Meet The Characters: Nikita and Coal | The Lion Whisperer

hello my precious right good morning everyone um today we are going to be doing the last installment of the meet the character series it's definitely a last but not least it's coal and the key to the two black leopards they are two of the oldest animals uh that i have in my care at the sanctuary um and two wonderful characters so i think you're going to enjoy this one stick around and relax all right so arriving at the sanctuary and i have two leopards who almost know what's going to be going on today oh okay all right so what i would do is just put a little bit of the sauce there and some of the cultures there and some cultures there nakakoli a few things that the black leopards colony kita really enjoy the first is pilchards i think most of you who follow me would know that the leopard's absolute firm favorite is a ton of pulchers [Music] all over the lens boy you can see beautiful example of the rosettes look at that wow what a perfect demonstration the melonism melanistic leopards [Music] also known as the black leopard black panther look even on the tail there guys this is a perfect demonstration in this light this life's perfect and you can see actually that they're not black the resets are black but the in between areas is actually like a reddish dark brown and then when you look at them in another light like that they look black to the eye they are quite special animals when you see them they are found in africa more recently the there were some camera trap pictures in kenya taken of some wild black leopard there um which was quite a surprise because people didn't think they occurred there there's been sightings of black leopards in the laudenburg region in uh south africa and obviously there's also these very famous leopards in india that have been photographed quite quite a lot recently so they like their normal colored cousins have a very very wide distribution leopards are very adaptable animals and can live in any region cultures are finished look at that they're going to lick up the scraps and then hopefully go outside and then we can carry on talking about kalinikita as characters you'll see now he's probably going to give a um hissy hissy at the camera no he's not hey boy there he is there's the talking and so let's talk about coal coal has always had a typical male temperament um male leopards are really selfish they're all about themselves if cole can get something from me he's going to come and try and get it when i come into this enclosure and i don't have food then cole will come for a quick stretch and that's that then he'll move away lucky's just done into the the shade of the tree and then you try and approach him at your own peril um he wants to be left alone and he's happy to be on his own and that's very different to uh two characters like duke and khan who are very social for leopards they have actually very unusual for nine ten-year-old leopards he's not a a dangerous cat he's just not a cuddly cat so he doesn't want uh kevin to go and cuddle him and hug him and kiss him and all of that that's going to result in in cole uh lashing out at kevin um not a good idea but he's he's not out to get you either so every time you come in here he realizes that kev is a positive influence in his life and uh that's why i can come in i can apply um fly cream i can put um a tick uh um lotion on on his back uh the the micro droplets this concentrate to concentrate the pipettes i can put that on him no problem um i can feed impulses i can even feed him pilchards out of my hand um and and that's all cool but once the pouches are over or once the gig is over or once the tickling on the the chin is over then cole wants to be left alone and so he will go into the shade you see that look he gives the camera and then he will busy clean up after he's eaten those pulchers happy cat hello my precious so [Music] it's a very different interaction with nikita as to call nikita is very touchy feely very tactile and loves to love still loves to lick nikita doesn't mind being touched nikita actually enjoys a good scratch and yeah i'll go and follow her get her in the sun here but she will always come up to you for affection and it's not always about food which is nice it's nice to be liked for things other than just food um and when nikita has had enough just like a normal leopard she'll get up and she'll walk away and that's what i love about her there's not a bone a bad bone in little nikita's body ina is coming up because he thinks he's missing out on something he's like let's give it up to i think kevin's got something in his pocket so i'm just going to hang around and see if i can score here so we're just following nikita to one of her favorite spots in her camp and this is one of the nicest camps we have here uh the the the old couple has a very nice area um i always look at this area and think yeah if i was a leopard i wouldn't mind living here so certainly a beautiful beautiful spot so yeah kitty same kind of call for her very very nice personality such a beautiful temperament there's not much that i can tell you about nikita that she doesn't like so let's go into the bushes here hello my girl it's a very nice area here michael it's a very nice area look at that beautiful tail long tail like a colabus monkey cole thinks he's missing out on something hello sweetheart [Music] [Music] she's hissing at him telling him back off pasta he's there marking his territory all right so she's really settled down nicely and as a cole he's just looking at me with that old face of his that old wires face uh going come on kevin i know you got another trick up your sleeve these two have really calmed down to the point that i often um use the analogy or the comparison between humans and and animals um and and it's so accurate in many respects you know when the animals are of babies they're very dependent on you and they want to spend time around you and then when they are are slightly older than babies they just before before their teenage years they're still very gregarious and very you know playful and very friendly and then as they get into their teenage your years and their hormones start to kick in just like humans they start to become all weird and quirky and you start to think oh my gosh what's going on with cole nikita's acting all strange and then they go through that phase and they come out the other side and if you give them time and enough patience then you know then you've got a lifetime of of these animals that are just so balanced and well-rounded and you know they're not hissing at everyone who's coming to try and clean their their camp or trying to clean their water or just you know give them food they're not overly aggressive um but they you know they remain they remain respectful and that's a wonderful thing to see with these two how they've evolved but certainly now at this age they've totally calmed down it's almost like you know they spend their days reading a book on the rocking chair in the sun that would be the human equivalent you know i look at coal and it kind of reminds me of a grumpy old man you know they don't have a bad bone in their body but they're grumpy as all hell and you go there's no reason for you to be grumpy but you gotta understand they have got some physical ailments perhaps and you know they're not as agile and flexible as they used to be so you know little bones are creaking and hurting and they're not as mobile and so those are all the things that come to mind but one thing you'll know about some old people at least is that they really love their treats hello my darling she's so playful yes let's see if i pull out the catnip treat let's see what mr mr big over there does that wait i'm putting the catnip all over him so he loves catnip and again it's all about coal [Music] she rubs in it i'll talking about nikita the relationship that i have with her 100 trust um and i don't say that um you know i don't say that freely about any animal you know the trust is a very it's a word that i don't dish out or give out easily so if an animal has my trust and i have that animal's trust it's an amazing place to be and nikita i can say i trust her 100 and she does me so much so that you know nikita i could take to the vet if there's something wrong with her i could get loaded into a crate typically that a leopard would not want to or any cat would want to go into i can get her into a small little crate put her in my car and take her to the vet and she doesn't stress out she just lies there she knows that this is nothing to be worried about that's trust big boy on the other hand it's not the same and we need to just be conscious of where our relationship with each other is and and stands hella boy let's take a little walk through there wonderful area that they have you can just see kind of enclosure that these guys live in these are historical runs um these date back many many years to the end of the 1800s little crawls that are part of their enclosure and lots of liquid this area is a hectare and now she comes running again you can run for a grenier granny kitty come come come it's not hard to see why they really like this enclosure it's their territory and there he goes calm and peaceful all right guys so that is it for the meet the characters series i'm afraid i hope you enjoyed uh watching the meet the characters series it was great to get your input and your feedback certainly there are a few firm favorites out there we will be exploring doing a follow-up series whereby we go just delve a little bit deeper into some of the key characters so we hope you'll enjoy that guys yeah thanks for subscribing to the channel if you um are coming to the lion whisperer tv channel for the first time and you want to see more of this kind of content then please do subscribe and uh thank you to all the members out there uh for your continual support really means the world to me um keep up to date on all the other social media platforms uh instagram and facebook it's lion whisperer s a and yeah all that's left for me to say is until next time here in line with spirit tv [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: The Lion Whisperer

Views: 1,726,124

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Id: G0dPRM98I20

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020