Over the weekend, I spent some time with a small pride of lions. Initially, they just lay in the sun, but later a couple of the females got up and began to stalk a pair of warthogs which were foraging nearby. The warthogs knew that something was going on even if they couldn’t see the lions, so they never strayed into striking range – I decided to try to video the event, rather than taking still photos, so I only have the following blurry image (which is a frame from the video).
Later, once everyone’s pulse had returned to normal, the pride settled down and the male surveyed his sleeping females through the long grass.
We could hear cubs calling from the thickets behind the pride, but they never showed themselves. Nevertheless, this female got up at the sound of the the cubs’ yelping and paced around. We left her them to rest, not wanting to disturb her if she had very small cubs nearby.