BIG CAT LOVERS
BY WILLIAM GRAY | | PUBLISHED IN TRAVEL AFRICA MAGAZINE
Early morning sunlight seeped through the bush, a molten tide that gilded the acacia trees and ignited the feathery grass heads. When it touched the lions, sprawled in a clearing, they responded lazily. A young male stood, stretched and flopped, while the rest of the pride rolled in the grass, pawing and nuzzling one another in a feline tangle of tawny limbs and black-tipped tails. They barely glanced in the direction of our vehicle. We were parked just a few metres away, yet the big cats seemed completely indifferent to our presence.
The adoring human, the nonchalant cat – an encounter that’s been played out on just about every safari I’ve been on over the past 30 years. And yet the prospect of a big cat sighting still gets my spine tingling more than anything else. It’s not that I’m particularly into cats. I’m more of a doggy person. Our pet labrador is part of the family – we’re besotted with her – but I rarely yearn to see a jackal or a bat-eared fox. What, then, makes me, or anyone for that matter, a big cat lover?
I can trace the start of my love affair with Africa’s big cats back to 1986, before I’d ever been on safari. My parents had given me a book, Among Predators and Prey by Dutch photographer and filmmaker Hugo Van Lawick. The cover of my now battered, well-thumbed copy bears a remarkable image of a Thomson’s gazelle somersaulting over a wild dog, mid-chase. But the book naturally falls open to another image showing a lioness breaking from cover, charging towards the camera, her gaze locked on the slowest of five gazelle fleeing before her. By today’s technically high standards, it’s nothing special – the focus isn’t razor sharp and the background is cluttered with thorn scrub – but 30-odd years ago, that photograph not only screamed ‘Africa!’ at me, but also perfectly captured the energy and thrill of the hunt.
Is that why we’re all so obsessed with seeing big cats on safari? A sense of anticipation? That split second when dozing pussy cat switches to keen-eyed killer? Never mind the impending doom of the gazelle or zebra... when the lions’ ears prick alert, shoulder muscles bunch and tails start twitching, we’re all on the edge of our seats, poised for drama, our money on the cats.
“We had an amazing safari – we saw lions make a kill!” Have you noticed how often you hear people judging the success of their safari by whether it featured big cats hunting? I don’t believe it’s the actual process of killing that holds us rapt. We’re not all baying for blood. Several years ago, during a visit to Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, I witnessed lions hunting a waterbuck next to my tent. There was no pleasure in hearing the death throes of the antelope, the crunching of teeth on sinew and bone, or of seeing the cats, bloody-faced at dawn, pulling long coils of intestines from the corpse of their victim. That’s what big cats do. Rather than a macabre fascination with the act of killing, we simply have a desire to witness these supreme predators in action – just as a motor enthusiast admires the most powerful, beautifully made racing cars at full throttle, but flinches if they crash.
I once spent a memorable few days in the southern Serengeti. Our camp was pitched in a shady grove of acacia trees a short distance from the Ndutu Plains where, from January to March, wildebeest gather in huge numbers to give birth. One afternoon, we found a female cheetah with three almost fully-grown cubs lying up in asparagus scrub on the edge of the plains. Every time a herd of Thomson’s gazelle or wildebeest wandered past, the cats were instantly alert – four spotted heads turning in unison to follow them. We joined the cheetahs’ vigil, watching them and their prey from a respectful few hundred metres. Five hours passed. The cheetah never got quite close enough to launch an attack (and I would still love to see one at full pelt), but it was a privilege just to spend time in their company, watching them interact with one another.
When you view big cats as more than just predators, you begin to appreciate a gentler, equally fascinating side to their behaviour. The day after seeing the cheetah, for example, we came across a lone lioness calling softly to her month-old cubs. They eventually scuttled into the open, three little golden fur-balls, to be greeted by their mother with the most tender display of grooming you could imagine from a 150kg killer capable of bringing down a buffalo. Watching cubs rough-and-tumble with the grown-ups in a pride is equally heart-melting – but there’s also fascinating biology to be observed in the unique social behaviour of lions.
Unlike wild dogs, there is no dominant female preventing subordinates from breeding. The egalitarianism of lionesses often results in communal cub rearing (nursing, forming crèches etc), and they will ferociously defend their offspring from males attempting to take over a pride. Nevertheless, infanticide is common in lions – it accounts for around a quarter of all cub deaths and is not only a ‘genetic priority’ for incoming males, but also resets the reproductive clocks of the lionesses.
It’s very much a ‘him and her’ society with lions. Daughters are either recruited into their mother’s pride or disperse to form a new pride with their sisters. Males, on the other hand, are expelled from their mother’s pride after a few years, forming brotherhood coalitions that last for life. Pride males fight off rival coalitions, lionesses defend territories and hunt in well-coordinated teams – and all adult members of a pride will roar (a territorial display that can be heard from 5km away and is used by neighbouring prides to gauge the number and strength of potential rivals).
