The Leopard Will Lie Down With the Baby Baboon and We All Shall Squee

Last night’s 60 Minutes featured a segment on Dereck and Beverly Joubert, two award-winning filmmakers from Botswana who have been documenting wildlife, particularly big cats, for the last 25 years. While the majority of their 60 Minutes feature focused on the couples’ work with lions, there was a brief portion of the segment devoted to some remarkable footage that the pair captured of a young leopard that, after having killed an adult baboon, discovered a day-old baboon baby clinging to the corpse’s fur. Rather than kill the baby, the leopard instead rescued it from roving hyenas and spent the night trying to keep it warm. Sadly, the baby eventually succumbed to the elements (you can watch the full clip from the Joubert’s documentary here), but that doesn’t make the incident any less peculiar or touching.