Photographer Andrew Schoeman captured the fiery moment between two lions and a hippo at the Sabi Sands animal reserve, South Africa. He sent this set of photos to animal experts for review.
Mike Watson, chief executive of Lewa Wildlife Sanctuary, said: “This is astonishing, lions are a species that do not want to put themselves in situations that cause significant injury to themselves in hunting. prey on large mammals such as elephants, hippos, rhinos…”.
Lions mainly focus on obvious objects such as wildebeest, zebras… So experts say this is an extremely rare occurrence, with a probability of 1/4,000.
Here is the entire process of the fiery clash between the lion and the hippo:
Two male lions attack a hippo at Sabi Sands private reserve, South Africa
The hippo was forced to jump into the water with injuries on its body to escape the lion’s attack. The hippo stood in the water all evening
When one of the two lions jumped into the water, the hippo immediately attacked
The pair of lions chased and attacked the hippo after it ran out of the water to escape
The hippo jumped back into the water and ran away, but seemed exhausted so he was attacked by two lions and couldn’t run away.
Finally, the hippo was “knocked out” and drowned in the water