Lioness Attacks Crocodile To Protect Cubs (PHOTOS)

Lioness Attacks Crocodile: Caught In Stunning Photos

Lioness Attacks Crocodile: Caught In Stunning Photos

Lioness Attacks Crocodile: Caught In Stunning Photos

Lioness Attacks Crocodile: Caught In Stunning Photos

Split Second Decision Captures Lioness Attacking Crocodile

The Daily Mail is reporting on a series of extraordinary photographs taken by Pia Dierckx as she was quietly capturing photographs from a secure location along the Okavanga Delta in Botswana.

Dierckx, 48, had with her a high-speed shutter camera capable of taking six photographs per second.

As Dierckx panned the view of a lioness guiding her young pride across the river, she said a splash occurred with the lioness and a crocodile in plain view.

Upon reviewing her photographs she found that in a split-second decision the lioness attacked the crocodile and submerged it in water giving her young pride time to escape.

The Huffington Post reports, the two powerful animals engaged in a quick but fierce battle, each biting the other, until the lioness ran off relatively with only a small cut on her lip.

“It was only when I downloaded my pictures later that I saw what had happened,” said Dierickx.

“The sequence of six pictures of the real action were taken in one second,” Dierckx told The Daily Mail.

The photographs are a stunning instance of wilderness life in the balance.

“Luckily for the lioness the crocodile did not have an opportunity to do the death roll because her mouth was kept closed between the front legs of the lioness,” Dierckx added.

Lions continue to be threatened by indiscriminate killing and habitat loss, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.