The famous Battle At Kruger Park video shows the power of a buffalo herd as it fights to save the life of a buffalo calf caught between the clutches of lions and crocodiles.
The video begins with lions on the hunt when a herd of Cape buffalo arrives. The buffalo only see the lions waiting when they have already got too close. A Kruger lion attack begins and the buffalo run away. The lions chase their target – a baby buffalo. They catch the baby and drag it into a river.
To make matters worse for the poor baby buffalo, a crocodile fancies its chances of getting a nice dinner. The buffalo calf is caught between the lions and the crocodile.
The lions win the contest and drag the buffalo away from the crocodile and out of the water.
By this time the buffalo herd has rallied and come to rescue their baby. A large male buffalo at the head of the herd charges one of the lions and scoops it into the air with its horns and away from the calf. This is incredible! Other buffalo come to charge and the lions are eventually put at bay.
Amazingly, the baby buffalo survives the trauma and rejoins its herd. Whether the calf lived beyond that with the injuries it would have got, is another question.
The video is enormously popular and is available for free on YouTube. We have reproduced it here to save you looking it up.
The video lasts for 8:24 minutes. If you’re using a dial-up internet connection, it’ll take some time to download before you can watch it all.
If you want to see the remarkable story of a powerful herd banding together to save their young calf, click on the play button in the player controls at the bottom of the video screen just below.
The video was filmed at the Transport Dam watering hole, between Skukuza and Pretoriuskop rest camps, in Kruger National Park in September 2004.