Watching these live safari drives has been a real education. These animals are pretty 'habituated' to seeing humans in the safari vehicles, and they don't see them as either a threat, or as prey. However, that wouldn't be the case, if the human was on foot.

They are that habituated. They live with a dog as a way to habituate them and calm them down.

It's a very controlled short walkthrough, and they tell everyone to be very still. But they let it out of the cage and walk it through the crowd of people, which wasn't a huge crowd. But it walked right by me, and it was absolutely thrilling.

You can also go to the cheetah run to see up close how fast they are. Haven't gone to that yet.

The Wild Earth Safari group in the Masai Maara are following a coalition of FIVE male Cheetah, which is a very unusual thing to see. I watched them take down a Wildebeest, the other day. Amazing.

Of course the cheetah was on a leash and with the handler. She had a helper who you could tell was also familiar with the animal and with the procedure and they gave a long history about the animal we were looking at. The handler really eyed the crowd, and I would bet she proceeded on a case by case basis. Meaning, if a crowd looked too unruly, like too many antsy teens or squirmy people, she wouldn't proceed. The handler really watched everyone's hands as she walked by and was very careful to be steady with the animal. She warned everybody before they came out to be still, no sudden movements or sounds. It just made me shudder with awe being that close to the animal. So majestic!! I would say it was a distance of about 4 to 6 feet away as it walked.

Interesting about the Masai Maara. I'll Google it! Great thread!

A sunrise and then a sunset safari. And, for the next 2 Fridays they are doing a live show on the NatGeo Wild channel (11pm eastern standard time) If you like their facebook page, they jump in with live video feed when something exciting is happening. They went to Kenya for the big migration, and are planning to keep that camp. One group is there, and one is in the Kruger Park in South Africa. That's where this leopard lives.

Some safari's are kind of shy on animals, but the guides can always find something interesting to show, or talk about. I am totally addicted.

being that I can't watch some of the animals hunting, which sounds silly I guess, but otherwise they are just so fascinating to watch. I would love to watch a live video feed, though, like the migration sounds so interesting.

It bothered me, at first, but the guides are so fantastic in explaining things. And, they usually give a warning if things are going to get rough.

The shows are also archived, so you can FF through parts. I guess this has been on the internet for about 10 years, but I only discovered it in February, when they went live, on Sunday nights, for 8 weeks. They are now 5 or 6 weeks into this series.

The guides are so into their jobs - you can feel their joy and excitement.

uncomfortable watching the feedings.

This is such a wonderful resource. Bookmarking!

edit: found this on YouTube and looks like what we saw with them at the Safari park