Intrigued as I was with the news, I rewound to about a week earlier, in the middle of our African safari, when we were spotting lions and lionesses by the dozen.
The image I had in my mind of the lioness, a 3-foot tall, 5-foot long 150 kg killing machine was a wee bit different than what we ended up encountering. We were expecting a fierce predator, intimidating to venture near, an animal in whose vicinity potential prey dare not tread. Thank you, National Geographic. What we saw in reality, though, was a completely different story. Lions and lionesses being nocturnal, normally rest during the day. That we expected. That they would look like cute stuffed animals, we did not!
Maybe they were habituated to humans, maybe they were plain bored, I can’t put my finger to the exact problem, but the fact is that they barely opened their eyes when our vehicle was 3 feet away from them! This behavior was universal too. Fearlessness? Maybe. We were still impressed with their demeanor (though that could be plain envy, I mean, sleeping all day long?), their grace, their carriage. Admittedly though, seeing 40-odd lions and lioness sleeping in the wild was a little disappointing.
Till that day.
So there we were, on our way out of Serengeti when we came across the most thrilling part of our trip, one that would stay etched in our memories for a long time. We spotted a bunch of lionesses, on the alert, and a pack of zebras in the distance. Creeping upto the herd, the primary lioness came in plain sight of the zebra herd around 20 meters from them. Zebras are either very brave or incredibly stupid. I mean, lionesses may be lazy, but they are apex predators! 10 meters. 5 meters. Nothing. It was only when the lioness started actually running full speed toward the zebras that they finally realized they needed to get away. And that they did in style, complete with a cloud of dust and all. The hunt failed and the lioness returned to ground zero, with the zebras observing from a safe distance.
Just then, a lone wildebeest in search of water, came skipping and hopping right into the area where the lionesses were. I mean, I have heard a lot about survival of the fittest, animal instinct, sharp sense of smell and hearing etc. The wildebeest demonstrated none of these signs of evolution. Two lionesses took strategic positions and gave chase. The wildebeest did the first intelligent thing of the morning by changing direction midway through the chase, thus escaping death by a whisker. Another failed hunt. That was two on two in the space of a half hour. Given the information that there are a few thousand lions in the East African conservation areas, I was wondering how they manage to catch anything at all! Of course, given the information on the probability of an actual kill, I put it in perspective and realized that just because these predators are primed to chase and kill doesn’t always mean successful kills – in fact, more often than not, the hunts would be fruitless (or animal-less).
Gives one some perspective on human work life…people are skilled in their own ways, primed to execute the job they are paid to do (ok, not all people, but this remains the assumption). But the actual “kills” that meet or surpass expectations are few and far between. These kills keep one alive (in a manner of speaking), but if they don’t happen for a long enough time, survival is threatened. People who make kills/scavenge on other peoples’ kills survive a bit longer. In time, we’re all weakened, unable to perform kills routinely enough, and have to make way for those who can.
How much have we really evolved?
