Nature Red in Tooth and Claw …

In 1850 Alfred Lord Tennyson published the poem In Memoriam A.H.H. It commemorated the life of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam who had died at just 22 years of age 17 years earlier. It was at a time when science and religion were posing different answers to the fundamental questions. It was an immense work (2,916 lines and getting bigger in subsequent editions). Tennyson wasn’t the first or last to wonder if God is the great and good creator of all why He is so careless with individual lives …

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

Darwin’s Origin of Species came in 1859. One of Tennyson’s 2,916 lines, perhaps the most memorable of them all, came to sum up the implications of the survival of the fittest.

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed

Bad Boy …

I once went on a walking safari. You can read about it. Day 1 is <HERE>. The safety briefing was a gem. In it I learnt that most charges that I could expect to face would be mock charges. But if it was a buffalo it would be for real.

Our pick up point was 20 km away. It soon became apparent that there was a very strung out herd of buffalo in between. This meant a significant detour. Late lunch that day.

Sandgrouse …

Inhabitants of dry open country, sixteen species spread across Africa, Asia and just making it across the Mediterranean into Spain. They are primarily seed eaters. They are well camouflaged and usually seen exploding out of close by vegetation and flying quickly away. Their belly feathers are adapted to absorb and transport water enabling them to raise chicks at some distance from the drinking supply.

Got lucky with this pair of Double-banded Sandgrouse. They stuck around long enough for a couple of shots, male on the left …

Help me out here …

I am in the process of writing an essay on safari photography. It will eventually drop on the blog. I am rarely seen with a camera lens shorter than a bazooka but I know that some people take some very nice photos with their phones. If you have a few wildlife shots that you are proud of and are happy to share please send them my way. I’d like to know the make and model of your phone as well. If you have my email that’s easy. If not drop a comment below and I’ll be in touch.

I will acknowledge your work in any way you like, name, pseudonym, whatever. Any way, that is, except pay for them!

Thanks

Rob.

Elephant …

I met my first wild Elephant on the 16th of August 1997. You never forget your first.

It was first thing in the morning of our first day on safari, Mombo, Botswana. I had the rear seat of an open safari vehicle. We came upon a youngish male. He was running along thrashing the vegetation. The driver/guide pointed out the secretion of temporin running down its face and the seminal fluid dripping from its penis. Told us that its testosterone levels were through the roof. Its mania was due to the state of musth, an annual event for bull elephants over about 30 years of age. After a while we overtook it and continued on our way.

About 15 minutes later we came upon our first collection of Impala. We stopped with our rear wheels in a bit of a ditch and turned off the engine. Our driver/guide pointed out that this was a male and his harem and began to explain the exhausting and competitive life of the male Impala. Turned three quarters around to address his guests he was well placed to notice a maniacal male elephant charging the back of the vehicle. He immediately started the engine and set about rectifying the situation.

But forgot that the rear wheels were in a bit of a ditch and stalled the engine. Valuable moments were lost. The engine was restarted, many more revs were injected and we were on the way again. The elephant had its head down, fortunately for me because those tusks could easily have impaled me. Its forehead hit the rear end of the vehicle but by that stage our relative velocities dampened the impact to a minor blow.

Those were the days of single shot exposures and 200 ASA colour slide film. The head filled the frame but it wasn’t a keeper, poor focus and too much motion blur.

Cheetah …

Nought to 70 in two and a half seconds, a top speed of 100 kph plus, 7 meters per stride. Impact. Choke hold. Suffocation. Consumption. No time wasted. The chase occurs over a maximum of about 200 meters and has a success rate of about 50%. The Cheetah is the obvious choice as the falconer’s cat and has been tamed and used for hunting for perhaps 5000 years, probably in ancient Sumer, certainly in early Egypt.

Today the Cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is confined to Africa plus a small isolated population in Iran. It was once far more widely distributed disappearing from North America at the end of the last ice age. Then dwindling in Asia in the last few centuries. There appears to have been a couple of population bottlenecks along the way indicated by a very high level of homozygosity.

Males tend to live territorial lives in small coalitions usually of brothers. Females roam more widely on their own or with their youngsters. Males and females come together only to mate.

Hunting usually takes place in the morning or evening. Loss of their kill to other predators is common. They usually eat immediately, don’t return to a carcass and don’t scavenge.

Spotted in Africa …

Bold, beautiful, smart and really really weird. Very capable hunters, social, ferocious and, did I mention, really really weird. Crocuta crocuta, the Spotted Hyena. For a very interesting account of just how weird go <HERE>.

But briefly, the girls are bigger and stronger and have bigger dicks than the boys. The alpha female rules the clan. Their genitalia mimic the male genitalia so well that to be sure you need to squeeze the scrotum (presumably the boys then burst into tears).

It looks like a dog, hunts like a dog, and very successfully too, taking down Zebra and Buffalo and killing far more than scavenging. But the last time it shared a common ancestor with the dogs was 50 million years ago when the feliforms and the caniforms went their separate ways.