A PAIR of lionesses were ambling through the grass; three cubs were scampering around them. A delightful spectacle, but this was the African bush, not Disneyland. The lionesses were not going for a stroll. It was many hours since their last meal, so they were out to kill and feed.
As for the cubs, they were playing regardless of their doom. I said to our guide that they had presumably survived the worst menaces that overshadow leonine infancy, but was told that this was not the case. Unfortunately for them, the leader of their little pride was a ten-year-old lion. That is late middle-age in the lion world and, in the same neighbourhood, a four-year-old lion was lurking. Driven from his pride by a seven-year-old, he was looking for lionesses of his own, and in a fight he would probably be too strong for a ten-year-old. Even if the older fellow defied the odds and fought off the four-year-old, there would soon be other challengers.
Once the new lion was in charge, he would expect his conjugal rights, which would create a problem. Lactating lionesses lose interest in sex. But a lioness without a cub stops lactating. So the new master of the pride would simplify matters with three brutal paw strokes. There was almost no possibility that the three cubs would survive to adulthood.
We drove on for a few hundred yards, to an apparently pastoral scene. As the sun declined towards evening, a large herd of buffalo was slowly emerging from shade. In front of them – a tawny flash in the grass – a Thomson’s gazelle was sheltering. Then, suddenly, there was tension among the buffalo; they had probably got wind of the lionesses. On this occasion, the buffalo had nothing to fear. A single fully grown buffalo is hard prey even for a lion, and this was a herd of 150 or so with many powerful males to protect the calves.
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