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Cat Wars Lion Vs. Cheetah

Caught on tape in Africa's wild Serengeti,

a stunning act of violence between two top predators.

Cat Wars Lion Vs. Cheetah

A run-in between lions and cheetahs so rare, this is the first time

it's ever been documented.

Look at the energy, the fury.

Like a back-alley ambush, the assault sends survivors scattering,

and leaves bodies battered.

Filmmaker Leo Kuenkel witnessed the attack, and is trying to make sense of it.

Was this a once in a lifetime perfect storm event?

Or do these iconic African cats have a deep-set, sinister reason to fight to the death?

The players in this incredible savannah attack are well-known on the African scene.

The perps, lions.

King of the cats and fiercest of predators.

Hunting the biggest prey,

challenging the most persistent rivals,

and commanding the most impressive prides.

They also have great hair!

Cheetahs are the marks in this bizarre and brutal showdown.

They're top hunters in their own right,

but often considered the underdogs of the big cat world.

Their thin, lanky bodies and long legs are built for speed, not power.

They can do 0 to 50 in under three seconds.

And reach top speeds over 100 kilometers per hour.

But they lack the firepower to defend against aggressors,

and generally, choose flight over fight when threatened.

The scene.

Ndutu, a compact, bountiful corner of Tanzania's famous Serengeti.

It's home to all the top predators,

a tough neighborhood where lions, cheetahs,

leopards and hyenas often cross paths.

They come for the plentiful prey, and a permanent water source that stays wet

even in the dry season.

Witness to the attack is filmmaker Reinhard Leo Kuenkel.

Leo has been living and filming in Africa for more than three decades,

and is passionate about cheetahs.

But in all his years following the spotted cats, he's never seen an event like this.

It's an attack so peculiar, so complex, and so unexpected

he's invited world-renowned lion expert Craig Packer to help him decipher it.

It's such a long time, huh?

Craig is studying the way top predators interact

on the other side of the Serengeti.

Leo hopes he can shed light on what motivated the assault.

Base camp for the investigation is Leo's edit suite-with-a-view.

Craig, I would like you to have a look at that scene,

and I thought I got some very unusual stuff.

On the day of the attack, Leo was out filming on the southern edge

of the Serengeti when he gets an urgent call from his wife.

She called me on the radio saying come over here, something very interesting is happening.

Rushing to her location, he arrives just ahead of the chaos.

Three male cheetahs are hot on the heels of a female who is coming into heat.

They've been pursuing her for hours.

Trying to keep her close until she's ready to mate.

They're also competing with each other for her favor.

These are three territorial males and this is one of your guys.

One of his guys is a large male lion, who's just appeared on the scene.

But the testosterone-fueled male cheetahs are not initially impressed.

Craig is surprised by the cheetah's reaction as the lion approaches.

It looked like he had just lost his balance, but it's very clear

that he slaps the ground.

I've never seen a cheetah threaten a lion before.

I've never seen that either.

Usually, cheetahs would simply run away from the lions in that situation.

But this guy put up a really strong determined show.

And that lion is three times its own weight.

It's a macho move, but fleeting.

It's definitely out of his league, and then he kind of realizes,

"Oh, that was silly, I just threatened a lion."

The female cheetah has a different response.

Three randy males are bad enough-she's not about to take on a lion as well.

Feeling threatened, she's taken cover in an awkward location.

And up there you see a female cheetah, which has tried to escape from the lion

and from the male cheetahs.

Cheetahs often seek out high spots when they're scanning for prey,

but this is extreme.

She was standing there, she was shivering.

I could see her legs, they were really shivering fast while she was watching the lion

and she was also watching the three males.

Terrified, the female decides to make a run for it.

And when she saw a chance, she actually jumped down from up there,

jumped down and then raced off at 100 miles an hour,

and all we could do then is to follow her because the three males

were also chasing her, trying to catch up with her.

I revved up the engine and raced after them, but they were so fast it was really hard

to keep up with those guys.

By the time he catches up, the action has resumed.

