Actually, the story is not as simple as it may seem, but this is the way it was presented in the Daily Mail.
As often happens in the wild, young cheetahs (or other young predators) have to learn how to catch and how to kill. In many cases, this goes very fast (think about the birds learning to fly when they first try). But cheetahs are known for spending some time at it. Mothers may catch a prey and teach young ones how to kill. Things may take time and the animals seem to be playing with the prey.
The Daily Mail just forgot to provide the real end of the story: The baby impala did not leave the premises alive. It may happen sometimes, not often, but here it was finally killed and eaten.
The photos were shot by Christine and Michel Denis-Huot, clearly some of the very best wildlife photographers in France (Christine is also commonly leading some photo safaris in Africa, you may find information on their web site).
Note: Impalas are really the most common food for cheetahs, probably because of their size (and large numbers in many parts of East and South of Africa).
The Snow Leopard Trust organizes several scientific works related to the snow leopard. In India, Rishi Sharma pilots a program of camera traps aimed at snow leopards. They produced quite superb images, obviously because they were setup not only with data-collection in mind.
the Barbary Lion, sometimes named Atlas lion or Nubian lion, Panthera leo leo, is a sub-species of African lions which lived in the Atlas mountains (Morocco, Algeria, mainly). It is now totally extinct out of some zoos. But it seems that it was a great animal with a truly impressive look.
Honoring its memory, I collected a few images from the world wide web:
We know few things about this species (near to the Clouded Leopard) that is known under the name of the Bornean Clouded Leopard. But a scientific team recently surprised on of them in the Dermakot Forest Reserve in Malaysia. The team could shoot a short film of it while it is usually a very easily frightened animal which does not let people approach it.
It seems that this area has a quite large diversity of big cats. A place where they are still protected by the lack of human population, but will it be for long?
This new species was discovered last month in Borneo and the lucky photographer just presented amazingly nice photos. Even better, one of them is good enough to allow a direct identification of gender differences and the specific fur coat of juveniles.
The moral in the tale lies somewhere around the need to understand the difference between a big cat who does not climb (the tiger) and one that climbs routinely (the leopard). The monkey knew.
This scan of a children’s book comes from a wonderful compilation of a collection coming from between 1860 and the 1920s and assembled in a book: ‘From Mother Goose to Dr Seuss: Children’s Book Covers 1860-1960‘ by H Darling, 1999.
There are a few more covers in the set (mostly without felines, though) that you can see on Flickr and on Bibliodyssey.
We usually think that a country rich of an impressive wild life like Kenya is nearly out of danger of seeing the full extinction of an emblem of Africa like the lion. This is not all so certain.
According to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), wild lions from Kenya are disappearing quite quickly: 100 lions less each year for the last 10 years. But there are no more than 2000 of them left. The last lion would so die in 20 years.
But Laurence Frank, biologist in the protection group for big cats, Panthera, believes that the KWS estimate is much too low and that the last lion in Kenya has no more than 10 years left!
The pressure applied by the human population onto the wild eco-system of Kenya already seems huge and this is compounded by a smuggling traffic small but measurable.
So, your next safari in Kenya this year may well be the last hope you have to see the king of animals.
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