Watch the extremely brutal moment a duiker cries for help in the dying moments of its life, as a cheetah makes the kill.
It was a rainy afternoon and I was returning home along the main road that runs through the reserve. I spotted movement in my peripheral view off the road and slowed down when I noticed a female cheetah and her cub.
She suddenly started trotting across the road up ahead of me and within seconds increased her speed to a run. She disappeared in some long grass on the opposite side of the road and seconds later reappeared on the road holding a common duiker in her mouth.
She seemed to struggle to get a good hold of it, as the wet clay soil on the road was quite slippery underneath her feet. The cries of the common duiker seemed to encourage her to work even harder to silence it as it could potentially attract the attention of other predators in the area. It was interesting to see how she tried to use her body weight to pin the duiker down and how it retaliated by kicking back at her soft belly with its sharp little hooves when it got a chance.
There was a moment where the duiker nearly slipped out of her grasp indicating how hard it was really kicking her. It took at least 6 minutes for the little antelope’s body to finally go limb, longer than one would expect, but he put up a good fight! At the end of the video, you can see her dragging the little antelope a little closer to where she left her cub and you can also hear her calling to it.
The sighting ended as he pulled the little antelope further down the road closer to where her cub was hiding in the long grass. She started calling back to her cub and it came to feed immediately whilst mom took a moment to catch her breath.
If anyone else is lucky enough to witness a kill like this, try to watch it and appreciate nature at its finest. It won’t always be easy to watch but you will probably never see anything like it again. Some people spend years on safari to experience interactions like this.
