It is night in the African bush
where the familiar becomes mysterious and the unfamiliar is strange indeed.
It is the time and place where lions come into their own...
and man does not willingly venture.
In this dark realm they reign supreme;
they are the kings;
They are the Lions of the African Night.
A day in the bushveld of southern Africa draws to a close
and a pride of 30 lions
that has dozed and slept through the long, hot day lazes on.
This pride is unusually large two or three times larger than most,
and for small cubs life in such a pride can be hard.
When food is scarce, competition at kills is fierce,
and it's the little cubs that always suffer.
The males that sired these cubs
have deserted their big family to form a new pride
elsewhere with younger lionesses.
Now, all the adults in this pride are females.
They rest on, waiting for the day to cool,
for lions are seldom active when it is hot
and like most prides, this one hunts mainly at night.
They'll hardly stir until the sun has set.
As the day winds down, young baboons cavort in a last burst of play.
The sounds of day merge through the evening into those of an African night
A hyena sniffs the night as the clan set out on their hunt.
A toktokkie beetle taps out the signal that will find him a mate.
And from somewhere close by comes an answer.
Each hole, cut to the same pear-shaped pattern,
serves the same remarkable purpose of magnifying the sound
made by the slender tree cricket that shapes them.
To advertise for a mate,
the male cricket has developed a system comparable to a loudspeaker
where a vibrating membrane his wings is surrounded by a baffle.
The leaf is the cricket's soundboard,
and the sound produced is magnified in intensity as much as three times.
But simply tapping on the ground
seems to work well enough for the toktokkie beetles.
In their first hunt of the night the lions have failed to make a kill.
They have panicked and scattered a mixed herd of zebra and wildebeest,
which are still vulnerable as they try to regroup.
The lions have approached their prey on a broad front
and are now spread out at intervals through the bush listening.
When hunting at night, lions rely almost entirely on their acute hearing
They move noiselessly through the darkness,
stopping frequently to stand motionless
listening for the slightest sounds of their prey
Although the lions may not see any better at night than their prey,
the deep shadows provide more cover for stalking.
The herd has picked up the scent.
Lions pay no heed to wind direction.
They're not aware that the wind will carry their scent to the quarry.
And, like most hunts, this one ends in failure.
With so many mouths to feed, a pride like this one has to hunts every night.
To survive, each year they will have to kill about
250 animals the size of a wildebeest.
From crevices, burrows, and holes
animals that have slept through the day are emerging.
These night apes will feed until daybreak on tree resin and insects
moving with prodigious leaps through the trees.
Hippos, having slept and rested in the river all day, emerge now to feed.
At night they graze on grasses and sedges along the river's edge.
But sometimes when food is scarce,
they will lumber several miles inland to find enough to eat.
By dawn each will have consumed about 80 pounds of forage.
From his burrow entrance a porcupine tests the safety of the night
before he leads his family out to feed
The tiny pups, only a few weeks old,
will accompany their parents along regular trails
in their search for the bulbs, roots, and bark on which they live.
The lions have trapped a warthog in its burrow.
It's a prize they cannot resist, and they will dig until they unearth it.
Fierce and frantic, the warthog in its burrow lunges
with its sharp tusks as the digging lions.
But with such odds against it, the outcome is inevitable.
But only a lucky few get a meal from such small prey.
The others search the ground for scraps.
A hungry lioness returns to the demolished burrow
for a last hopeful search before the pride moves on.
A black roach digs the hole
where she'll place the package of eggs she carries attached to her abdomen.
The only maternal care she gives her progeny is now
as she carefully conceals their position
disguising the site with pebbles and vegetation.
Parental care is more developed in this large centipede.
The female carries her young about with her.
While she devours a grasshopper,
her offspring life packed securely against her body,
held in place by her many legs.
Other centipedes protect and tend their young in burrows under stones.
But in addition, this species can carry hers.
She holds them high above the ground and walks on her remaining legs.
Centipedes too have predators,
and this tiny snake is a specialist, feeding on them almost exclusively.
Holding on grimly, the snake appears unaffected
by the many bites it receives from the centipede.
The snake's venom takes effect and the centipede is overcome.
The little snake is able to swallow
centipedes almost twice the diameter of its own body.
It always seems to start with the head
One of the cubs has an injured leg and lags behind the behind the pride.
The pride does not wait for her and she struggles to keep up.
A civet is more at home on the ground,
but a dead tree is a handy refuge when 30 lions pass by.
Now he can resume his nightly search for fruits, insects,
and the smaller animals he preys on.
When the cub catches up with the others,
she must endure the rough bullying that young lions inflict on one another
especially on those with any disability
There is usually a little comfort to be had from one of the adults.
Besides, cubs are remarkably resilient the have to be
and this one will soon recover to torment in turn some other poor cub
Unless driven by hunger, the hunt proceeds at a leisurely pace.
At intervals through the night the pride will stop to rest
and sometimes even to sleep soundly for a few hours.
Supreme masters of relaxed living, lions are seldom on their feet
for more than four or five hours 24.
These are the tiny tracks made by the larvae of ant lions.
It is only at night that these small insects wander about,
moving backwards, in search of places to dig their traps.
The head of the ant-lion larva is dominated
by large hollow jaws through which it sucks the juices of its prey.
In a patch of fine, soft sand
the ant lion digs in and begins to excavate the unique trap
which it will catch its prey usually ants.
But it could well be any small insect.
