Have you ever seen a lion being thrown into the air by a buffalo, do 3 flips and then land on its feet? Now you have.

Business System Manager, Sune Eloff (32), was out for a drive on the H4-1, just west of Lower Sabie, in the Kruger National Park, when she came upon an almost funny interaction between a buffalo and a young lion who was trying to catch a monitor lizard. Interesting events soon started to unfold!

Sune tells “We spent some time at Sunset dam watching impala coming down for a drink. We decided to move on and saw some lions sleeping in the riverbed. They were so calm and peaceful and then suddenly we saw all of them get up and move into the reeds.

At this point I took out my camera as they were watching something that we could not see. Suddenly a young lion came out of the reeds with a water monitor lizard that he had just caught. This is when the entire scene started to unfold.

Some buffalo in the vicinity had noticed that the lion had captured a lizard and one of them came storming in as if he knew this lizard needed protecting. To our absolute astonishment, the buffalo proceeded to get his head right under the puzzled lion and somersault him through the air. It was crazy!

I had mixed feelings… the excitement of everything happening was overwhelming. I felt bad for the young lion, but luckily he had enough brains to know that he needed to get out of there, and fast, so off he ran. The three dagga boys (male buffaloes) still charged into the reeds every now and again but the lions scampered off.

I have never seen anything like this in my life and I’ve been a Kruger visitor since the age of 2, definitely a first for me!

Huge respect to that courage, just run like that into a pride of Lions and launch one into air. That’s a badass! I knew these buffalos are strong, but to actually see them flip a lion into the air like we toss coins is something else. Just WOW!

Never mess with a buffalo’s pet lizard. Lions are so majestic when they fly!

Lizard: IF YOU SAVE ME I’LL TELL YOU A PLACE FULL OF GRASS AND NO LIONS OR WHATEVER I SWEAR