If you think stuff is competitive at your job, I can assure you, it has nothing on the animal kingdom. Eat or be eaten, the land of the fittest. It’s very hard to compete in an environment where losing a battle can equal to losing your life. This is the reason that wildlife is… well, wild. Predators are merciless and deadly.
I’ve seen my fair share of YouTube videos about animal battles. Some people are a little disturbed by them. I am not but I have to say they are shocking. There’s no restaurant or salad place to go there. Whatever you plan on eating, you will have to kill it first. It sounds raw, but that’s how it is.
Some ways that animals have of taking control of the others’ populations is through disposing of the others’ cubs. By doing this, they ensure that no new generations will ever put their own in danger. Some of these battles seem heart-breaking for us. They make us want to jump into our screens and save them before danger comes their way.
This makes many people believe that two distinct species cannot coexist. Surprisingly, this is something that happens all the time. We can see a very good example of this in farms across America. Sometimes cows feed other animals like sheep when their own mother is not around. Seeing another species in despair often activates the mother’s maternal instinct and starts caring for the babies as if they were her own. While this behavior can be common in farm animals, how common could it be in other species like lions or tigers?
Some people from the Ngorogoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, Africa got to find that out. Everything started where a leopard cub was found wandering. His mother had been killed and the cub didn’t know what to do. The cub was only three weeks old and didn’t have anyone to turn to get fed. Without this crucial element that gave him the essential vitamins he needs he would probably die.
Things start to get very desperate for this small cub so he turns to the most unlikely of candidates: a lioness! As the following clips show, this is an extremely rare occurrence. The fact that it happened and that it was caught on film is extraordinary. The instinct of the lioness at this point would be to go after the leopard cub as he would be an easy prey. Instead of this, she takes the role of a loving mother. Absolutely touching!
