Eye of the Leopard

One of nature’s most extraordinary cats can still be found deep in the flooded marshlands of a place called Mombo, in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. An ultimate predator, nearly silent, at times invisible, but when one can get close enough, always strikingly beautiful. Within this harsh environment, the leopard continues to flourish. One day, under the watchful eyes of two humans, emerged one particular cat with a birthmark that distinguishes her from all others – and they nicknamed her Legadema or “Light from the Sky.”

When Legadema first wobbled her way into the sunlight at only eight days old, Dereck and Beverly Joubert, the award-winning husband-and-wife filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence, were there. Over the next three years, they captured a remarkably intimate and gripping story of survival in wild, unspoiled Africa.

Eye of the Leopard takes viewers on an enthralling journey deep into the rarely seen lives of leopards. It is a journey of birth, life and death as a mother leopard and her first surviving cub of six, fight off marauding baboons and elude scavenging hyenas in a constant struggle for survival. Documenting her experiences in incredible detail, the Jouberts took great pains not to interfere in the leopards’ wild existence. They tracked the early formative experiences that armed her for the future, and her mother’s deliberate stealth, evading detection by a gauntlet of predators that could claim her cub.

We watch as Legadema increasingly refines her hunting prowess and graduates from stalking lizards and squirrels to warthogs, impala and even dangerously aggressive baboons. One particularly poignant and unexpected chapter occurs as Legadema nears the cusp of adulthood, and kills a mother baboon only to find the young baby still clinging. To the Jouberts’ amazement, instead of killing the baby baboon, Legadema lies down protectively around it and even gently lifts it to safety at the approach of a scavenging hyena.

“It was as if nature had turned on its head completely,” says Dereck Joubert, a filmmaker who followed Legadema for three-and-a-half years in her natural habitat, the Okavango Delta of Botswana - the verdant flood plains known as Africa’s Garden of Eden.”

“She had killed the mother primate, but then found this live new-born on the ground. The little baboon called out, and we thought we were going to hear a major crunch and the leopard smacking its lips, but instead the baby baboon put its paws out and walked towards the young leopard.”

“Legadema paused for a moment, apparently not knowing what to do. Then she gently picked it up in her mouth, holding it by the scruff of its neck and carrying the infant up a tree to keep it safe.”