WILD

Celebrating the New Year with a Baby Leopard

26.01.2009 | Categories: Footage from the Field,Video Back to Gallery List

(written by Vance Martin on New Years Day, 2009, Okavango Delta, Botswana)

Two years ago I was in this same area of the Okavango Delta in Northern Botswana, and we were told of a very young female leopard who had been suddenly orphaned and had to make her own way, teaching herself to hunt, etc. The guides named her “The Little One.” We came upon her a few days later, a few moments after she had made her first kill (a small impala antelope). We watched her until sunset as she unsuccessfully tried to get the carcass up a tree where she could eat in safety. Right on cue a hyena showed up, then another…and started closing in on both her and the dead impala. The Little One decided that retreat was the best option, so she gave up her first significant meal to the larger, much more powerful hyenas.

This morning I asked about her and was told she had adopted the territory, was now a fully mature female, and was likely pregnant. We kept our eyes open and eventually found her…with her first cub! She had stashed the cub in a hollow log at the base of large fig tree, where it would be well-camouflaged and hopefully safe when she would go off to hunt.

I’m glad to report that mother and cub are both doing very well.

[video by Greg Price]