Battle at Kruger is an amazing nature video. It was Sai Prasad who told me about this amazing video way back in 2008. It is mind boggling that a video by an amateur videographer has been watched by 63,466,716 people on the Youtube. (As on 30th September 2011, 1835 IST). Many more millions have watched this amazing video on major television networks including the national geographic.
Battle at Kruger is an eight-minute amateur wildlife video that depicts an unfolding confrontation between a herd of buffaloes, a small pride of lions and crocodiles. The video was shot in September 2004 at the transport Dam watering hole in Kruger National Park, South Africa, during a Safari guided by Frank Watts. It was filmed by videographer David Budzinski and photographer Jason Schlosberg.
Taken from a small vehicle on the opposite side of the watering hole with a digital camcorder the video begins with the herd of buffalo approaching the water. Upon seeing the lions, the buffaloes runaway and the lions charge and disperse the herd, picking off a baby buffalo, which in a panic to escape gets thrown into the water.
While the lions try to drag the buffalo out of the water, the baby buffalo is grabbed by a crocodile, which fights for it before giving up and leaving it to the lions. The lions sit down and prepare to eat, but are quickly surrounded by the reorganized buffalo, who move in and begin charging and kicking at the lions.
After a battle which sees one lion being tossed into the air by a buffalo, the baby buffalo still alive, to the astonishment of the onlookers escapes into the herd. The emboldened buffalo then proceed to chase the remaining lions away.
After being posted on YouTube on 3 May 2007, Battle at Kruger received over 63 million views and became a viral video sensation and was widely praised for its dramatic depiction of wildlife. It became one of YouTube's most popular videos, with more than 60 million views and 79 thousand comments as of September 2011 and won the Best Eyewitness Video in the 2nd Annual YouTube Video Awards.
The video was also the subject of an article in the 25 June 2007 issue of Time magazine, and was featured in the first episode of ABC News i-Caught, which aired on 7 August 2007. A National Geographic documentary on the video debuted on the National Geographic Channel on 11 May 2008.
It is, very rare for such events to be captured on film even by professional wildlife photographers. Dereck Joubert, a photographer and writer for National Geographic said of the video:
"There is no doubt at all that the tourist who shot that scene were unbelievably lucky. I mean, we would've considered ourselves lucky to have had that whole scene happen in front of us.
What can be learnt from this video is that sometimes strange events happen right in front of us. There are few people in this world who capture that moment and encash their incredible luck that destiny gifted them.
