Talk about fast food! This incredible footage captures the moment a startled impala ran straight into a pride of lions, delivering the big cats an easy meal.
The lions were walking along a roadway when the prey came bounding in, seemingly out of nowhere. Within moments, the fated impala was taken down.
This was indeed a lucky break for the lions. Hunting requires a significant amount of energy, and despite their fierce reputation, these big cats aren’t always successful in capturing prey. In fact, lions hunting in pairs or groups have a success rate of only 30 percent. It’s even less for those hunting by themselves; solo lions successfully take down prey only 17 to 19 percent of the time.
Lions are generally ambush predators, as they lack the stamina and speed to keep up with sprinting animals for more than a few hundred feet. Because of this, the animals will usually stalk their prey for a considerable amount of time, waiting until animals are within 100 feet. If a lion misses its prey target on its first running attempt, it will generally abandon the chase to conserve vital energy reserves.
The most successful hunts (besides this one, of course) occur on dark nights in dense cover where a single prey animal can be singled out and ambushed.