For some reason, everyone likes to see new born babies – lions, elephants, zebra, giraffes, etc. However, some species are not that easy to find when there are babies around.
This morning, we were lucky enough to see baby hyena pups. We went to the den where we would usually find the adults, but unfortunately, we didn’t see any of them around. We couldn’t track them either so we went on with our normal morning game drive, looking for some of other animals.
After about an hour, one of my fellow rangers called in a sighting where there were new born babies at the den we had just come from. I was very excited to hear about this and we went straight back to the hyena den to have a look.
As we arrived there, we could only see one female. She was still half way inside the entrance, facing towards our vehicle. We decided to wait a few minutes, when suddenly, one of the females picked up one of the pups ever so gently with her big mouth.
It’s amazing to see that such a big animal can be so gentle with her little babies. As she put the baby down, we could see that the pup’s eyes were barely open and I estimated that the baby was around 10 to 12 days old.
After a little while, there were two more babies that appeared and they started playing with each other. The mother was just observing and making sure that it was safe to play outside of the den.

Story by Janco (River Lodge)
2013/08/09