Balloon Ride Around Africa

Hello, did any of you watch the balloon ride around Africa program last night?  

He met with a leopard tracker who had put collars on the leopards to try and work out how they live and how they travel.  

Thought this story he told was interesting.  He used to have a male leopard called Maverick with a tracking collar on.  One day he picked it up on the radar one day and found Maverick up a tree dead with another male leopard eating him.  Even the tracker said that this had never been known before but that was why they were tacking them to find out more about their behavior.  The tracker then moved the collar from Maverick and onto the new male and named him Goose! (top gun theme).  They tracked Goose down last night and the tracker explained that he was ok round vehicles because he goes near the road a lot and has got used to them and people, they were meters away from him and he still just lay in the shade watching them watching him.  The camouflage was unbelievable he was really well hidden, if they hadn’t had the radar they could have passed just in front of him and would have been none the wiser.

They looked on the computer at all the signals they had picked up from Goose and it was all in one area but never in the same area for long, well so the guy was saying, moving on constantly.  They didnt explain this as much as i would have liked because on the computer you could see Goose (green dots) then around his area were purple dots, which covered a larger than his area and tons more of them so dont know if this just one leopard or a few as the man had mentioned that there were 3 females around Gooses territory.

Just goes to show how little we do actually know about them, especially eating another of its own kind, let alone another carnivore, so i guess a big cat would/could kill a fox and eat it after all!  Also the fact that Goose was getting more and more comfortable around cars and people just shows how adaptable they are.

I am going to try and find out the trackers name and google him see if there is anymore info on the work he does.  might help us a little….

Kim Hancock BCIB