Domestic cats will do almost anything to avoid contact with water. Not so for their wild cousins, though. Lions, tigers and jaguars have had to adapt to water and sometimes take the plunge for survival.
And this is what we observed on the late evening of 1 February 2024. Our research team in Uganda filmed filmed two male lions swimming in a waterway in the Queen Elizabeth National Park. But what was unusual was the distance and the danger: the lions swam an estimated 1.5km across the Kazinga Channel, which connects two lakes in the park. The channel has a high density of hippos and Nile crocodiles, which are known to attack lions.
The footage, caught on a high-resolution thermal camera, shows the lions making three attempts across the 6 metre deep channel (and returning to shore), before starting to swim towards the south of the park.
