Lions aren’t supposed to be good at this.
The hip-scarred Majingilane heads up the tree first, his ponderous bulk inhibiting him slightly, but his enormous power still enabling him to accomplish the feat.
That’s the old story anyway. Leopards live in the trees, lions stay on the ground, and the two don’t swap roles. So when Brandon watched the Blonde Gijima Male haul himself high up into a tree to take a kill off the Tinxiya Female, it was the kind of sighting that makes you rethink the rule.
And he made quick work of it. This is a big, heavy, beastly lion, and he went up after that carcass with far more ease than you would ever give him credit for. Not pretty, not graceful, but effective. He wanted the meal; the meal was up a tree, so up the tree he went. Shaun D’Araujo even captured him sharing a bit of the meal with his brother waiting below.
The common misconception is that lions can’t climb. The proof is in the pudding; they clearly can. They just aren’t built for it the way a leopard is. A leopard is lighter, more flexible, made for moving through the branches. A lion is pure muscle and bulk, built for wrestling big things to the ground. Climbing is a skill they have but rarely use, so they are a little rusty at it.
Going up, all that power and those big claws work in his favour; that is never really the problem. The problem is coming down! Everything that helped him now works against him. The bulk he muscled up with suddenly wants to pull him off the tree, the claws point the wrong way, and there is no neat way to lower that much weight back to the ground. So they tend to reverse down in a clumsy scramble, or simply commit to the drop and take the whole landing on their joints. For an animal that heavy, coming off that kind of height, that is a serious amount to absorb.
Have a watch of Ranger Brandon and Londolozi Guest Harold Patout’s video of him coming down
It isn’t the first time we have seen a lion do this. Every so often one of them decides a leopard’s hoisted kill is worth the effort and goes up after it, and it almost always plays out the same way. The climb up is surprisingly capable. The climb down is where the entertainment starts.
The Tsalala female climbs a tree for a vantage point on an open crest.
That is what makes a sighting like Brandon and Harold’s so special. We are so used to seeing leopards draped in the branches that a lion up a tree stops you dead. There is something about watching all that size and weight go somewhere it was never really meant to go. The Blonde Gijima Male is built to rule the ground, and for a few minutes he decided the rules didn’t apply to him. You don’t forget a sighting like that in a hurry.
0 Comments
on What Goes Up Must Come Down