We were reminded this afternoon of the brutality (if that is the right word ?) of the life and death struggle of the bush I have been privileged to live and work in. One of my colleagues and his guests witnessed a lion pride stalk and chase a family of warthog, and in so doing flushed an aardwolf from cover. A sub-adult male lion from the pride caught and killed the aardwolf, and there was no attempt to feed off the aardwolf body (also a carnivore). From our point of view, it is a “loss” and “waste” to lose such a rarely seen animal in such circumstances.Not far from Madikwe River Lodge, west of the Marico River are the Madikwe Plains. We were priveleged to have resident aardwolf living on the plains. It was not unusual for us to see an individual foraging on the open grasslands, when we returned back to the lodge in the evening after the sun had set. Aardwolf are quite a rare sighting, not often seen in many game reserves, so it was great to be able to see such an unusual animal with the guests. Aardwolf are part of the hyena family, but feed almost exclusively on harvester termites, hence they have reduced dentition compared to other members of the hyena family. They adapt their feeding times to the times when the harvester termites are most active on the surface gathering dead plant material to take back into the termite nest. In mid-winter when the nights are particulalry cold, the aardwolf would be more active earlier in the eveneing, and we would have a better chance of seeing them. A single individual can consume a vast number of termites in a night, and hence play a key role in controlling the harvester termite population.