As with any social structure, however, there are always intriguing ‘misfits’. In South Africa’s Madikwe Game Reserve, I came across a group of just three lions where a partially disabled adult male lion seemed to be under the protection of his coalition ‘brother’ and was effectively kept alive thanks to the hunting prowess of a single lioness.
When you encounter lions there’s usually something going on, some backstory or nuance of behaviour. With leopards, however, you’re just grateful for the encounter. I’ve glimpsed this secretive, largely solitary big cat on less than a dozen occasions over the past three decades. Its elusiveness is, of course, a large part of its appeal.
On a visit to the Selous Game Reserve in southern Tanzania, I remember being slightly irked at how easily and quickly we found wild dogs on our first outing: a pack of 15, fast asleep and stomachs bloated, strewn across a grassy clearing. It was almost a relief that we couldn’t find a leopard.
My guide knew all the tricks for tracking the fickle feline. We drove along the edge of dense woodland where he checked favoured resting trees – old jackalberries with black, twisted limbs. He stopped and listened for telltale alarm calls – impala sneezing, baboons barking – and he studied tracks on sandy riverbanks. My method was more random. I simply let my gaze flicker from tree to tree, tripping up on leopard-shaped stumps and branches that seemed, at first glance, to sprout ears.
Every now and then, I latched onto movement – impala skittering away, like autumn leaves picked up by a gust of wind; sparrow weavers squabbling through the thorn scrub. Despite the fact that we were searching for a largely nocturnal cat in a wilderness the size of the Netherlands, I never lost that sense of anticipation; the feeling that this might be the day. The reality was that if the big cat didn’t want to be seen, there was very little you could do about it.
So just imagine the thrill, the wide-eyed wonder when, on my most recent trip to Africa, we spent nearly an hour watching a young female leopard less than 5m away in broad daylight. She dozed, groomed, stretched, yawned, licked her paws and then curled her lip at a group of over-inquisitive francolin. But rarely did she take any notice of us. Nonchalant cat, adoring humans. We were totally smitten – not because she was displaying any particularly interesting behaviour or making any effort to hunt, but simply because she was big-spotted-cat-gorgeous.
Leopards have a kind of hypnotic beauty. Lions can hold you rapt with a deep-throated roar or smouldering gaze, cheetahs can leave you breathless with their turn of speed or finely poised grace, but leopards can just be leopards. A brief glimpse of that long, luxuriant tail disappearing into dense bush will do for me.
Of course, I’ve heard plenty of stories from people who have seen leopards hunting, dragging their prey up trees with extraordinary strength and agility. But the enduring appeal of Africa’s big cats is something far more deep-rooted and visceral. It’s the electrifying realisation of finding yourself in an environment which still has space for large predators; the deep sense of respect that comes with setting out on a walking safari knowing that you’re momentarily dislodged from the top of the food chain.
Considering our mutual bond with their domestic cousins, it’s perhaps not surprising that we love wild cats. They first struck a relationship with people in mud settlements along the Nile 7,000 years ago. Infested by rodents, grain stores proved a lucrative hunting ground for local African wildcats and it wasn’t long before farmers recognised their value as guardians of a hard-won harvest. Cats were welcomed as an ally, and the seeds of domestication were sown. Ancient Egyptians worshipped their cats. Whole families shaved their eyebrows in mourning when a feline member of the household died. They mummified the cat and placed it in the Temple of the cat goddess Bastet.
In Roman times, domestic cats continued to enjoy high status as pest controllers and house pets. Treatment of wild cats, however, reached an all-time low. In the wake of new cults glorifying animal sacrifice, hunting became a popular sport and the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire were scoured for trophies. Big cats were also brought back alive to star in the gruesome festivals of public arenas. Lions and leopards were starved for days and then released into the ring to maul defenceless slaves before being slaughtered by gladiators. When Emperor Titus opened the Colosseum, 5,000 animals were butchered in a single day. So great was the demand of the Roman arenas that lions were rapidly exterminated from the empire.
Once stretching throughout southern Europe, Africa and Asia, the lion’s kingdom continues to crumble. On a typical safari you would be unlucky not to see one – lions are still widespread and conspicuous – but their numbers have plummeted from around 200,000 in the 1980s to just 20,000 today. Cheetah are also having a hard time – their population has crashed to as little as 9,000. Notoriously hard to survey, leopard numbers were thought to be relatively high compared to other big cats (around 700,000), but recent research suggests significant declines and a rapid shrinking of its habitat range. Trophy hunting, the fur and ‘traditional medicine’ trades, human-wildlife conflict, habitat loss and fragmentation… the threats facing big cats are widely known.
But there is hope for these magnificent creatures. Good news trickles in, like the recent reintroduction of lions to Liwonde National Park in Malawi. One thing is certain though: we all desperately need to become big cat lovers – before it’s too late.