The males have tracked the female to her new hiding place in a bush.

They're so intent on getting the girl, they cast their coalition relationships aside

and compete fiercely for her attention.

It's like they got this once chance with this female and instead of making

a good first impression, they're really rude and they're really aggressive

and they really try to grab them.

So presumably they're trying to make sure that they mate with her

before she moves on to a different area.

The males are desperate to seal the deal.

And now is when the noise started, she protested and they just jumped on her.

In their excitement, the males fail to notice that they're still being stalked.

The lion is following, albeit at his own, more stately pace.

They were calling and calling and making a big noise and fighting each other

and that attracted and motivated that lion.

Leo was as surprised as the cheetahs.

I was filming, from the car, and suddenly on my left-hand side,

the lion came in and I was very lucky my camera was on when he rushed in.

The lion came out with that female in its teeth and by that time you

could tell she was already dead.

He's crushing her skull, this is the same way they kill lion cubs.

Yeah.

It's a gruesome hit.

A fearsome display of force.

But strangely, the male cheetahs barely seem to notice.

And those guys are fighting again while he is still busy killing the female.

What an incredible situation.

Right there at the scene, the male cheetahs continue to squabble, madly

vying for the attention of their dead companion while her killer is still on the prowl.

Leo can't believe what he's seeing.

Not even in his wildest imagination could he have conceived

of an event like this.

And what he didn't know at the time, the violence was just getting started.

Seeing the attack on tape, Craig is as surprised as Leo was.

Typically, what I see is just the lions show up and the cheetahs skedaddle.

There's no simple reason why a powerful male lion should feel the need

to track and attack four adult cheetahs who were minding their own business.

Before getting to the rest of the encounter,

Craig wants some background on both perpetrator and pursued.

So, this is the three males after the female.

Yeah, this is the coalition of three males.

They would have been in their prime, say four or five years old.

The three were probably brothers, who had stayed together

when they left their mother.

Cheetah males form these coalitions to improve their chances of getting

and holding good territory.

A good range means lots of prey, and is also likely to attract more females,

who travel great distances looking for worthy mates.

When a female enters their territory, the males try to assess

if she's coming into heat.

If she is, they'll keep on her until she's ready to mate.

I've seen a male cheetah mate with a female and it's a very short, very unromantic affair.

She crouches down, he grabs her at the nape and he pulls as hard,

as if he wants to take her coat off, and they basically part within

half an hour or so.

- And he may never see her again. - Never see her again and that's it.

With mates and quality real estate hard to come by,

competition between cheetah coalitions can be fierce.

Skirmishes between groups get nasty, sometimes leading to injury or even death.

Once dominance is established, the victors keep the territory.

The losers beat a careful, submissive retreat.

In the case of Leo's cheetahs, it's not coalitions battling for territory,

it's blood brothers squabbling over a female.

There's no doubt that can drive males of most species to distraction,

but Leo has never seen a sibling rivalry cause such blatant disregard

for mortal danger.

This one-of-a-kind video is changing our understanding of just how irresistible

a female can be, and just how irrational her suitors can get.

What's puzzling is how strongly the hormones effect their brain in such a way

that they totally neglect the danger.

I mean, something must be happening there, something strong.

Their testosterone levels are peaking, their need to mate all-consuming.

It's putting them in danger, but at least it's a biological explanation

for the cheetahs' recklessness.

Craig is not so sure the same can be said about the lion's strange behavior.

He's not looking for sex, he's out for blood.

So right here he's making no attempt to conceal himself,

so, this is the way they would behave towards a stranger in their territory.

But Craig sees no motive for the display of dominance.

Craig thinks brothers like this should have had more important things to do

than harass a few scrawny cheetahs.

Most males of their stature would be busy trying to take over new prides,

or protecting their own prides from the fierce advances of other males.

These clashes can be vicious.

Male lions have been known to fight each other to the death.

The battles are winner take all.

Territory, prey,

and, most importantly,

females.

The victors get mating rights to the lionesses,

a chance to sire the next generation of lions.

