Historias al fuego del campamento

En Lower Zambezi, en Chiawa Camp, Dave Cumings comienza con sus historias:

HISTORIAS DE AFRICA #2: The largest lion pride on earth

From Dave Cumings

No history has ever been recorded, that was 47.

46??

47. Grant says 46, I say 47, but anyway it’s irrelevant, once you got over 40, you’re getting a very unusual size. But this group stayed together for 84 years. There had been big prides of lions in 85 before, around the 40 level, but for very short periods: weeks, a month and nobody knows why. Three or four prides get together and then part after few weeks. So this is the first time there was a total single pride stayed together with bonded males and cubs and we there was also a very heavy elephant poaching going on at the time; we used to loose between 40 and 50 elephants a year to poaching. And slowly with our arrival in the park and intensive anti-poaching we began to get on top of the poachers. And the more successful we got the lion pride size started to diminish, until one day they actually split up into four about three years later.

We discovered that what was actually happening, you know there is a natural mortality rate with lion cubs of about 86% and that’s due to hyenas, crocodiles when they are crossing these little rivers and things, and what these animals were doing they were just moving from one elephant carcass to another the poachers were killing and because there is four times meat there they would be there for a week and the natural mortality rate disappeared almost immediately