Rare footage of a lion finishing off an elephant in northern Botswana.

The video, filmed on May 18, shows the male lion chewing on the wounded elephant, which appears to be still alive.

According to the filmer, the footage was taken shortly after the big cat pounced on the elephant's back and brought it down.

"I tracked the male lion early one morning," the filmer wrote online.

"He eventually came to an open pan in the bush and charged at the elephant."

"The elephant ran off into the bush, but the lion pounced on its back," he continued.

"The elephant soon lost balance, which allowed the lion to asphyxiate it.

"It took 90 minutes to kill the elephant [and] the lion started to eat it alive."

This extremely rare sighting happened in Northern Botswana.
"I tracked the male lion early one morning. He eventually came to an open pan in the bush and charged at the elephant. The elephant ran off into the bush, but the lion pounced on its back. The elephant soon lost balance, which allowed the lion to asphyxiate it. It took
90 minutes to kill the elephant - the lion started to eat it alive, starting at the anus. It was verydifficult to watch but remains the most amazing sighting of my young career so far.
What started out as a normal morning quickly turned into the most incredible observation session I’ve had as a research assistant with the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust. Before dawn I picked up a signal for ‘Hector’, a collared adult male lion, on the tracking-mast at camp and headed out to track him down. I found him about 1.5km north of our camp, in the Santawani area south of Moremi Game Reserve. He was heading northeast with some serious determination.
He was walking fast and I followed him, trying to keep a visual on him in order to collect behavioural data. Finally he stopped at a dry pan and froze, stared directly ahead, his tail jerking back and forth.
He just kept looking forward, standing completely still apart from his twitching tail.
Hector had seen a lone young elephant at the pan. The elephant looked up, saw Hector, and wheeled around.
It broke into a sprint and headed straight back into the tree line. Hector burst into the pan and chased the elephant at full speed, gaining on it as they crashed through the trees and thorns. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I heard an elephant trumpeting, and the extremely loud crashing of leaves and twigs. By the time
I had manoeuvred my vehicle around the pan and through the mopane, the elephant was on the ground with Hector on its throat.
The elephant was kicking wildly, flinging its trunk around and making gurgling sounds but Hector already had it on its side. The elephant must have outweighed the lion several times but Hector kept it down. He struggled to stay on its throat and kept grappling its side to keep it down. He held it by the neck for
nearly 20 minutes but it was still breathing heavily, kicking and making some horrendous sounds.
Hector moved to the elephant’s belly and while it lay there, clearly alive, he started to eat. It took about an hour and a half for the elephant to die. It was a truly painful yet amazing thing to witness but it was certainly not something you see every day, and worth sharing, given the male lion’s reputation as a
back-seat hunter." - Video Taker