On our game drives we had the good chance to come across a pride of lions. Two males, six females and a cub. We saw them on two different occasions. On the one sighting they were quite sleepy. Well fed perhaps so not much reason to move. On the second occasion they were also lying in the shade but we watched the cub playing, jumping on the females and on a male. Both their responses were so touching and caring.

They started walking around and we watched as a male sniffed the pee of a female who had gone before and bared his teeth – a mechanism called Flehmen designed to show him if the female is in heat. By sniffing deeply, and then pulling back their lips, they are in fact ‘testing’ the chemical content of the urine left behind by the earlier animal.  

Another male stood up and looked as if he was coughing and promptly vomited. We are not sure why.

We sat quietly and watched them as they stretched, one male had a paw on a branch of a tree, another female cuddled the cub.

Sniffing male

Ended our day listening to some mighty snorting hippos.