On August 17th 2017 in the Masai Mara in Kenya we had the opportunity to watch a group of 5 male cheetahs hunting. It was impressive to see how they coordinated their hunt and what incredible speed they reached.
Unfortunately it was already very dark at the time of the hunt, so the following shots could only be taken with high ISO values. Moreover, the protagonists moved away from us very quickly, so that I had to crop most of the shots significantly. Nevertheless, I will show the pictures here, because such a hunt is only rarely observable.
We were able to observe two hunting runs directly one after the other. On the first attempt, the wildebeest was finally lucky and got away.
At first the cheetahs spread out:


A vulture had already noticed what was coming:

The first cheetah sneaked up on a group of wildebeests:

When the wildebeests discovered him, the hunt began:

A younger wildebeest was chosen and chased:







Finally, the cheetahs succeeded in capturing and surrounding the wildebeest:




Amazingly, the wildebeest managed to escape after all:

Finally, the wildebeest even turned the tables and now hunted a single cheetah:




Somewhat frustrated and out of breath the cheetahs gathered up again afterwards:

A new victim was chosen. After the previous defeat, the 5 chose this time a younger and smaller one, this one should not be as lucky as the first one:







The small wildebeest was finally overwhelmed and killed by a bite in the throat. We all were very sorry afterwards, but that’s the way of nature.

