a bit differently. Here's the back of the foot. Yeah, and these are the toes! It looks like he was walking quite quickly, and he stood, and he slid into his tracks slightly, but that is massive!

I mean, if I put my hand over there—I'm gonna wreck this track now—should we do it this way? That is so cool! Virtually my fingers are maybe a centimeter or two centimeters bigger than his track. Otherwise, my hand is exactly the same width as his footprint—probably his foot just probably a little bit bigger than that. That's crazy!

Ha! So we've had a discussion. We've been trying to figure out who it could be. Tristan said to me they spoke to some of the Arethusa guards that saw him initially tailing after the Inkhumas, and it wasn't a Birmingham; it was a Magellan male. And they are quite big, so that's what was happening here. And he's a little bit on the beaten-up side, so we do need to also be careful while we're walking. That wouldn’t be a fun lion to bump into—imagine with an old male that so had his ego seriously bruised he could be injured to the point where maybe he can't hunt!

We don’t really get any more information other than that. So on a bushwalk, probably best to just stay back. You have to be careful! So we don’t want to be following his tracks at all today.

Now, obviously, with all the lion dynamics, everything’s changing slightly—whether your VOC is trying to do, come on, and just as... Beck has said, Daniel—sorry, David, there we go. And so, David, no, I don’t think that the Birmingham boys would come in and intervene in two different prides fighting for the females.

Yes, if there were other males that came in, most certainly they’d want to try and get rid of them and take them out, chase them away, but not for a dispute against two different prides—not at all! They're just let things be. They might be curious by the sounds, but remember, they know no different; the Birmingham boys will see the Torchwood pride; they see the Sticks pride, so for them, it kind of means absolutely nothing.

We’re still on the road. No, we've decided to move away from that elephant, and it just got too thick, and I don't know. It was just—we just had a weird feeling, so we both decided that we're gonna give him a skip. We're gonna rather focus on finding a leopard, so it might be a little bit easier.

And David, yes, male and female lions do get along, and obviously the longer the coalition of males is around and the more frequently they visit the pride of females, they'll start forming a better bond with one another. But those males are not bound to one pride; they can move around and have more than one pride with it. So most of the time, they get on.

If it's a new coalition of males that's taken over, sometimes the females are slightly hostile, and they've got to earn their place with the boys. But normally, within a few months, they sort of won the girls over, or at least the girls know, “I want to mate with the new boys!”

Going to find themselves, well, with a few scratches, possibly even dead! So they might only put up a fight for a little bit.

Well, speaking of all these cats, I know Steve’s trying to find lions, but Brent has won the safari because he’s found you a leopard at the sunset safari! There we go! He’s only about 50 meters from where we left him in the morning, and it is Tingana, still looking quite hungry. So he hasn't had any success during the day.

There are some water bucks not too far away, but lots of open ground between him. But it’s a good spot to lie in wait because you never know what might wander along the dam wall. We often have impalas and all sorts coming through. Yeah!

As I said, he was quite hungry this morning, so it might be worth playing the patience game this afternoon with him. Now, it's amazing how much his territory has shrunk in just over a year.

Say he had massive amounts of territory! I mean, let’s get this—get my bearings correct—yeah, well, a very big welcome to Macy, a brand-new viewer. He is a boy. He’s a big boy. He’s not in the best condition; he’s quite an old boy as well, and he used to have a large territory, but unfortunately, as he’s got older, younger males have moved in and put a lot of pressure on him.

So I know if we can—how's that work for you, then, Sid? Okay. So that little blue dot is where we are now. But Tingana’s previous territory basically used to encompass like this—his whole territory—further than that. His territory used to encompass from Chitwa all the way around like this, up into the fence line, across to the north, all the way down south here, all the way down to the Kruger boundary, and then down and around again. Back now, his territory has shrunk from that massive area to basically where we are now, and this sort of small square just like that.

And he’s got Okumuri pushing in from this side, and he’s got quarantine pushing in from this side. So he’s lost the majority of his territory in the last little while, and that he seems have been surviving on baby waterbucks around the dam, and we’ve all been sort of joking it’s a good retirement home for old leopards. There’s a constant supply of decent food. Oh, but he’s a tired kitty now!

So while he naps, let’s send you across to Steve, who you might have caught up with the elephant Taylor was with.

Yes, I have! We have got a beautiful male elephant here, who’s just walking around us quite cautiously. He’s not causing any trouble or showing any signs of discomfort. Let me try and just reposition so we can get a better look at him.

As he comes down towards the road, I heard reports of a breeding herd of elephants, and he’s headed in that direction, and we found a bull. So this is the first elephant I've seen in some weeks! Actually, I saw him this morning when I was doing some tests with Juliette, but I think this is the same individual.

