Animals are all about conserving energy, all animals. Energy comes from food and food is not always plentiful and especially for predators the whole energy conservation is a very big deal. They are just an injury away from starving especially the lone cats. Lions are social and so there is always someone else who can hunt and the injured one gets at least something to keep going. There is very raraely a glut for predators. This summer in the Kgalagadi was especially hard and the rains which often sprinkle some extra water so there is some grass to grow came late. There was a real famine in the land. Without good grazing the wildebeest, springbok, oryx and eland would be in serious trouble. Seems like the eland were the first ones to start dying off.
Summer is also a time when the lions play a nasty game. They stake out the waterholes and that means nothing can drink when they are around and whoever comes in to drink are a likely target. This is what I mean about conserving energy. When it is 50C in the shade you do not want to be wasting energy and running around and dehydrating cuz you will die. The lions know this best and they find a shady spot near the waterholes and just sit there waiting. Eventually some animal is going to run the gauntlet and when that happens they have an easy meal.
This time it seems the eland, which are the largest antelope in the world, just could not hack it. There were dead eland which had died of thirst and starvation in a few places in the Kgalagadi especially in the Nossob valley. We were driving down from Camp Nossob and heading to the dune roads when we came upon an unheard-of sight. There were 2 lions at the waterhole called Kij-kij. Lo and behold there was a half-eaten carcass of an eland and another one not even opened up yet. The big male was lying right next to the whole one while the female kept her distance a little ways away. I have never seen that before or after that time. A whole eland, and they are big, was just lying there. The lion had pulled it into the shade next to him and he was sleeping almost on the carcass. These two lions were set up for a week of eating from the looks of it. An eland weighs about 450kg and the big males can go up to double that. This was a skinny female but still that is a lot to have just lying around. So these lions are bulking up in the glut while the weather lasts.
