Hyena Swatted by a Cheetah and Wild dog Chaos- Virtual Safari #246

So this morning I found myself in a little predicament, spoilt with choice. A cheetah has been found, as well as the Ottawa pack of wild dogs, which has got 6 or 7 adults and 9 or 10 pups. So I'm now trying to make up my mind as to where to go this morning, what to enjoy, and it's a cool cloudy morning so both of them, both of the different sightings could be fruitful and there's a very good chance that they'll be moving around and quite likely hunting. So I think I'm going to go with the cheetah, go and join Dean and see what happens. We haven't seen a cheetah for quite some time so it'll be quite fun and exciting to get down there and see that. And you never know, we might even be able to get across to the wild dogs after that. So hold on for now, thanks for joining me on this little adventure this morning and we'll touch base with you shortly. So as we were driving into where the cheetah is we saw a hyena skulking around in the distance so we've just parked beyond the cheetah to see if there's any interaction between the hyena and the cheetah. Hyenas are hugely opportunistic and if they see the vehicles across here they're most likely going to come across to investigate what's happening. I'm secretly hoping for a little bit of activity and by us all being parked here it's most likely going to come and investigate and that could then cause the cheetah to get up and run across towards a fallen marula tree over there and jump up into that so that'll be a photographic marvel if that does happen so fingers crossed that we get a little bit of activity like that happening this morning. That was absolutely insane. Watching any interaction out here in the bush is phenomenal. Let alone seeing a cheetah solitary by itself obviously has nobody else to help it out or to rely on to go up against a hyena which is probably the biggest scoundrel out here in that they just take a chance at any given opportunity and so to see it challenging the hyena and basically forcing the hyena to then move off into the distance was phenomenal. So cheetah's now settled up on their termite mound here, hyena's disappeared off into the distance so peace prevails once again and there is a few nyarla moving through in the distance down there however if the cheetah has any common sense it's not going to try and hunt now because that hyena will very likely hear the hunt go down and there's a chance a hyena will then just come in and steal the rewards from the hunt so it's going to be resting up on the mound now, relaxing, barely isn't too hungry so it's not desperate to hunt but just to see the cheetah moving around watching the little interaction with the hyena was phenomenal. Some of the guys are still with the wild dogs so there's no major rush to get across there. The cheetah wasn't going to do much more, still just resting up on that mound. We've decided to leave and head across to the Chamungwe female and join Melvin. So why did we choose to come to the Chamungwe female as opposed to try and get across to the wild dogs? A number of reasons, firstly it's getting later on in the morning, wild dogs are just down resting, not going to get up to too much I don't think. The Chamungwe female has been pretty elusive as she always is but she is looking very heavily pregnant so I wanted to get some footage of her being very heavily pregnant and also to gauge for myself as to when we presume she's going to give birth. She's now just running around here grooming, you can see a very large belly but it's always so deceptive because they will look heavily pregnant and it'll still take a good week or two before they actually give birth. So she's now just been milling about I presume on a bit of a hunt but also looking for potential den sites where she would like to give birth and that then just helps her narrow it down so when the time does come she knows where to go to to give birth. I'm sure you're also wondering what's all the hype around wild dogs, cheetah, so when one thinks of a traditional safari you think of the big five which is lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino. You don't often think of wild dogs, cheetah, who are the other two larger carnivores or predators that we see out here. The excitement around wild dogs often stems from them being social animals found in a group often very active and hugely interactive or social with each other but also the excitement or the thrill of being on a chase or a hunt with them because they tend to move around a lot in the early hours of the morning, the late hours of the afternoon and are hugely successful predators. The thrill of a cheetah is because it is so rare, cheetah being solitary animals are at the bottom of the predator hierarchy therefore they are out-competed and have a very difficult time with all of the other predators out here and that firstly makes it very difficult for them to survive, constantly having their carcasses or their kills stolen. And they are often or they are at risk of being killed off by many of these other predators So life out here for a lone cheetah is particularly challenging, therefore seeing them is super special and there is a certain air of anticipation or excitement when you do see a cheetah because you know how rare it is but also because if you are to see one hunting or moving around and chase it is the fastest land animal out here. So just seeing an animal moving at such top speeds is very exciting. So to see a cheetah is fantastic. So while we were busy talking about the cheetah there, she got up and slunk back down towards the Mushabin river and I cannot for the life of me find her, so she's done a little sneaky one and disappeared. But on top of that the first rains of the season have arrived so definitely got to love that smell of the first rains, it's also known as petrichor and a little fun fact for you as we are racing back to camp, the human nose is more sensitive to the smell of petrichor than a shark's nose or sense of smell is to the presence of blood in the water. So enjoy that one and we will reconvene the search for her this afternoon or possibly try and head across towards the wild dogs, so we'll see you there. We managed to get ourselves across to the wild dogs this afternoon, they're all busy just sleeping out in the open, thankfully with it being cloudy they haven't had to seek out a too deep a shade and we can see at least five of them out in the open here, one off in the distance there, presuming the pups must be somewhere in the background there just resting in the longer grass that we can't really see. Something's just caught these wild dogs' attention or basically caused some lapwings to take off in the distance and that's somewhat got the attention of the wild dogs, imagine those massive ears, they can hear a lot more than we hear. And actually speaking of which I can just see a whole lot of pup ears in the distance down there sticking up through the grass which I can't see on the camera, so somewhat frustrating but anyway. So we now have Nick coming to join us, so I'm going to stop my ramble now because you can hear the vehicle in the background. So that was pretty awesome, as Nick arrived that almost prompted the wild dogs to all get up and start running around, the pups all came running in, they're just charging all around here. Quite a bit of excitement, I just didn't know where to focus the camera, they all settled down for a short while just rolling around in the grass, scratching, grooming, heading off down the road, so let's follow them for a short while and see where they end up. They're now trotting off into a pretty thick area, there's a few other rangers wanting to get across here and we've had a pretty phenomenal day, starting off with a cheetah having a little scuffle with a hyena, a very heavily pregnant Chamungwe female and then an epic wild dog interaction, it doesn't get much better than that. Subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't already, drop a comment below, let us know what else you want to see and thanks for watching and we'll see you all again next week, but bye for now.