Josie and the girls

Three incredible lionesses

Josie and her two adult daughters, Dawn and Duffy at the Ngulube Waterhole in the Addo Elephant Park. Currently they are the only lionesses in the main section of the Park. Photo: Steven Lang

In this edition of the Real Safari newsletter, I am going to tell you about three big cats that we did not see . . .  this time. Nevertheless I will share with you strands of the ‘Josie and the girls’ story so that you may appreciate our affection for these three incredible lionesses and understand why we are always on the look out for them.

Last Saturday, Ilza (the Wife) and I spent eight hours driving around the Addo Elephant Park (AEP) looking for wildlife to photograph. We arrived at the Matyholweni Gate just before it opened at seven, so after handing in the forms and going through the Covid19 protocols, we were dodging giant plops of elephant poo on the road up north by ten past seven.

You have to drive around the big brown blobs, not because they threaten to engulf your car, but because dung beetles spend a lot of time gathering material from them. The unique flightless dung beetles at the AEP don’t have much road sense so they are vulnerable to uncaring vehicles that drive through the elephant dung. There are even sign along the road warning visitors that beetles have the right of way.

Josie (born in August 2008) and her adult two daughters – Dawn and Duffy – are the only three lionesses in the main section of the AEP at the moment. Dawn and Duffy were born in December 2014.

There are currently three males in the main section – Niklaas and Witwarm are a coalition of older males and Jack is a young male who patrols his section of the Park alone.

Niklaas and Witwarm are sometimes seen with Josie and the girls and appear to have mating rights with that pride too.

As a visitor to the park, you are more likely to see Josie and her daughters than any of the males. They spend a lot of their time near the Ngulube waterhole and quite often move around during the day, especially if they are going for a drink of water.

Josie, the matriarch of the park, had her last litter in the early part of 2017 and since then, it seems that Park management has kept the three lionesses on some sort of birth control regime.

Lionesses and their snack food

The three of them hunt together and appear to be quite efficient by lion standards. They pull down zebras and buffaloes without much trouble but it seems that they most often dine on warthogs.

The only time I have actually seen a lion make a kill was when one of the daughters, either Dawn or Duffy – not sure which, ambushed a tiny warthog just above the treeline near the Ngulube waterhole. She crouched behind the bushes as the poor little piglet came happily trotting along toward her.

The warthog could only have been a couple of weeks old when the lioness pounced on it with lethal accuracy. The whole valley suddenly shook with fright as the piglet squealed with its last breath. The mother warthog and its surviving babies ran off, tails in the air as quickly as their little legs could carry them.

The lioness came down towards the waterhole vigorously shaking the baby warthog as if she needed to make sure it was dead. The battle looked so uneven. A fully grown lioness against a teeny little piglet that could hardly have been more than a mouthful. It did not seem fair, somehow.

I took photos of the ambush but they were not very clear as the ambush took place about 200 metres from the road and my 75-300mm kit lens is not very sharp when fully extended. Every time since that hunt, I always look to see if there is a lioness hiding in those bushes just beyond the waterhole.

In another incident several years later, I learnt the terrifying power of sound. It involved the same pride of lions.

Josie had just had her last litter of cubs – three males who came to be known as Tom, Dick and Harry. She was with Dawn, Duffy and the three cubs who were a few months old and were learning how to hunt.

The pride was resting up in tall grass about fifty metres from the road so it was hard to see them. Occasionally one of lionesses would get up and walk around to find better position, or every now and then one of the cubs would try to provoke his brothers into some rough-housing. We waited patiently for just a glimpse of a tail flicking into the air. Perhaps they would decide to move on and come towards the road or at least occupy a clearing where it would be easier to take photos.

That’s what we do. We wait – hoping against hope for that once-in-a-lifetime pic.

Those tusks can be formidable weapons, but the three lionesses usually make short work of warthogs. Photo: Steven Lang

Then suddenly wild commotion. One of the lionesses jumped above grass level and the loud screeching began. We never saw the warthog, but it was audibly an adult in the throes of pain and terror. Cubs sprang up, lions jumped and the grass moved wildly as one warthog fought for its life while others scrambled blindly in every direction as lions appeared to be all around.

The screeching didn’t stop. It must have been one of the sisters teaching her younger brothers to make a kill. Dawn or Duffy would have been much quicker. They’re in their prime and have killed dozens of warthogs quickly and without fuss. This one seemed to go on forever.

I can think of few sounds more heart-rending, more pitiful than a warthog being torn to shreds by clumsy young lions. The shrieking, high-pitched squeals tore through the air piercing the tranquillity of the African bush. In horror we listened to the screams, and because we could not see anything beyond flailing tails and bobbing heads, there was nothing to photograph. We could not even hide our shock behind cameras.

It felt like we were lurid paparazzi who had eagerly come to witness an execution.

Then thankfully it came to an inevitable end. We still could not see anything, but the squealing stopped so the warthog must be dead.

Why hunt warthogs?

Josie and her daughters hunted many, many warthogs for two main reasons. There was a warthog population explosion not only in the AEP but in virtually all the parks and farms in the surrounding area. So there are lots of them and they are relatively easy to hunt – especially if you are a lion.

The second reason appears to have something to do with Josie, or to be more specific, Josie’s right eye. It seems that she is blind in one eye and has difficulty judging distances or direction with just the one eye.

In this photo you can clearly see that Josie’s right eye is clouded, but she appears to be fully capable of helping her hunting daughters. Photo: Steven Lang

It has been reported as far back as 2017 that there was a problem with that eye. It has even been noted that she sometimes ran into trees and at least once, even a car. Josie is a powerful lion and clearly has the strength to take on large prey, but if she can’t see them too well, that could be a problem.

On the other hand, when warthogs are afraid they often dive into a burrow. Josie doesn’t need 20/20 vision to dig a warthog out of a hole in the ground. She knows where it is and it is not going to get away.

There is however, no need to worry about going hungry. Josie is very tight with her daughters, Dawn and Duffy, who are expert hunters. There are numerous antelope such as kudu and red hartebeest in their area as well as plenty of zebras and buffaloes. The girls make sure that Josie will not go hungry.

Josie’s eye looks creepy. Some days it’s worse than others. It seems to get infected and then the infection subsides.

Addo addicts occasionally put out calls on social media for Park veterinarians to do something to clean up the infection, but it seems to be against AEP policy to interfere with nature.

This policy has not stopped rangers from putting the lionesses on birth control because too many lions exact a heavy toll on prey animals. There is a limit on the carrying capacity of the park.

That said, there are rumours that one of Josie’s daughters has been taken off birth control and is now pregnant. If this turns out to be true, we could have the first litter of lion cubs in the park since 2017.

Calls to sell excess lions to other (private) game reserves are problematic because firstly, many of them are already over loaded with lions as the big cats breed easily. Secondly, there are some questionable hunting practices in certain private facilities that raise loud alarm bells.

In next week’s Real Safari newsletter we’ll reveal how lion cubs are treated in some parks as petting animals while they are still young. Then, when they grow older, they are sold as trophy animals to barbaric idiots who pay tens of thousands of dollars to show the world their hunting prowess.  

The movement against ‘canned hunting’ in South Africa has gathered momentum and now government is considering a scathing report that calls for the total banning of this type of cruel buffoonery.

ENDS/ssl

Addo Park management have put radio collars on Dawn to help them keep track of her movements. Photo: Steven Lang