A large male warthog killing and eating a newborn Thomson's gazelle. This behavior had never been reported before when I first observed it in 2012. I suspect the behavior is fairly rare because the warthog is not very good at subduing prey and therefore seems to only be able to kill fawns within the first hour or two of birth. I have seen a handful of instances of warthogs attacking older fawns, and even fawns that are only several hours old are much better at recovering from the warthog's head butts and running away to safety.
The mother's behavior in response to the warthog also suggests that this is a pretty rare behavior. Female gazelle respond to fawn predators with high levels of vigilance and, for smaller predators that don't pose a threat to the mother, aggressive attack. This female does not behave as if she regards the warthog as a threat at all.
I suspect that I was able to observe multiple instances of this predatory behavior because I was actively searching for female gazelles giving birth and because the density of warthogs was very high at my field site while I was conducting this study.
Learn more about this unusual predatory interaction and Thomson's gazelle birth behavior here: www.blaircostel...
19 сен 2024
