Kenya: Masai Mara – Leopards
Masai Mara is all about spotting the big cats – lions. cheetahs, and leopards. And while this African trip wasn’t big on leopards so far, we got our fill in Masai Mara. We spotted a leopard across the grasslands and followed him as he or she traversed across a wide open plain. At some point as we were moving in a distance behind him, he sprinted and raised an antelope from the grass, chased it and took it down – yes we saw the entire action (albeit from a moving car and no pictures or video). Then the leopard dragged the kill into the forest near a river and it took us some time to find out where he was hiding (food eaten or stowed away by then). African Leopard (or Felis Pardus in Latin) is one of the Big Five African safari animals, widely distributed, but not that easy to see as they are very secretive and can hide in plain sight. In Masai Mara they are known to frequent villages and take down dogs (who can’t even hear them coming).
