Do Lions Eat Leopards, Cheetahs, and Hyenas?

It’s one of the most-asked questions on an African safari: if a lion runs into a leopard, a cheetah, or a hyena, does it eat them? The short, slightly surprising answer is that lions killthese animals fairly often — but they very rarely eat them. And that one distinction explains almost everything about how Africa’s big predators live alongside each other.

Here’s the honest, myth-free version of the great predator rivalries: who kills whom, why they do it when there’s no meal in it, and where on an East African game drive you’re most likely to see this drama play out.

The Short Answer

• Do lions eat leopards? Lions readily kill leopards when they can catch them, but they almost never eat them.
• Do lions eat cheetahs?Same story — lions kill cheetahs, especially cubs, but don’t feed on them.
• Do lions eat hyenas? Lions kill hyenas in fights over food and territory; eating them is rare.
• Do cheetahs eat lions or hyenas?No — cheetahs are the ones on the back foot here, and they avoid both.

So why kill an animal you have no intention of eating? Because for a lion, a rival predator isn’t food — it’s competition.

Killing the Competition, Not the Meal

Biologists have a name for this behaviour: intraguild predation. When several meat-eaters share the same landscape and hunt the same prey — lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas and wild dogs all chasing the same antelope — the biggest and most dominant of them will kill the smaller ones to remove rivals from the board. It’s not about hunger. It’s about reducing the number of mouths competing for the same herds.

Lions sit at the top of that hierarchy, so they win most of these encounters. A lion gains very little nutritionally from eating another predator — the flesh of a fellow carnivore is a poor, stringy meal compared with a fat antelope, and catching one is dangerous work. But by killing a leopard or a cheetah, a lion pride quietly protects the food supply for its own cubs. That’s the whole logic in a sentence.

Lions vs Leopards

Lions and leopards are direct rivals, and lions dominate. When a lion finds a leopard, it will chase and, if it catches it, kill it — cubs most of all. The leopard’s answer is avoidance and altitude: leopards are superb climbers, and hauling a kill high into a tree keeps both the meal and the leopard out of a lion’s reach. Being solitary, secretive, and largely nocturnal is a leopard’s way of sharing the same ground as a lion pride without meeting it.

Lions vs Cheetahs

The cheetah comes off worst of all. It’s built for one thing — blistering speed — and everything it gives up to be that fast (a light frame, small head, non-retractable claws) leaves it poorly equipped to fight. Lions and hyenas kill a heartbreaking number of cheetah cubs, which is one of the main reasons cheetah numbers stay low even in well-protected parks. An adult cheetah’s best defence is simply to see danger coming and run — it will abandon a fresh kill rather than risk a confrontation. (We dig into just how fast that getaway is in how fast is a cheetah.)

Lions vs Hyenas: The Oldest Feud

The lion’s relationship with the spotted hyena is different — it’s less predator-and-victim than an open, ongoing war between two heavyweights. Hyenas are powerful, clever, and hunt in numbers, and they will happily steal a lion’s kill if they outnumber the pride; equally, lions will rob hyenas and kill them in the scuffles. Male lions in particular kill hyenas when they get the chance. The two species compete for exactly the same food, and much of the drama you’ll witness around a carcass at dawn is this rivalry in action. Neither “eats” the other in any meaningful sense — they’re fighting over the third animal.

Do Cheetahs Eat Hyenas or Lions? The Other Way Round

Not a chance. A cheetah is a specialist hunter of gazelles, impala, and other small-to-medium antelope — it neither hunts nor eats other predators. Against a lion or a clan of hyenas it is completely outmatched, so its entire strategy is to hunt at different times, in more open ground, and to give way the instant a bigger carnivore appears. Hyenas routinely bully cheetahs off their own kills. So while the search engines fill up with “do cheetahs eat hyenas” and “do cheetahs eat lions,” the reality runs firmly in the opposite direction — we unpack it in do cheetahs eat lions and hyenas.

Where to See Africa’s Predator Drama

You don’t need to witness a kill to feel these rivalries — they shape the behaviour of every animal on the plains. A few of the best places on our trips to see the cast in one landscape:

• Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda— lions (including the famous tree-climbers of Ishasha), leopards, and hyenas, plus a superb boat safari on the Kazinga Channel
• Kidepo Valley, Uganda— a remote northern wilderness that is one of the few places in the country to hold lions, leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas together
• The Masai Mara & Serengeti— the classic big-cat stage, where the Great Migration concentrates predators like nowhere else on earth

For the strangest lions of the lot, read about the tree-climbing lions of Ishasha, and if you’re trying to tell the two spotted cats apart, see leopard vs cheetah.

Predator Rivalry FAQ

Do lions eat leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas?They kill all three to remove competition, but they very rarely eat them — the flesh of another predator is a poor meal.

Why do lions kill animals they don’t eat? To protect their food supply. Killing a rival carnivore (and its cubs) means fewer hunters competing for the same antelope herds.

Do cheetahs eat hyenas or lions?No. Cheetahs hunt antelope and avoid other predators entirely — hyenas and lions regularly steal cheetah kills and hunt cheetah cubs.

Who wins, a lion or a hyena? One-on-one the lion, easily. But a large clan of hyenas can overwhelm a lone lion or drive a small pride off a kill.

See It for Yourself

The rivalries between Africa’s predators are the hidden engine of every game drive — the reason a cheetah bolts, a leopard climbs, and a hyena laughs in the dark. If you’d like to watch it unfold, tell us what you’d most love to see and we’ll build it into a Kidepo Valley wilderness safari or an East Africa migration safari shaped around your dates.