2011-09-19 – Masai Mara

It is not often that you can witness the entire life of an animal, from its birth to its death, with some extremely intense moments in between. It happened today to us. After finally watching a beautiful crossing at the Cul de Sac, with the huge Crocodiles killing many Wildebeests, we caught up with a single female Cheetah we had watched in the morning and knew being hungry. Soon after finding her we realized that among some rocks not far was a female Thompson’s Gazelle giving birth to a fawn. We documented the whole delivery, including some very interesting behavior by the dominant male. The mother ate the placenta after delivery and after a few minutes the fawn tried to get up. Unfortunately for them, the Cheetah was watching from a termite mound. She understood what was happening and rushed into the scene. The mother Gazelle departed and left the fawn lying on the ground. The Cheetah stood near the fawn, apparently not knowing what to do. The fawn, who by then had learned to stand up, saw the Cheetah and instead of running away, tried to suckle from her. The Cheetah licked the fawn repeatedly, then laid down next to it and played. At times the fawn would try to run and this would invariably spark the Cheetah’s chasing instinct. She tripped it and the fawn stumbled to the ground, until the Cheetah finally grabbed it from the throat and killed it. For some moments it seemed as if the Cheetah was behaving more as a mother for the fawn than as its predator, but then all went back to its natural course, the Cheetah was hungry and needed to eat. It was a really moving scene, we watched in awe at this full display of nature’s cruelty and beauty at the same time, all under the dark cloudy skies of the Masai Mara.