Domestic cats will do almost anything to avoid contact with water. But the fear of water is not at all peculiar to their wild cousins. Lions, tigers and jaguars had to adapt to the water in order to survive, scientists who observed the lions came to this conclusion.
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A research team in Uganda filmed two male lions swimming in a pond in Queen Elizabeth National Park. But what was unusual was the distance they traveled and the danger lurking on the way: the lions swam about 1.5 km through the Kazinga Canal, which connects two lakes in the park. The channel is home to a large number of hippos and Nile crocodiles, which are known to attack lions. In the footage, captured on a high-resolution thermal imaging camera, the lions make three attempts to cross the 6-meter-deep channel (and return to shore) before starting to swim south of the park.
