Dazzling Wildlife Documentaries

I must apologise for being tardy with my blog entries. I am buried under heaps of work and shadowed by several looming deadlines.

For now, please allow me to cross-post an entry that I had written for my uni blog.

Enjoy! :)

~5-Cat Style

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Big Cats Rock!

I am a sucker for big cat documentaries.

Whenever an episode on one of the big cats comes on the telly, that’s it. I sprout claws and embed them firmly into the couch. Nothing will move me away from the flashy screen until the show is over.

Therefore, as an ardent devourer of big cat documentaries, I feel that you can trust me when I say that the best of these are created by Dereck and Beverly Joubert.

Dereck and Beverly Joubert are award-winning filmmakers from Botswana

Of all their films, my absolute favourite has to be Eye of the Leopard. It tracks the dramatic life of a 3-day-old leopard cub named Legadema for three years. Before this film, I never realised how swift and and agile leopards are in trees. The way these large, heavy beasts weave through the branches like little squirrels is a magnificent sight.

The mesmerising Lagedema

The most moving segment in this film has to be where Legadema kills a female baboon and stumbles unexpectedly upon her baby. Against our understanding of the viciousness of nature, Legadema picks the baby baboon up and begins to mother it.

National Geographic's Eye of the Leopard

You must now be wondering… So what happened to the baby baboon? Did it survive?

My words will do no justice to this tale. So I will just say, please watch this film to experience the roller-coaster of emotions and breathtaking visuals it will take you through.

Right now, I cannot wait to catch the Jouberts’ newly released film, The Last Lions.

It is about a lone lioness named Ma di Tau (“Mother of Lions”) and the unbelievable obstacles she has to overcome to keep her cubs alive. From an enemy pride of lionesses to hungry crocodiles and dangerous buffaloes, the struggle to survive is brutal.

The Last Lions Official Trailer

For now, I will leave you with a video of the Jouberts’ presentation at TED entitled Life Lessons from Big Cats. It is a peek into the lives of the Jouberts as wildlife film-makers and their efforts in ensuring the survival of the big cats in Africa.

PS. If you would like to contribute towards the big cat conservation, please click here and choose how you would like to help. Every small bit of effort will go a long way in protecting these amazing animals.