For a while, it looked like these lions had a giraffe dinner in the bag.
South Africa's Kruger National Park is a place where tourists are regularly treated to insane scenes of life and death being played out by the park's predators and prey. It isn't uncommon to see prey animals fighting to avoid becoming just another link in the food chain. This sometimes leads to encounters one does not see too often.
In today's video, a small pride of lions has sighted an old giraffe that they think will make for an easy meal. Sure enough, they catch up to him.
This giraffe has one lion riding on his back and two more clamped onto his back legs. It's a wild scene where the giraffe has no chance right? Well, just watch to find out.
What a wild video. It looked like this giraffe was doomed. Five or six lions against one giraffe? We don't care how large the prey is, those are not good odds. One would think with those three lions clamped down, there was no escaping. It almost feels like this giraffe has been through this before. He didn't appear to panic, he stayed calm and just dragged the lions along for the ride. However, it turns out that giraffes have a nasty and mean reputation of their own. They are more than capable of handling themselves.
The video's description says this footage was captured by safari guide Francois Pienaar. This footage was captured in the Klaserie Game Reserve which is right next door to Kruger. The lions stalked the giraffe for almost 20 minutes before making their move. What resulted afterwards was a nearly five hour struggle.
"The old bull giraffe, fighting to stay standing, managed to throw the lions off his back and fought his way out by trying to stomp on the lions," the video's description reads.
This is a classic case of "survival of the fittest" and this giraffe fits that description to a T. It just goes to show there are no easy meals in nature, no matter how ferocious of a predator you happen to be.
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
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