Lion Hearted by Andrew Loveridge

Author:Andrew Loveridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regan Arts.

The remaining duo became known as the Dynamite Boys. They developed a following among tourists and guides and were highly successful territorial males, enjoying longer-than-usual tenure in the Safari Lodge and Ballaballa prides. At least sixteen of their offspring survived to adulthood, which is a remarkably high degree of reproductive success. Two of their sons, Bhubesi and Kakori, are themselves currently territorial males in the national park. The Dynamite Boys were close allies—invincible as long as they stayed together. The battle scars on their faces were a testament to the ferocious fights the pair had with other males who unsuccessfully challenged them for tenure of the two prides. That was until January 2011, when TNT suffered the same fate as his brothers. He was caught and died in a wire snare set by cattle herders illegally grazing their animals in the protected forest bordering the park. His death left the nine-year-old Dynamite alone and vulnerable to challengers for his territory. Dynamite was by now a grizzled old lion. Some would even go so far as to say he was ugly. His nose was black with age, his muzzle almost hairless, and his face scratched and scarred from a hundred vicious skirmishes. He’d become rangy and swaybacked as his prime years slipped away. Over the next year, he slowly lost control of his erstwhile realm, an aging king giving ground to younger pretenders to his throne.

After nearly two decades of studying the behavior of lions in the wild, they still have the capacity to surprise me. Perhaps this is what makes behavioral studies of wild animals so rewarding, and conservation of natural ecosystems so complicated. Just when one thinks one can predict pretty much how lions will behave, they go and do something unexpected. The truth is that wild animals respond to a myriad of behavioral and environmental cues, many of which humans have only the vaguest understanding.

Inexplicably, one day in the middle of December 2011, Dynamite started walking. He left the protection of Hwange. This in itself was not unusual. Lions frequently make forays out of the unfenced protected area, but they almost always quickly return. Dynamite’s movement was somehow different. He walked determinedly into the collage of peasant fields and small villages of Africa’s rural farmland. Using the data collected by his GPS collar, we could plot the breadcrumb trail of his path on a map and see for ourselves the deliberate arc of his route across the landscape. He walked for thirty-seven days, covering a total of 220 kilometers. He stopped occasionally for a day or two in a patch of thicket between villages, perhaps feeding or resting, before resuming his march. He meandered only a little but kept going more or less northwest, seemingly drawn by the call of some unseen destination that only he could sense. His path led him out of the populated farmland of Hwange Communal Land and over the sparsely inhabited ridges and hills of Kamativi and into the valley of the Zambezi River.

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