The first elephants I'm showing you lovely people in some time—let's see if we can just get in front of him. The wind is also playing a part in a little bit of his discomfort, and he’s on his own, shame. Poor guy! The life of a lone bull elephant!

They are Jonathan, Alicia, and Giraffe Girl. I'm also very excited; it's marvelous! I always love seeing elephants because they’re always doing something. You know that was busy trying to just get a little bit in front of him so we can see what he's doing without causing him any stress.

Sorry, Craig. Oh, that's about as good as we're going to get here. See? He’s quite relaxed. Ours are soft! Hello, my boy! I believe that's a 4.5 to 5-ton animal moving over there and hiding behind the bush as well.

How easily he hides! Steps up. Sorry, Craig! What delicacy has he found now? Through observations, I was talking last night about looking at the fecal content of animals' dung to see what they're feeding on. You connect your spend time focusing on the feeding aspects. He’s feeding on the wild tea bush!

So that we know for a fact because we can see it happening. The analysis under microscope will also give you the facts of what’s being fed upon, and a lot of animals make their ego is enjoying the wild tea bush. A lot of animals make use of wildflowers this time of year—lots of nitrogen in them, lots of nutrients. They will fade away in the coming weeks, so it's good to get all that nutrients in while you can.

Very selectively doing so with that big trunk, and if you don't know what snake fruit is, this is a 100% live! A 100% live with a live African elephant who is showing us his bottom right now. Let’s move around and see if we can get on the other side! Now he's feeding on some lovely grasses underneath the tree and a little fruit.

Okay, that's so much tannin in that. I wonder if he’s actually going to eat that branch or if he's looking for the seed pods—the little berries. Craig actually grabbed a handful of berries just now when we drove past.

So only if it isn’t—this is a big African elephant walking pretty much straight towards us—and then he turned. Yeah, we're not causing him any harm to just move away and as comfortable as they feel. The need to be as close as that feel the need to be.

Okay? Well, we’re going to follow this bull for a bit longer. Let’s go back over to Taylor and see what she’s up to!

Well, look at what we've got! It looks like a bit of a crime scene, eh? But I promise you it's not! I think this is one of the darkling beetles that we're looking at.

It's very pretty! They typically aren’t quite round, having a sort of carapace like that with little—and what would you call that? I don't even know what words I'm trying to find today, but it's got sort of a very bumpy back, and it's got a long proboscis as well!

But it's pretending to be dead! I promise you it's not dead. This is—this is actual thanatosis! And I think when we found that maybe a hornbill or something must have frightened it, and now it’s pretending to die. I’m hoping this thing fits long enough.

Yeah, actually see it wake up now! With thinner choices, it depends on the species as to how long it will actually last. From what I saw, because it’s just come alive again twice and then gone back to sleep, it takes about, I don’t know, 30 seconds or so to a minute, I suppose.

It also depends on how long the stress is around. Remember, animals only perform Thanatosis typically if they feel like there are under threat in some way. They better move quickly! Because there's an ant coming, it might tell its friends that you are dead when you're not!

And the idea behind it is that things that catch other animals, like—well, it's wriggling around! I suppose it's about the thrill of having something that's alive and then being able to kill it!

So if you're not moving around anymore, it might be a bit on the boring side, and then they tend to leave it alone. Please wake up! You woke up in my hand once, and so really got out, but it was quite funny the way that it sort of just stood upright!

Sens was amazed—you've never seen anything like it before? Have you thought it was some kind of voodoo? What's going on? I'm not exactly sure how they do it! Come on, wake up!

I’m quite surprised at the fact that this beetle is playing dead! Well, I’m not. Because I suppose I know that lots of different beetle species as well as snakes and some lizards and oh, there's a mite! Twelve! Thank you, Rebecca! I can see the mite!

My thumb is a little—it looks like a little mite that's running around, probably living on this little beetle! Well, just quite cool!

And so yeah, so so far I'm not surprised about this. I was surprised, though, when we watched a mongoose! He was almost like he was looking for attention, as the little pup was trying to death feign in front of a yellow-billed hornbill!

Now, yellow-billed hornbill was never going to eat among those! Well, I shouldn't say never! But the chances are highly unlikely they have a completely different symbiosis where they actually help one another. So I can't imagine that this thing would just turn all of a sudden.

Please make up! I don't know—do you think it likes my hand? Do you think maybe it’s because my hand is warm? Let’s try! I’ll be very gentle—also, I’ve been pressing my hand against the sand, as you can see.

Ghost shooter! And no, I don’t think it will bite me. It’s got a long proboscis! I have been actually bitten by an assassin bug, which also has a proboscis. I suppose it could bite!