Sadly, it's not a happy ending for everyone.

When a takeover succeeds, the conquerors engage in one of the most brutal acts

in the animal kingdom.

They chase down and kill any cubs from the previous pride males.

It's a grizzly but effective way to ensure that their genes will be passed on.

And, it's the quickest way to get the pride females back in heat.

With such high stakes in the world of lions, it's amazing Leo's lion is wasting his time

with the cheetahs, exhibiting unusual persistence

for little apparent gain.

You know, this is a very unusual situation.

As Craig scrolls back through the footage, he's intrigued

by the lion's uncharacteristic determination.

Usually, it's like always against one.

Lions are notoriously lazy, especially during the heat of the day.

Yet, he's just watched this one follow the cheetahs in the blazing sun, dive headlong

into a bush to take them on, then crush the skull of the unfortunate female.

What Craig hasn't seen a hint of is why he's going to all that trouble.

That's the big mystery he and Leo are trying to solve.

See I don't think there's any reason to expect lions to want to remove cheetah

from an area because the way they occupy the habitat is so different.

The lions like to stay in adequate cover and they stay hidden

and they don't actually go where the herds are.

Though they patrol the same general territories,

the two predators have very different hunting techniques,

so, they're not even competing for the same prey.

Lions use their strength, size and numbers to go after the big boys,

buffalo,

zebra,

wildebeest,

and even giraffes.

Their hunts are masterpieces of teamwork when they attack en masse,

or exhibitions of pure power when they venture out alone.

Cheetahs, on the other hand, are specialists.

They lack a lion's heavy artillery, instead relying on their unparalleled speed

to catch their prey.

On the open plains, they use their tails as rudders and their long hind legs

and flexible spines to generate massive forward thrust.

Their technique works.

They actually take down close to 50% of the prey they go after

a far higher success rate than lions.

But for the most part, lions couldn't be bothered with the prey cheetahs hunt.

Too small.

Not worth the effort.

And, usually, too fast and agile to catch.

What lions will do is steal a meal from a cheetah after it's killed.

This is a primary point of conflict between the two specie But it's never an even fight.

Cheetahs have no chance against the bigger, stronger marauders.

And lions aren't the only culprits.

Cheetahs often lose kills to other predators and scavengers before they can eat their fill.

It's for this reason Craig doesn't believe lions would see cheetahs

as competitors worth killing.

Why Leo's video is so uniquely disturbing.

It makes no sense to me that lions would want to kill an animal that can capture gazelle.

To the contrary, he thinks lions benefit from having cheetahs around.

The cheetah is a great source of a free meal.

If I were a smart lion, I would keep a pet cheetah, 'cause then they could catch me dinner.

But if that's the case, why is this lion so intent on putting a further

dent in Africa's dwindling cheetah population?

Is there something they're missing?

Some reason the cheetahs don't feel the need to run for their lives?

They used to be the best of brothers and now they have this deadly fight going on.

So, this is within seconds or?

This is within seconds, this would be 50 meters away from where the lion is killing

the female, and then these guys fighting each other

to the death over a dead female.

It's as if they don't know the female is dead.

If anything, they become even more aggressive.

And even less concerned about the presence of the lion,

or lions,

because the threat has suddenly doubled.

The first lion, a bit winded from his slaughter of the female,

is quietly joined by a second impressive male.

He was still fresh. He was still curious.

More than just curious.

The cheetahs scramble out of reach,

then quickly resume their excited squabbling.

It's a bad move, and they'll soon pay the price.

With their mate dead only meters away, and two threatening lions now on their

trail, the male cheetahs have every reason to flee the scene.

Instead, they continue squabbling amongst themselves as if nothing has happened.

They're playing a dangerous game, and the new arrival wants a piece of the action.

After his initial exploratory charge, he goes in for the kill.

- Whoa. - Isn't that incredible?

I didn't believe it when I saw it through the viewfinder.

And now look, the two lions are tearing that poor fellow apart.

No, it's incredible, just incredible.

He's using all his strength, that lion, to kill that cheetah.