Turning in ever decreasing circles,
the ant lion uses its head and jaws as a shovel to throw the sand
and small pebbles out of the steep-sided pit that it digs.
The trap is ready.
The ant lion buries itself in the bottom
with only its jaws exposed and waits.
The ant struggles free from the ant lion's jaws.
But the ant lion has another strategy that makes escape almost impossible.
It throws up a steady shower of sand that dislodges
the ant from the steep sides of the trap
and brings it once again within reach of the great jaws.
Now, held securely, the ant is dragged below the sand to be devoured.
Roars in the night can mean danger for the pride.
These come from a group of males that have been trying to take over the pride
and its territory for some months.
But the intruders are shunned by the pride,
for males tend to kill cubs they have not sired,
and they always appropriate and prey killed within their hearing.
So the pride departs in another direction
and won't relax or resume the hunt until out of range of the big males.
Dawn finds them safe and asleep,
several miles from the troubles of the night.
Most nights the pride will walk about five miles,
but when foiled in their hunt or to avoid other lions,
they may cover twice that distance.
The unpredictable wrath of this bull elephant takes the lions by surprise.
There is no point contesting the matter
and the pride moves on to find a more hospitable place.
A male ostrich sits tight on his nest
despite the steady approach of a herd of buffalo.
If he deserts now, the buffalo might well trample and scatter the eggs.
But the approach of a herd of lions is too much for the buffalo...
and the ostrich also abandons his clutch.
These eggs are a novelty for the lions
In the excitement of the first rush on the net,
one or two eggs were smashed and the contents fought over.
But now the lions are puzzled and unable to open the others.
There's more fun for a cub in the futile stalk
and chase of the female ostrich
who had just returned to the awful scene at her nest.
The remaining eggs are lion-proof
and the pride wanders away to seek shade
where they will sleep through the rest of the day.
By late afternoon it is overcast and cool enough for the lions to stir,
and the younger ones have found a tree to play on.
But tree climbing is not something they're very good at.
Lions have an edge when stalking prey distracted by the chaos of a storm.
This time they have killed a young zebra.
But even the lions are unnerved by the fierceness of this storm.
The rain unearths a rainfrog.
Most of the year they are inactive and remain buried underground.
They emerge only when the earth is soaked.
The storm has damaged the tunnels of termites,
exposing the workers and making them easy prey
for the quick tongue of the rainfrog.
During the rainy season temporary ponds are formed throughout the bushveld.
About 20 different kinds of frogs will breed at night in this pond.
Not only frogs are attracted to the pond.
This marbled tree snake waits for a meal to come within range.
Most of the frogs will deposit their eggs in the water,
but there are exceptions.
These golden leaf-folding frogs
are placing a row of eggs along a blade of grass.
With their hind legs they fold the blade to form a cylinder
in which the eggs will develop.
By far the most numerous predators at this pond are the spiders.
They wait motionless at the water's edge.
When the frog has been subdued,
the spider carries it out of the water to be consumed.
In a tree over the pond a pair of foam frogs are making their nest.
With their hind legs they whip up the foam
in which their young will spend the first five days of their lives.
The female provides the mucus together with her eggs,
while the male on her back adds his sperm to the mix.
Soon the foam hardens on the outside to a meringue-like crust.
From other nests made five nights previously
tiny tadpoles are slipping out and dropping into the pond below
where they'll complete their development.
It is common for more than one pair of frogs to make a nest together,
but this group is extraordinary.
About 40 frogs are contributing to this nest
which, when completed, will contain about 3,000 eggs.
The pride has come upon a foraging porcupine,
which the adults have left to the inexperienced younger lions.
The porcupine has been wounded, but not badly,
and there is much fight still left in it as the cubs are finding out.
To succeed they will have to insert a paw under the porcupine
and bowl it over to expose its unprotected belly.
But they're not finding this easy and frequently get stuck with quills.
The encounter eventually becomes a lesson in restraint.
With more time the cubs may have succeeded,
but the adults have moved on and the cubs leave to catch up.
A scorpion clears the sand from its burrow
before settling in the entrance to ambush passing prey.
Millipedes are often eaten by scorpions,
but this millipede has an escape technique
that makes it almost uncatchable by any scorpion.
When molested, it flips onto its back and, snakelike, slithers out of range.
A charge on a wildebeest herd is imminent
and the younger lions listen for the outcome.
For the small cubs this is the ultimate test of their ability to survive.
Only by displaying a fierce will to take its share
can a cub get enough to eat.
And it is now, when the abdomen of the wildebeest is torn open
and the choicest portions become available,
that the competition is keenest.
By the end of such a meal
most of the pride will have at least some small injury.
But they scarcely seem to notice their wounds, which soon heal.
Eventually the carcass is dismembered
and the adults and larger cubs have taken their spoils
into the surrounding bushes to gnaw on in peace.
The younger cubs now have easier access to the remains of the carcass,
which they attack with a will.
And even the lame cub has managed to get a share.
Hyenas and jackals that would snatch a meal from smaller prides
find this group too formidable.
They will keep their distance until it's all over.
The lions that have finished eating groom one another
licking away the blood from each other and probably renewing bonds
that were battered during the frenzy of eating.
For it is only at kills that harmony within the pride breaks down.
There is no hierarchy in a lion pride
all are equal, and the members compete only at kills.
In harmony again and replete for a little while,
the pride moves on to find a shady place to spend the day.
By nightfall this large family will be hungry.
Impelled once more on their everlasting search for food,
They will resume again their journey through the African night.