The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Or This Morning)

Today was an early day, but also my favorite way to start to the day… research! At 6am, we headed out to see the Ngamo release pride. The researchers observe the lions and see how they react to noises from cars, people, etc. The researchers also look at the relationships between the lions to determine social structures. I took SO many photos today (even though the lions were sleeping most of the time… Remember lions can sleep up to 21 hours per day). Here are a few.

We sat in the caged vehicle for two hours observing the lions. We also got to see another beautiful sunrise.

In the afternoon, we had a day encounter. A day encounter is like the night encounter that we did last night where the lion handlers take a few lions out of the enclosures. We follow the lions in the car for hours to see if they go after any animals or make a kill. Like last night, we followed the lions for about 3 hours and there was no kill. The two chased some wildebeest, but were more interested in sleeping and lying down. Personally, I don’t think two lions are enough to make a kill as lions hunt in their prides. Females are usually the hunters, and both times we did encounters the lion handlers chose mostly males. Here’s one photo I took when I was bored… I’ve been playing around with minimalistic black and white photos as its something different. Maybe I can use it in my art one day!

More later…