[3rd POV]
(Documentary Episode : 7)
[Name : Dr T. Soma Tonson
Role : Lead Researcher]
....
"Leo was able to rescue his mother and old lover from the clutches of the enemy, Scar. He went out to hunt for them, took down a full-grown bull giraffe in a display of feats thought to be impossible. And now they were feasting," Dr Tonson continued the episode.
"All seemed well," he said.
The documentary showed the whole pride tearing away at the gigantic meal of the giraffe. Nearly two tons of pure meat were enough to feed this huge pride for days and still leave leftovers for the vultures to enjoy.
The footage showed the pride grooming each other after having the meal. It was one of their social interactions to lick the blood off each other after a meal. Leo himself had four females grooming his thick mane.
The new members were also welcomed by the pride and even more so by Leo. He would stay close to them, making up for all the lost time by cuddling and rubbing on each other.
The sun was rising in the sky, shining its warm light at the lions who were under a shade now.
"But we have to remember, there were two sides to this story. While one could be sunshine and rainbow, the other could be brewing up disaster," Dr Tonson said.
"And that's what Scar did."
The footage cut to the dark and gloomy wasteland of the Pridelands. The camera zoomed in on three hyenas that went into the lion's den.
That seemed like the most impossible thing. A hyena with the minimal survival instinct to breathe and eat should not be stupid enough to go inside a lion's den.
But it didn't just end there. A few moments later, the drone captured these three hyenas leaving the lion's den, completely unharmed.
"An impossible alliance, but proven by nature. This was one of the moments where the saying, reality is often stranger than fiction, could not have been more right," he said.
"Scar and his legion of hyenas, now aware of the new challenger, were preparing for a war that would consume the whole of Pridelands and dictate its future," he said.
The three hyenas that came out from the den parted ways. They all began moving towards their own direction. At first, it was not clear why they would do such a thing. Were they not part of the same clan? Why were they separating?
"The traditional way lion kings settle dispute is through battle. The winner takes it all. But when two lions, each with their own pride, territory and subjects, met in a clash, the result was not just a battle but war," he said.
"And Scar was gathering his forces."
The documentary began showing the events that took place in the next three days. All the hyenas all over the Pridelands began gathering. The three initial hyenas seemed to be the leader as they began gathering forces from the North, South, East and West.
"This was the first sign that the Pridelands were no longer behaving like any ecosystem we recognised. Nature was breaking its own rules."
The image transitioned to a wide aerial view of the wasteland.
"And over the next three days, our drones captured perhaps the most astonishing phenomenon ever recorded in the study of terrestrial predators."
Time-lapse footage played. The barrens shifted from dawn to dusk. Shadows lengthened and contracted. And from every corner of the land, hyenas began appearing.
"One hyena. Then three. Then twelve. Then thirty. Within hours, we were counting them in dozens per frame."
The documentary slowed to real-time. Hyenas loped over ridges, trotted through dead grass, and emerged from caves, ravines, and dried riverbeds.
There seemed to be an invisible call in the air, and each and every hyena in the land was responding to this call.
"To understand how absurd this is," Tonson said, "we must first understand hyena social structure. Hyenas live in clans. Clans rarely exceed eighty members. These clans are territorially isolated and often violently competitive. They do not merge. They do not unify. They do not answer to a single central authority."
A graphic appeared showing typical hyena clan ranges: small, patchy territories with little overlap.
"Hyena communication is extremely sophisticated," he continued, "but nowhere near the level required for coordinated, long-distance mobilisation. No known signal, auditory, chemical, or visual, could summon clan after clan across dozens of kilometres."
The footage continued. Hundreds of hyenas now moved across the plain.
"And yet… they gathered," he said gravely. "There was only one way to make this make logical sense. And that was the fact that we were looking at a large hyena clan of over 400 members. That was more than four times the number of the largest recorded clan. And they were all unified under the rule of one king."
"A lion king. Scar."
Another drone angle showed a growing tide.
"By the middle of the second day, we estimated nearly two hundred hyenas. By the end of the third… four hundred and twelve."
The drone rose above the swarm until the hyenas looked like dark insects crawling across a pale, dying earth.
"This number is not only unprecedented but it pushed the boundary of ecological limits. A super-clan of this size should collapse under its own food requirements. The metabolic load of four hundred scavenger-predators cannot be sustained in this environment. There is no prey. There is no carrion. There is no resource to justify their survival, let alone their congregation."
A map overlay showed their routes converging on Pride Rock.
In front of the king.
"But still… they came."
At the head of the formation were the same three hyenas from Scar's den.
"They were not merely messengers," Tonson said. "They were leaders. They displayed body posture consistent with dominance in hyenas."
The camera showed clusters merging, splitting, then falling into step.
"This behaviour resembles something we see in entirely different branches of the animal kingdom," Tonson said. "Locusts, for example, undergo what is known as a phase shift. Under extreme ecological pressure, solitary grasshoppers transform into highly cooperative, migratory swarms capable of devastating landscapes."
Footage of locust clouds appeared, grey and buzzing.
"But this…" he said, returning to the hyenas, "is not insects. This is not simple neural rewiring. These are apex-level carnivores displaying swarm-like behaviour with military precision."
The hyenas arranged themselves into a crescent shape facing Pride Rock.
"And then something even stranger happened."
The hyenas sat.
They waited.
Silent.
Still.
"As if awaiting orders."
The next frame showed Scar stepping into view atop Pride Rock.
"And for the first time in recorded zoological history, a lion appeared to command four hundred hyenas."
Scar's silhouette against the rising sun looked almost mythical.
"The question was not how Scar controlled them," Tonson continued. "The real question was why they obeyed."
The hyenas lifted their heads. Some chattered, some laughed, some hollered, while some bowed. But it was clear where they were taking orders from.
"This gathering represents a level of social coordination unseen in any land predator. It defies everything we know about hierarchy, competition, resource distribution, and ecological stress behaviour."
"They were soldiers."
The drone zoomed further back, capturing the entire mass, hundreds of bodies packed densely into a half-moon formation.
They were like a lake of blackness and flesh amid the vast wasteland.
"When asked what this resembled," Tonson said, "my colleagues compared it to wolf super-packs, sardine bait balls, elephant matriarch migrations, even human military formations. But none truly match it. This was something new. Something we might not fully understand even decades from now."
Scar roared.
And the swarm answered.
"In a motion so synchronised that it sent chills down our spines, the entire crescent turned."
Every head. Every paw. Every gaze.
"One single movement. Like they were one organism."
The hyenas faced the distant slope of the plateau.
"And they began to run."
The audio swelled with the thunder of hundreds of bodies charging across the land.
"But where?"
The drone flew in front of them and passed them. The drone quickly covered the distance they would cover in time before eventually slowing down at the end of the plateau and finally, the Leo and his pride that were laying down right outside of the plateau.
"You know where."
...
...
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