Watch a lion trying to escape a pack of hyenas in this gripping video
Twenty hyenas, all ‘laughing’, versus a young male lion was an unequal battle.
Even one of nature’s most fearsome predators can get into a tight spot once in a while. This is what happened to a lion when a pack of hyenas attempted to take him down. Circling and ‘laughing’ menacingly, they seemed ready to attack the young male.
The confrontation was captured on camera by the BBC’s Natural History Unit, which was filming a pride of lions for the series Dynasties. The lion, nicknamed Red, put up a fight but eventually had to be rescued by one of his friends.
Simon Blakeney, one of the producers, remembered, the moment thus: “Initially he tried to show how dominant he was by chasing individual hyenas. But by the time he got over his bravado, he was surrounded by twenty or thirty of them and couldn’t escape. Each time he lashed out at one that came close, others would attack him from behind. He was vastly outnumbered, and trapped in a life and death situation.”