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The lioness adopted the baby antelope
In 2018, photographer Gordon ·Donovan from New York traveled to Etosha National Park in Namibia in search of spectacular wildlife imagery. The main subject he wanted to photograph this time was the lion, because he thought it was the most representative of Africa's wild animals.
So he was led by a local guide to the edge of a lion colony and began to squat for filming.
Such an ordinary shoot allowed him to shoot the most counterintuitive picture, and he soon captured a strong lioness with his camera. But that's not the point, the point is that this lioness is actually taking care of a baby springbok! The camera recorded the lioness warmly holding the little springbok in her arms, licking it from time to time, as if she was treating a lion cub. And this little springbok also seems to have no sense of resistance at all, sometimes the lioness releases it, and it will not run away, but will get close to the lioness.
Gordon · Donovan couldn't believe his eyes, and he checked the photos repeatedly to make sure that he was not hallucinating. He then asked the guide if he had any idea of what he was going to do with such a picture. The guide recognized the lioness as a local lion pack that had recently changed leaders, and the new leader had killed all the cubs of the previous leader, probably because she was so sad that she had lost her child, so she adopted the springbok.
Gordon · Donovan nodded, he actually didn't quite believe it, he thought the lioness was just playing with food. But what happened next made him have to doubt it.
In the more than 2 hours of Donovan's shooting, the lioness continued to show her warm side, and even a pair of pregnant lionesses approached the lioness and the little springbogus, obviously the goal was to hunt the little springbock, and the lioness actually got up to stop it, chased and roared to drive away the pregnant lioness.
It even protected the baby springbok from a pair of lions looking for food!
Donovan later said in an interview: "It was a strange and amazing sight. I was excited to see the lion at first, and I waited for it to hunt the springbok. But instead of doing this, it began to take care of and protect the little springbok. This is the mystery of nature, never knowing what will happen next. ”
After finishing the shooting and leaving, he came here again the next day, and he never saw the lioness and the springbok again, and he didn't know what happened next.
This is not the first time it has happened
In 2002, a lioness in Kenya's Samburu National Reserve made international news when rangers spotted her strange behavior in adopting newborn antelopes. Compared to other similar incidents, this side seems to be more harmonious, because the little antelope also tries to eat the lioness's milk, and the lioness is not resistant at all!
In October 2012, a photographer was documenting a lion hunt in Uganda when he saw a surprising sight: a lioness had adopted a cub after killing and eating a female antelope.
The photographer is Adri · de · Visser, and it can be seen from the images he posted that the lioness rubbed her nose against the little orphaned antelope, biting its neck and taking it away as if it were her own cub. According to several media reports at the time, when the lioness faced the poor, helpless little antelope, her maternal instincts came into play.
But is that really the case?
Can there be a happy ending?
The follow-up of the 2012 and 2018 lionessses adopting antelope is unknown, but the 2002 incident is documented. The follow-up was not as good as imagined, and in the end, the adopted gazelle still died, and then the lioness ate it.
Craig ·Parker, director of the Center for the Lion Research at the University of Minnesota, said that everyone loves the beautiful story of lions and antelope lying together, but the truth is not what we think, and it is common for felines to play with their prey, and they do so that they seem docile, but always end in tragedy.
Parker said the scenes depicted in the photos are familiar to anyone who has studied lions and anyone who has seen cat and mouse. These are just variations of cat-and-mouse games, where cats will grab their prey and play until they get bored and leave, or eat it when they are hungry. He noted that lions and other big cats are surprisingly gentle when playing with young, weak prey, but only to keep their prey alive, prolonging the game of cat and mouse.
So how to explain that the little antelope does not resist at all?
Parker explained that its escape instinct had not yet worked. The "adoptees" in the events here are baby impalas, baby gazelles and baby springbos, which are still poor in their running ability in their infancy, so when their mothers graze, they hide in the bushes, remaining still and docile to minimize the chances of being spotted, which is their strategy.
So when they are spotted by the lion and pulled to their side, they just stand there and they don't know how to escape. When they see a lion, they are reacting to the presence of a huge, warm body, not yet aware that danger has come.