Although it was crawling around on my hand, it didn’t seem to bother too much. I didn’t feel it trying to bite me; it was actually just walking around. It was very relaxed—it was actually more relaxed on my hand than anything!

So I wonder if it was a little bit more active because I'm obviously giving off heat, and on cooler days, insects—well, not really moving around too much. Wake up!

I really just wanted to get up! It would be so cool if it does! Okay, well, we’ll see if we can get it to wake up again. We’ll hold onto it for a little bit longer. I’m going to send you to Steve, who has got an elephant disappearing into the bushes!

Thank you, Taylor! Well, this elephant bull is slowly meandering away from the red. I'm not gonna go follow him off there, and then we don't get to see him! The elephants—the last couple of weeks, but it's marvelous! That we've been able to see this nice big bull! I thought Herbie and Taylor had seen a breeding herd of elephants!

I was quite excited to go find them, but this is the actual animal that they saw, I think—and no breeding herd to speak of! So we're going to leave him to his feeding and his slow meanderings.

Because the tusks do appear to be quite small; tusks are a genetic thing. They really are! Genetics! And some of the larger bulls, yes, will have bigger tusks, but you do get younger bulls with bigger tusks!

It's all genetics—all the lineage! I'd say he's probably between 25 and 30, so he's quite a big boy, but it's just a genetic size that's going on there. That's all I can suggest! He doesn't have the biggest genes when it comes to tusks!

And a lot of that had to do with poaching and the ivory trade many, many years ago. The larger bulls were actually targeted for their tusks, so for reasons like this—why down in the Addo National Park in the Eastern Cape, we for a long time didn't have any tusks in the generation or in the population because there was an individual by the name of Pretorius who was responsible for eradicating a huge number of elephants in that area, and he got paid in ivory!

So he got paid for the ivory he brought back, so he selectively only hunted or killed elephants that had ivory. We’re talking over 100 years ago! But the genetic—the loss of those genetics was very profound until about maybe 40 years ago—where they introduced Kruger elephants into Addo, and the tusks are coming back!

There are a lot of elephants still there, males and females included; they have no tusks at all, and that's just a disadvantage for them when it comes to feeding because they can't guard the bark and access the nutrient-rich cambium, which is very, very necessary in the dry season!

Then, as we know, as we talk a lot about plants, you get lots of medicinal value from the bark in implants itself, and if you don't have tusks, it's very difficult to do that! So, what is natural that? That is natural! That obviously, that bottle net selection that man did in there was a problem.

So here we have got a lone male impala! He has chosen to be—oh, there's like another one over there! I just caught myself at! Okay, but there’s two! There are two male impalas; now, by no means in a secure sort of location!

It is still a little bit windy, and they need to be able to look over their shoulder and also build up condition. So this is where the sort of race comes in; you know, this is where the race comes in! Do the male impalas start defending territories early or late? And who’s going to be more successful? Sometimes some of the guys start their rut or their territory demarcation maybe a little bit too early, and then by the time the mating actually happens, they have lost all their condition!

And then they don't do any breeding! So this is wasted, but anyway, those are the stories that are going to continue on and on for the next few weeks! Let's go to Taylor, whose beetle has woken up!

It's woken up! Look! I told you! It’s not dead! See? It's awake! It's now showing me—it looks like it’s quite calm! That's so cool!

I'm going to put him down; we haven't gone far from where we were, and these are incredible beetles. They’re from quite a large family! There are so many of them; my favorite is actually the racing striped darkling beetle. If you want to have a Google, it's quite a funny thing to look at, as it has very long legs!

I’m not saying this is in fact a darkling beetle; it really looks like one! What do you think? It could be a weevil—a type of weevil maybe! None of those patterns on the back are very interesting either!

Way too long to find, don’t you think? It's funny to see anything happen here. Now, you look to be on the other end of the log, this is so copious about choosing actionety and of course the hold on his hand.

It's being a little bit silly this afternoon. It’s also been a little bit more along with the grainy and dark so it would be hard to see, but you might have seen—that's super interesting!

There we go. Okay, once again, thanks very much for joining us in this single adventure and please, thank you so much!

I'm guessing that that’s the last thing you heard before we went into the tent.

Well, we are still with the lions, and it looks like a couple of them are starting to awaken and stretch. There's also one lioness who seems to be a little bit more playful than the others. It’s the first time I'm seeing them interact!

Yes, yes, it’s so wonderful! I mean, what a spectacle of nature! It’s amazing! And, well, as they get up in the gathering light, I really hope that we get to see it!

All of us are so eager for what comes next. It’s exciting!