I know at least in North America, you don’t usually see congregations of large animals, but in all documentaries about Africa, you see lions, hippos, gazelles, zebras, etc all together
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On the African plains, lots of animals usually depend on a few water holes.
So they learn what animals are ok to be around, because they need to be around them.
Even being close to lions is sometimes acceptable if the alternative is litteraly dying of thirst.
But in general, African animals often know what animals are dangerous, so they try to avoid them. And they also know what animals are safe to be around, so they stick close to those, since when a predator strikes, it’s usually better to have lots of bodies around you.
Well a great deal of animals went extinct on other continents (including North America) whenever mankind showed up. Africa is the only continent where animal evolved next to humans (remember humans came from Africa). My point is that it could just be a symptom of having more species of animals around to commingle. No more North American lions, camels, wooly mammoths, etc.
In North America, large mammals (like deer or bison or wolves) live in regions where water isn’t as scarce as it can be in Africa in the dry season. The drought forces animals to congregate near rivers or watering holes. At that point, watering holes become a sort of no man’s land where hardly any hunting takes place as it would ruin the watering hole for everyone. I doubt lions are aware of it, but maybe at a very primal level they do know that if they hunt near watering holes, the prey will abandon the area, which means less potential prey. And further down the line, if the zebras and wildebeest all die of thirst, they can’t make babies and the species will die out, leaving no food for the lions. It’s all about balanced ecosystems.
As for why they’re not scared: they have learned they don’t always need to be scared. Lions are lazy creatures that easily sleep more than 12 hours a day. If a zebra were to dart off every single time it saw a dozing lion, it would not be very efficient: energy is precious, and if you waste it on running from the sleepy lion, you may not have enough left to run away from the hungry leopard down the road. So animals have learned to read the body language of the predators.
A very important factor is also that I’d the predator is letting it’s prey see him, it’s unlikely to be hungry and want to attack. Most African predators stalk their prey and get as close as possible without being noticed. If they stroll into the savannah, visible by everyone, odds are they are not interested in hunting right now, and the prey can relax.
In North America, wildlife is less condensed and there is no need for a truce at a watering hole, or knowing how to read the body language of a wolf. If a deer sees a wolf, it’s probably because it’s being stalked, and it should run away. Odds are also that if it does run away, it won’t run into another predator quite as soon as a gazelle does in the savannah, so the safest bet becomes “run away if you see something suspicious” rather than “make sure it’s worth running away from before you do because you need your energy for later”
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