This leopard has never heard of the phrase “don’t wake a sleeping dog?”
Out in the wild, animals can’t let their guard down for even a second, as shown by this heart-pumping video below. These sleeping wild dogs were extremely close to being woken up to a leopard mauling.
A 34-year-old photographer by the name of John Fabiano was shooting inside Kruger National Park in South Africa when he managed to capture this unbelievable footage.
The group that he was with came up upon a group of wild dogs who were resting in an area just off the driving path, and the wildlife observers would have never guessed what they would witness as they came to a stop.
Initially, Fabiano was just watching the sleeping dogs, but he soon became aware that a big cat was lurking off in the distance. Once he spotted the leopard moving in slowly on the wild dogs, the photographer turned his attention to the prowling hunter and held his breath.
The leopard uses the bushes to camouflage itself, and also plays into the other noises in the area in an attempt to not disturb the wild dogs that were sleeping. It was clear that the leopard was making quiet, calculated moves to inch itself closer and closer to the group of resting dogs.
Then, in a literal blink of an eye, one of the dogs wakes up and notices the leopard right in the nick of time. The wild dog raises its head and freezes the big cat right in its tracks, and quickly (and surprisingly) turns the fight around in the dogs’ favor.
The wild dogs were incredibly fortunate that one of them awoke to alert the others, considering that the leopard had moved in on them and was only a few feet away from making a meal out of at least one of them. Instead of chowing down, the leopard found itself running for its life as the dogs launched their counter attack and chased it away.
Even out in the wild, the eternal battle between cats and dogs rings true. You can view the close call below:
