Maternal trumps predatory

The Daily Mail reports on an unusual turnabout in the predator-prey relationship. A female leopard killed a female baboon, which is normal prey, but then she discovered the baboon's day-old baby:

Legadema, as she has been named by the camera crew who took these moving shots, carefully carries the baby baboon high up into a tree for protection. There, she cuddles the newborn to her for warmth through the long, African night.

"It was as if nature had turned on its head completely," says Dereck Joubert, a filmmaker who followed Legadema for three-and-a-half years in her natural habitat, the Okavango Delta of Botswana - the verdant flood plains known as Africa's Garden of Eden.

"She had killed the mother primate, but then found this live new-born on the ground. The little baboon called out, and we thought we were going to hear a major crunch and the leopard smacking its lips, but instead the baby baboon put its paws out and walked towards the young leopard.

"Legadema paused for a moment, apparently not knowing what to do. Then she gently picked it up in her mouth, holding it by the scruff of its neck and carrying the infant up a tree to keep it safe."

Unsurprisingly, the baby had died by morning, but the leopard spent the entire night cuddling it  and protecting it from hyenas.

Via Arbroath

Comments

[Pixie]

The baby died in a loving environment... an extraordinarily unusual but loving environment. I would prefer a happier ending, but this was ... anyway.

[gail]

Jungle Book doesn't seem so far fetched when you see this.

[Lisa]

Maybe she was saving it for later. They start going bad right when you kill 'em, you know.