In Tanzania, Nature at its Rawest
Sep 17th, 2009 by wwftravel
© Frederick J Weyerhaeuser / WWF-Canon
WWF member Barbara Russell of Grayson, Ga., was with WWF this past February during a small-group tour of Tanzania. Russell recently told us about a few of the most exciting animal sightings from her tour:
“It was a windy day, and we were watching about five lions. All of a sudden, we saw a group of warthogs— two grown ones with maybe three babies. We didn’t think anything of it, but then we saw the lions crouching down. The head lioness used our land rover as cover. She was right there—I could have put my hand out the window and touched her, she was that close! And you could see the other lions looking at her and you knew she was giving them signals.
“This went on for about 30 minutes—they were creeping closer and closer to the warthogs. The lioness finally left our land rover and went behind a bush. The lions were now in a half circle around the warthogs. All of a sudden, the warthogs perked up their heads—I guess the winds had changed and they smelled the lions.
“A couple of the lions ran after the warthogs. The lions came so close but didn’t catch them. The other lions that hadn’t been involved in the chase just sat up and seemed to say, ‘What happened?’ ”
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“While at Ngorongoro Crater, we were so excited because we had just seen a group of lions have a kill. Right afterwards, our guide, Abu, said, ‘Look over there,’ and there was a wildebeest [giving birth].
“Abu said the baby had to get up within 20 minutes in order to survive. So I timed this little thing. He was having such a hard time getting up. He was slipping and sliding, because of the amniotic fluid. He was trying to get up, and there was a jackal hovering near it. We knew what the jackal was trying to do and we were rooting for the little wildebeest.
“The jackal circled around, and when the baby was almost up the jackal grabbed its tail and pulled it back down. The mama wildebeest turned around and scared him off, but he still hung around, and the poor wildebeest kept on slipping.
“Finally, 20 minutes later, the baby got up and the jackal decided it was no longer worth it.”
Join WWF’s Tanzania Safari, scheduled February 12-24, 2010, or WWF’s Tanzania for Families safari, scheduled June 27 – July 9, 2010.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy learing about WWF’s work in Tanzania.
