Warthogs have dens. They can make them under rocks or they can use burrows. And they tend to sleep and breed in abandon aardvark dens. These consist of a tunnel leading to a large underground chamber which is ideal for the warthog in which to shelter.
Lionesses appear to know that and to quote Mel and Fiona Sunquist in their book Wild Cats of the World “Lions seem to dig more than other big cats, and there are frequent observations of lions excavating aardvark burrows to reach warthogs.”
Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.
In the video we have that exact scenario being played out. The end is a little bit unpleasant but it is nature at work. Guggisberg, a scientist, described a lioness doing some very strenuous digging in Nairobi National Park in the early 1960s:
“She was standing almost on her head in an aardvark hole and was throwing out the earth with her paws exactly like a dog burying a bone. After about half an hour she suddenly gave up and left the hole which had become so big that half her body was hidden in it.”
Although lions are primarily nocturnal there are no strict rules on when they are most active. The biggest factors dictating when they are active are the availability of prey and stalking cover plus the influence of the habitat in which they lived. Sometimes lions respond to being sport hunted by becoming nocturnal and in the Serengeti, lions have two major peaks of activity, one just after dark and the other between two and four in the morning.
In this instance as seen in the video, the lionesses were successful.
Below are some more articles on lions.
