by Paul Jay, CBCNews.ca

One of the promises of online video is that it provides a forum for citizen journalism. Of course, when we think of citizen journalism we think of George Holliday's video camcorder catching police officers beating Rodney King in 1992. We don't think of citizen journalism as a replacement for Wild Kingdom.

But then along comes American tourist Dave Budinski, who posted an encounter between African buffalos and lions, plus a few uninvited guests, in a video entitled, in a somewhat understated manner, Battle at Kruger.

Since it was posted in May of this year, the video has been viewed more than six million times, cracking YouTube's top 100 most viewed and top favourites lists.

Take a gander and you'll see why. It starts with suspense, turns quickly into a horror film then adds the requisite surprise twist before morphing into a Rocky-style, feel-good flick. As Budinski's colleague Jason Schlosberg told Time magazine: "The guide told us that in his 15 years of doing this he'd never seen anything like it."

Need we say more?