DO NOT DARE TOUCH MY LITTLE ONE

After a gentle African rain poured down over the Crater in the night and then stopped. We had a chance to start our game drive after breakfast at 0800 am. We had a great general sightings of wildebeest, zebras, lions, cheetah, gazelles, birds, bat eared fox and many more.

At around 12h45 we came across a big buffalo breading herd near the Hippo pool. Those animals were lying down chewing the cud when we stopped to look at them. For the first 10 minutes we noticed that one female among them was pregnant and started delivering the calf. It took her 3 minutes to deliver the baby and she started licking{cleaning it}.

About 7 metres from them there were 4 spotted hyena lying down too. When the calf was struggling to stand up the hyena realised that they could take a chance. They suddenly started stalking the new born calf. The mother was trying to defend her calf and was assisted by another female from the group. They were able to protect the baby and it survived. The hyena were not succeessful in killing the calf  and instead settled on eating the placenta.

Posted: Ngorongoro Crater by Aboutwalib Gunda, Date: 28 April 2012