We had an amazing experience immediately upon arrival at Ivory Wilderness in the Klaserie Private Nature Reserve: witnessing the aftermath of a lion pride killing a giraffe. Don’t miss the video I embed at the bottom of this post!

Lion working on giraffe Lion working on giraffe

Turns out these weren’t the lions that made the kill: a smaller pride ambushed the giraffe in a brush-filled wash, but shortly thereafter this lion pride arrived and took over. This pride has two males and three females but are a fairly young group. I can’t remember the size of the pride that was forced out.

Male lion Male lion

Our guide was secretive about what we were driving to, and on first arrival we saw the two males lounging under a tree. The looked very content! The lions will spend two or three days feeding off a kill of this size, and they were clearly getting to final edible (to them) parts. Vultures were eagerly standing by: at least 20 of them, two different species.

Female lion Female lion

We then moved over to the group of three females laying near a muddy bath. They were also content, but in short time all five stood up and started to look more active. The males came out first and did a fun display for us (see the video), then the females wandered over to the giraffe and started to feed on the rib cage and skin lining. They were mostly cooperative but there were some challenge growls given.

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