4 days ago (God, I wish I had not skipped this game drive!!), Mike and Uyai found the cheetahs in an area that we call the “cotton fields”, on a fresh kill they had made moments before. Their kill was a young born wildebeest. Survival chances of baby wildebeest are not the highest, and one can see why. In this season, as they are just days or weeks old, they are still quite slow, and with the lack of experience, they are easy prey for predators such as cheetah, lions and leopards.

As the cheetahs were enjoying their lunch, a group (in English the proper term is “journey”) of giraffes approached the cheetahs, to take a look at the goings-on. Giraffes are known to display a lot of curiosity, and sometimes this works against them as they should rather keep out of business that isn’t theirs.

The cheetahs were not very amused, and made sure that the giraffes chose very quickly to make a run for it, and leave the premises.

Cheetahs are not dangerous to giraffes, as cheetahs are far too small to take down a giraffe, but nonetheless, the giraffes chose not to test theory either.

Both cheethas proceeded to finish their meal and moved off to new hunting grounds, making sure not to attract competing carnivores (lions or hyenas for instance) eager on snatching their kill. It is such a delight to watch these incredibly rare animals being successfully hunting. One of the female cheetahs has now chased off her cubs as they have fully grown up now, and are successfully hunting on their own. She has been seen with a couple of make cheetahs, so we are optimistic about her having new babies some time soon in the future.

Female cheetahs seek out make cheetahs for mating, but as soon as they realise they are pregnant (and they do very quickly due to hormonal changes), they become very hostile to male cheetahs and chase them off in a very aggressive manner. Male cheetahs will always make sure to stay far away from a pregnant cheetah female.