Caught in the act

Having camera traps around the Reserve has turned out to be a great way to ‘sneak up’ on animals and learn about their behaviour, without disturbing them in their daily life. Every time Research manager Botilo downloads images from a camera trap, it is a surprise what happened while animals were just living their lives. Here is the story of a hide-and-seek leopard in action: “Leopards have a very broad-based diet. They hunt and eat anything from lizards, birds, rodents to calves of antelopes such as wildebeest. In some instances, leopards have been recorded catching catfish in drying muddy pans. This makes leopards one of the most highly adapted predators in African landscapes. This male leopard has been witnessed on camera trap spending hours on end at this waterhole. The evidence provided by the same camera trap has shown the leopard using the log to stalk and catch some guinea fowls approaching from the other side. In this instance, probably an oblivious antelope coming to quench its thirst due to the rising temperature of our unforgiving summers. During the driest months of the season, predators spend most of their hunting efforts around water sources, knowing too well that animals are always going to have a drink at some point of the day. This can have an ecological effect on certain hunted species like kudu and waterbuck who are very sedentary towards water sources. This leopard spends a lot of time around this waterhole since I set the camera in August. Camera traps are indeed helpful in identifying individual animals across a vast wilderness as Limpopo-Lipadi.” If you would like to be a part of our conservation efforts, do call on us. For discreet information on share sales, contact generalmanager@limpopo-lipadi.org. To book a safari, request our rates via reservations@limpopo-lipadi.org or via WhatsApp: (+267) 76770191.