THE cheetah may be the fastest animal on the planet, but as these pictures show that doesn’t always guarantee a successful hunt.
The first mistake he made was to go after an ostrich, something he would not normally hunt - and then when the ostrich decided to turn on him it was the cheetah who had to leg it. This bizarre picture was taken by wildlife photographer Guy Dekelver at the Ngorogoro Crater in Tanzania, but even then all is not as it seems.
Guy, 36 said: ‘We found this cheetah hanging out in the crater, until all of the sudden it started showing interest in what seemed to be an ostrich. ‘After some sneaking up, the cheetah started gathering speed and a cheetah in full flight is one of the most amazing things you can witness.
‘The ostrich also took off, at which point in time, I also saw a hare trying to get out of the way. It then dawned on me that the hare was what the cheetah was really after.  ‘Unfortunately no one could tell the ostrich which obviously thought it was being chased. As it tired it decided to turn at which point the cheetah must have feared for its own safety and fled. ‘As for the hare, it lived to run another day, leaving behind a frustrated cheetah gasping for breath and a confused ostrich.’
Guy, originally from Belgium, added: ‘The irony is because I never caught the hare on camera people still ask me whether I’ve stitched two separate images of a cheetah and an ostrich running together.’ Guy, a natural resources management and renewable energy specialist has lived in east Africa for the last 12 years. He said: ‘I studied environmental engineering and international land and water management, resulting in jobs that brought me close to the animals I knew since I was a small child from books and documentaries. ‘Capturing those animals and their surroundings in pictures, in an attempt to share these wonders of nature with others, has always been one of my passions.’    –DM