He's doing a good job.

As if the action isn't rare enough, Leo and his wife were able to capture it

on two separate cameras.

Watching the attack from all angles, Craig marvels at the lion's potent technique.

Look how he uses his claws to lift up the neck and curl it in.

He's grabbing him, he's holding him in such a position that now he can,

he needs to get the back of the neck.

Once he does that then he can snap its spine.

But then the way the other guy came up and held on to the other end,

that's like a gang attack on another lion.

So, they're obviously treating the cheetah like a dangerous animal.

And they're not going to eat it, they just want to kill it.

They do that with little trouble, while still keeping track

of the remaining two cheetahs.

Incredibly, it takes yet another charge to convince the survivors

to head for safer ground.

And even then, the saga isn't over.

Not completely satisfied, one of the lions returns to the dead cheetah.

For Leo, who has known these cheetahs for many months, the violence is hard to watch.

And he still can't believe that when push finally came to shove,

the agile cheetah couldn't evade the bigger, slower lion.

Until, he notices something strange in the footage.

Something he hadn't noticed when he was shooting the horrific attack.

One has to realize that normally cheetahs are so fast they

can easily outrun any lion so in that way

they can handle a situation like that.

But in this case, the cheetah seems slow to react.

Leo only sees the anomaly when they look at the footage in slow motion.

There is something peculiar about the cheetah's movements.

It looks to me as if this one was wounded. This cheetah there was injured.

What do you think?

Could be. He's slow to get up, he doesn't have huge strength in his back end.

- You see what I mean? - Yeah, maybe, he got a swiped at.

See the lack of acceleration, he's getting good pull in the front, but not in the back.

The question is, can they find out when he got injured?

Was it an old injury, or a fresh wound from the day's brawling?

So, I think what happens here is that one is okay.

He's coming over to join the other two, and this one, he's not well, he's down,

he's staying there.

The other one comes in, he stays down, the other one leaps over,

so, he stays down, and this is the one that's gonna die, right?

This is the one you've got, so when the lion comes up and catches up,

that's the one that's most exhausted.

That's the one, that's the one that gets killed.

But did the injury happen then, or was he already hurt

when his brothers jumped him?

Could it also be that when the lion rushed in and eventually killed the female,

he hit one of the escaping males?

Two of the males scamper away quickly, but the other takes longer

to extract himself from the bush.

So, one possibility is that this guy gets a swipe at the male as he goes

and gets the female.

I think that might have been the same one.

Could be the case, yeah.

Whether it was dodging the lion or scuffling with the other cheetahs,

the soon-to-be victim had ample opportunity to sustain a hit.

And the injury, however it was caused, may explain his final inability to escape.

But it still doesn't solve the biggest puzzle of all,

why the lions were so committed to killing the cheetahs in the first place.

Unless, the lions were just lumping cheetahs in with their true mortal enemies,

hyenas and leopards.

And if they had reason to do that, the violence might be warranted.

But both Leo and Craig are familiar with the way lions interact

with the other top predators,

and believe these relationships might hold the key to understanding the attack.

Although their survival in the wild is threatened, we thin of lions as the top predators

on the African plains.

And they are.

Proud, powerful,

deadly.

But just because they're bigger and stronger than everyone else doesn't mean

they don't have enemies.

Enemies who are willing to engage when the odds are in their favor.

It's an aspect of lion life Craig and his field team have been studying extensively

at the Serengeti Lion Project, not far from Ndutu.

Leo hopes their results might provide some useful information

about the rare attack he witnessed.

The team is trying to learn exactly how predators coexist, or don't, as the case may be.

Led by graduate student Ali Swanson, Craig's study uses camera traps

to capture predator interactions.

We have 200 cameras set up across the study area, which is 1000 square kilometers.

And we have so many traps because, you know, a few pictures can give us an anecdote

about what these animals are doing, but hundreds or thousands gives us a story.

And these trees seem to catch the full suite of species.

Like this one tree has caught lions, leopards, cheetahs and hyenas. Just at different times.

