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In Mala Mala Game Reserve in South Africa, the menacing shadow is a spotted hyena. The other shadow is a National Geographic filmmaker. Kim Wolhuter follows the elusive leopard he named Tjololo, which comes from two African languages and means “the one that stands alone.” Hyenas stalk Tjololo to try to grab anything he kills. Tjololo’s hunts are long and hard. He’s very patient. And he knows the hyena and its pack are almost always close by, ready to take advantage of him. He is alert and tense. He spots his prey and closes in, quietly, carefully. When he’s in the perfect position at just the right distance, he bursts toward his victim. In about one out of five tries, the brief chase ends in success.
Before Tjololo can take one bite, a hyena appears. They battle over the carcass in a fierce tug-of-war, each gulping down chunks of meat as fast as possible. When the hyena’s pack members appear on the scene, the leopard gives up. He knows he can’t win a fight with several hyenas, any more than he could against even one lion. Tjololo wouldn’t even try to claim his kill if a lion, generally twice his weight, showed up.
With hyenas and lions on his tail all the time, how does Tjololo ever eat? He uses a rare strength. He drags his prey, often two times his own weight, high into a tree. Hyenas can’t climb trees at all, and lions can’t climb very high, so Tjololo is in control once he’s up there. For 19 months—wherever Tjololo went and whatever he did—Wolhuter followed him. The wild cat became so comfortable with this human’s presence that Wolhuter was able to capture extraordinary behavior on film. Now you can spot an awesome film that reveals the secrets of a leopard’s life.
For more about leopards, see the October 2001 issue of World magazine.
Text by Catherine D. Hughes
Photographs by Kim Wolhuter
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Watch a leopard in action.
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