Animals: How a leopard saved a baby baboon

Legadema, a female leopard, kills a mother baboon and then finds a young baby still clinging. Legadema lies down protectively around it and even gently lifts it to safety at the approach of a scavenging hyena..

"It was as if nature had turned on its head completely," says Dereck Joubert, a filmmaker who followed Legadema for three-and-a-half years in her natural habitat, the Okavango Delta of Botswana - the verdant flood plains known as Africa's Garden of Eden.

"She had killed the mother primate, but then found this live new-born on the ground. The little baboon called out, and we thought we were going to hear a major crunch and the leopard smacking its lips, but instead the baby baboon put its paws out and walked towards the young leopard."

"Legadema paused for a moment, apparently not knowing what to do. Then she gently picked it up in her mouth, holding it by the scruff of its neck and carrying the infant up a tree to keep it safe."

Africa is so good at divulging little secrets, just when we think that we know it all so well. There are many myths and legends dancing around these ancient forests, where the Owls call your name and the distant Hippos speak to the gods. Another layer of mystery was added the night the Leopard lay down with the Baboon.



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