Mysery Death

We were very excited and surprised to find a dead Giraffe near the lodge one afternoon game drive. The Giraffe seemed to have a few bite marks around the neck and there were signs of a small struggle. The problem was that the Giraffe was a large full grown male, and feeding on it was a large male leopard. It all fairness, the leopard was huge, I have never seen such a massive male leopard in ten years. One could be forgiven for thinking he was a lioness on her way to a dress up party! So apart from that being of interest we later noticed that he was allowing a young male leopard to feed with him. This was very unusual. I do not know how the Giraffe died; it is highly unlikely that the leopard would have purposely chased the Giraffe with the intent of killing it. I think that possibly, one of two scenarios could have happened, first, the leopard could have surprised the Giraffe while it was lying down early one morning and in the Giraffes haste to get up, could have lost its footing and fallen over. Or, the leopard could have given the Giraffe a fright and as it ran off, could have tripped and fallen over. The only signs of a struggle that I could see was where the Giraffes legs had been flailing around once it was down, there were no obvious signs of a chase. There were no lions in the area at all and even up until now, there has been no lion activity on the carcass. The second most amazing thing about the sighting was watching a huge male leopard allow a young male of no more than 4 years old and no less than 2-2 and half years old feed with him. There were a few growls here and there, but no major aggression. This is quite an unusual sighting to see with two males, they are usually not very tolerant of one another. It may have been because there is so much meat available on the carcass. Thirdly, as mentioned in a previous write up, hyena sightings are few and far between, so you can imagine how excited we all were this morning to discover up to fifteen hyenas feeding on the Giraffe carcass. The cackling and laughing, and growling and howling was unbelievable – the smell however was terrible!

Posted: Exeter Lodges by Craig Paulsen, Date: 30 July 2010

 
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