Huh, hyenas,

ah, we got a leopard.

Like surveillance cameras at a 24-hour convenience store,

the traps reveal the comings and goings of all the local residents.

The hyenas are the most frequent shoppers.

There's an aardvark and then hyenas. Um, hyenas after hyenas after hyena.

Hyenas outnumber lions 3-1 in this part of Africa,

and are quick to use their numbers to their advantage.

Covering the same ground.

Hunting the same prey.

And scavenging the same leftovers.

The two species often come into conflict.

They chase each other.

Steal from each other.

And even seem to wage all out war.

The battles can be savage.

The two species also go after each other's young.

It's easier to take out the competition before the competition can fight back.

This infanticide is a large part of what makes lions and hyenas mortal enemies.

It's also at the heart of lions' hatred for leopards.

Like cheetahs, leopards often find themselves out-muscled by adult lions.

So, they try to pick off cubs to lessen the competition.

Lions are quick to return the favor.

They'll kill any leopard they can catch in order to protect their own young.

Craig believes lions might extend their loathing for leopards

to other spotted cats as well.

I think it's quite possible that lions can't really tell the difference

between a cheetah and a leopard.

If all spotted cats are created equal to a lion, it might explain why

the Ndutu lions were pursuing the cheetahs with such vigor.

But Leo's not convinced.

He's sure lions can tell the difference, and isn't comfortable explaining away

the attack as a case of mistaken identity.

But he does think there are some relevant similarities in the relationships

between the three cats.

One last missing link that could provide a clear motive for the attack.

Trying to understand the brutal scene he captured on tape,

filmmaker Leo Kuenkel has examined every frame of his extraordinary footage,

and together with lion expert Craig Packer,

he's dissected the complex web of animosity between Africa's top predators.

For lions, hyenas and leopards, it's a volatile mix of competition for prey,

overlapping territories,

and perhaps of utmost importance, attacks on the young.

But does the same hold true for cheetahs?

Could an instinct for cub-killing have played a role in the attack Leo witnessed,

even though there were no cubs around?

To find out, Leo and Craig will have to look at both sides of the deadly equation.

First up are cheetah cubs, and they are never safe.

In fact, experts believe that in areas where other large predators abound,

up to 90% of all cheetah cubs are killed before they reach three months of age.

So that leaves only one last crucial question.

We know that hyenas can kill lion cubs and we know that leopards can kill lion cubs

and kinda the gap in our knowledge has always been, do cheetah ever kill lion cubs?

If they do, it would explain why Leo's lions felt such a persistent urge

to destroy the cheetahs they were following.

In the lions' eyes, it would elevate cheetahs to the same detested category as hyenas

and leopards, mortal enemies to be killed at any opportunity.

Problem is, Craig has never seen or heard of a cheetah taking out a lion cub.

Neither has Leo, though he once came close.

I haven't seen a cheetah killing a lion cub, but I've seen a cheetah,

a female cheetah chasing two lion cubs.

Leo remembers it well.

A female cheetah pursuing the two small lion cubs with deadly intent.

If they had been two weeks younger and their mother hadn't been around,

I'm sure that particular female would have killed them.

It's not quite a smoking gun, but it's enough to suggest that lions might,

after all, have good reason to treat cheetahs the same way the treat the other top predators.

Chase, catch and kill.

If cheetah can kill lion cubs and do kill lion cubs, it would make a lot of sense

that these males who are resident in a pride would want to be eradicating

any potential predators for their own babies.

I think so, too. Yeah.

And I think that would explain the behavior that we've seen here.

It's the final piece of the puzzle, and lets us finally watch

the rare events unfold with a true understanding of what went down and why.

A female cheetah in heat,

trapped by her suitors, in the wrong place

at the wrong time.

Three male cheetahs blinded by lust and an inborn drive to mate at all costs.

A battle wound that limited mobility,

and two powerful male lions,

ruthlessly pursuing rivals who might be a threat to their young.

A perfect storm on the African plains, and a lucky filmmaker in the perfect position

to capture it all on tape.

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.