A hungry cheetah on a small tree, taken in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
Interesting fact: Cheetahs can climb short trees easily, and sometimes do so to have a higher vantage point to spot potential food.
However, while climbing up is easy, they are very clumsy while climbing down and sometimes even fall. This is due to them being the only big cats in the Serengeti who don't have retractable claws. They get in the way and tend to get stuck in the tree bark.
wow...killer shot and thanks for the extended caption. Very interesting.
Wow, you must have been incredibly excited to see that in the wild. We were on safari for two weeks and never saw one even though we tried so hard. Or a leopard. Actually, we found a Cheetah in the distance and I shot 20 frames with my longest lens before realizing it was a piece of a fallen tree. 🤭
I watched a documentary about tribes in the Amazon who lived for more than a century without contact with people in villages. Once the tribes finally do make contact, something they often talk about is how afraid of Jaguars they are, who sometimes ambush them from trees.
Great shot.
They are incredibly hard to find in the wild I lived in Africa for 33 years and went on Safari at least once a year and I've only seen leopard or cheatah on a few occations.
Like Chris I've taken shots of wood or rocks thinking they may be the cats.
I've been lucky with Lions.
It would be great if we could click on some of the amazing pics on cake and have them expand.
Yeah, I'm dying for the ability to click on the pics and have them expand. Also to upload animated gifs and have videos play inline. They're on our list but priorities. We've been working on notifications (shipped today!), panels, search, and an iOS app.
Thanks Chris the photo expand will transfom Cake.
Is there a way to upload pics from external hosting sites like SmugMug.
Oh, there's link expansions which we really want too, so you don't just get the link, you get a preview of the pic if there is one and text. That's gonna take some work. Some services like Twitter make that look easy, but a lot of work goes behind it to do it right.
Wow, great luck getting a shot of a cheetah like that. Even in preserves like Kruger it's rare to see cats. I rode around on the roof rack of a Land Rover acting as bait and all I managed was to get the crap scared out of me by a bull elephant who false charged.
I have no idea what these guys are saying but I know exactly what they are saying...lol https://youtu.be/z-ymXFsbdzI
As CanvasOfLight said - cheetahs cannot retract their claws - not even the nursing kittens - mama cheetah has to be careful about this with nursing kittens - this image is from a trip to Kenya in 2013
We spent a fair amount of time with cheetahs in the Mara - we even had two sit on the roof of the Land Cruiser we were sitting in for about 25 minutes - unfortunately they were directly backlit by the afternoon sun, and needless to say I could not change my vantage point, nor could we move the Land Cruiser. Still, the image brings back fond memories. My wife was annoyed, as she was sitting in the back row of the Land Cruiser, directly beneath the cheetahs with their tails waving directly in front of her nose
Speaking of leopards in trees - We saw several leopards and watched a pair mating in South Africa. But what was really scary for me, was how lions just disappear in the tall grass. I have several images of lions in the grass where they almost are invisible - frequently you see one, but later realize there were three or four present. Notice how the body of this lion just disappears in the grass - and remember, lions are silent when they move or even run - if I get time someone ask me about being full body, face to face with a lion with absolutely nothing but a very thin chain link fence between us
