Baby leopards in den at Zarafa camp

A rare sighting of 3-week-old leopards and their mother, carefully secluded in a den under a fallen tree in the Selinda region of northern Botswana.

During our recent visit to Zarafa Camp in northern Botswana’s Selinda Concession, Nicky and I enjoyed superb game viewing, both on game drive and from the boat.  This area is so lovely during Botswana’s summer months, with the green landscapes, the abundant baby animals and the dramatic skies that it makes one pause at the grandeur.

Our favorite sighting at Zarafa was that of two 3-week-old leopard cubs and their mother, hidden in a den under a fallen tree.  It is not often that one has a chance to see leopard cubs in the wild and this was our first chance to see kittens this young.

As we approached the den site, we were very quiet and saw the two young cubs in the shadows at the back of the den.  However, we could not see the female leopard anywhere and so we decided to leave the area, as we did not wish to attract any attention to the unprotected cubs.  But just as we were turning the vehicle around to leave, we noticed some movement in the bush to the side of our vehicle…

Moments later, a gorgeous female leopard emerged from the fever-berry bushes and silently moved toward the den.  It was the mother of the cubs, returning from an absence that may have been a day or more in duration.  Female leopards spend only 50-60 percent of their time with cubs at this age, as they must hunt to provide the cubs with milk.  The timing of her return was fortuitous for us, as we now could now stay a short while to take a few images and watch the cubs with their mother.

This female leopard is well known to the guides here and she is quite used to being around game drive vehicles and is very relaxed, so Foster (our guide) assured us that we were not causing her any stress by being at the den.  This was quite clear as she calmly passed within 2 meters of our vehicle en route to her cubs, whilst barely casting us a glance.

What followed was a pleasure to watch, as the purring cubs were greeted with nuzzling and licking from their mom… but she lay down almost immediately so that the cubs could suckle and fill their tiny bellies with her milk.

After feeding for perhaps 5 minutes, the little cubs were full and ready for more affection and they proceeded to clamber all about mom’s head and shoulders, looking for more grooming and nuzzling.  With fat tummies, they soon tired and fell asleep under their mother’s chin and all three were soon dozing peacefully. This is how we left them.  What a privilege to have witnessed this.

Life for a baby leopard is extremely tenuous at this age, as they are completely reliant on their mother for sustenance and protection. The cubs will only venture from hiding at about 6 weeks and then only to make short excursions with their mother, as they are still extremely vulnerable.  At this time they also start to eat meat.  Weaning occurs at around 3 months, but they will stay with their mother for over a year before they are ready to fend for themselves.

Leopards will often move their cubs to a new hiding place, especially at this early stage, and in fact all three were seen a week later in a new den site, this one a burrow dug into the side of a termite mound.  If all goes well, then perhaps future visitors to Zarafa will have a chance to see these leopards as they grow.  I hope so!

James Weis
January 2010



8 Responses to “ Baby leopards in den at Zarafa camp ”

1. José Antonio Zechin says:

   February 4, 2010 at 5:22 am

   Mother’s Nature is fantastic!

   Mankind should learn on this.

   My congratulations for so rare moment and so much respect for the animals!
2. Nicole says:

   February 4, 2010 at 10:03 am

   Wonderful pics and I can only imagine how cool of an experience that was to see the cubs with their mother so close.

   I am traveling to Zarafa and Abu Camp in July/Aug – any tips or advise you could share would be greatly appreciated !
   Nicole
   PS- fantastic website – I find your info both current and very helpful in my safari planning.
3. Marius says:

   February 5, 2010 at 1:38 pm

   Too narrow depth of field in top photo, bottom 7 photo’s needs more sharpness and higher contrast (dynamic range), they appear a little dull. Nice reference shots but not calendar quality.
4. James says:

   February 8, 2010 at 9:58 am

   Thanks all for the comments -

   The shooting for this sighting was under extremely “contrasty” light – around 2:45pm and bright sunshine outside… inside the den was of course in deep shadow.

   On top of the difficult lighting, there were lots of hanging roots blocking clean views inside the den, so I am pleased to have been able to get the few clear images I ended up with!

   I added technical metadata for each image in the image captions above … the D3′s high-ISO capability certainly helped me out on many of these images.
5. Lee Whittam says:

   February 17, 2010 at 5:32 am

   Hi James , thanks for the update I will be up there in the near future and hope to catch a glimps of the cubs…
6. Jenny says:

   February 23, 2011 at 12:53 am

   Extraordinary sequence of shots of such a secret sacred time. Well done!
7. Zelda Connock says:

   February 23, 2011 at 7:12 am

   Thanks for sharing your beautiful photo’s – quite a few ahhh moments from my daughters and I. Glory to God for His amazing creatures!
8. Anne says:

   February 23, 2011 at 12:53 pm

   Hi James, Thanks for sharing this wonderful sighting. I enjoyed it tremendously – much more than looking at a calendar and think the comments made by Marius is unnecessary.