A school of catfish stranded in a muddy pool turned into a welcome meal for a hungry leopard at Klaserie Private Nature Reserve in South Africa.
Candice Pappin, a nature enthusiast, has watched this particular leopard grow up at the Nature Reserve and happened to witncess the leopard’s lucky fishing expedition. Over a few days in July, she had noticed the leopard returning to the waterhole.
“I knew he was waiting for all the fish to be huddled under the log, so I kept coming to check on him,” she told The LastSightings.com.
On this particular morning, Candice had spent three hours watching the leopard at the waterhole. She was about to leave when a couple of warthogs came for a drink.
“He immediately went into a stalking position, but the warthogs caught his scent and ran off as he came sprinting out of hiding,” she said. The leopard didn’t catch the warthogs but the commotion caused the fish to thrash in the mud, which caught the leopard’s attention.
“Like a switch, it triggered something inside him,” Candice said. “He ran straight onto the log and decided it was now or never! Looking at the fish, he reached into the muddy water, and with a swift movement, grabbed one!”
And not only one. Candice couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed and she got more of a show as the leopard went into a “catching frenzy.”
She said, “At one point, he decided to walk straight into the muddy water and submerge his head, which was very entertaining! He eventually ended up covered in black mud from head to toe.”
“By the time he was done, he had caught 11 fish! Some, he carried into our hide or placed under a bush, others, he left lying on the dried mud, and a few were stolen by a Saddle-billed Stork and a Fish Eagle.”
The leopard continued his “fishing spree” for several days after that and Candice guesses the leopard will keep on fishing until all the catfish are gone.
According to the Last Sightings, some African species of catfish have adapted to survive with almost no water for certain periods. They enter aestivation – a dormant state that uses hardly any energy. They can burrow into the mud to stay cool. But they can’t adapt to predators like the leopard, who took advantage of the dry conditions.
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