Another day in Manyeleti: stinking elephant corpses with vultures and hyenas, a leopard sighting, and many other beasts

NOTE: Click the pictures to enlarge them.

Here are the latest results from our twice-daily game drives at Manyeleti Game Reserve. I’ll put up photos of food, our facilities, and other such stuff later, but for me the important stuff is the animals and their behavior. This post covers the second game drive yesterday and the first one this morning.

Yesterday afternoon we came upon a breeding herd of African bush elephants (I won’t give links or species names henceforth for animals I’ve named previously). The one on the right is a female (angular head), there are two infants of indeterminate sex, and it’s unclear what sex the elephant on the left is.

Rosemary says that the elephant below is probably a male, but can’t be sure because it’s facing us and is also fairly young (ca. 10-12 years). But it is apparently both giving us an alert pose and sniffing the air to see what our vehicle is (elephants have poor eyesight):

This is definitely a female, as shown by the sharp angle of the forehead (adult males have rounder foreheads).

I asked Martim about this bird, and he said this:

I would say this is a Greater Blue-eared Starling, Lamprotornis chalybeus. Although the photo suggests a black belly (rather than blue), I guess this is an effect of the light angle.

A blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus), formerly known as the brindled gnu, is a large antelope that’s common across southern Africa:

Another “lion wedding party,” as our guide Dan calls it. Same pair as yesterday (they can copulate up to 50 times a day over several days), and in the same spot. And, like yesterday, copulation took less than a minute and the mail roared halfway through (is that a lion orgasm?). He then swiped at and roared at a nearby juvenile male (“leave my wife alone!”), lit a cigarette, and then both lions rested:

Afterglow:

The female, perhaps pregnant by now:

A trio of giraffes (Giraffa sp.; they’ve named seven but I don’t believe that number). Several zebras were following them around; apparently other herbivores use giraffes, whose height allows them to see far away, as lookouts to give an alert to nearby predators.

Watch out for antelopes! A sign quickly photographed at high speed. You can see my reflection in the mirror.

Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius)  in a nearby “dam” (a big water pond). I think this is the closest we’ll get to them. There is only one species and usually you just get to see their eyes and nose. They are, I believe the closest terrestrial animal to whales. They are born and nurse underwater, and can swim before they can walk.

In the last half hour of our evening game drive, we stop, have drinks, and chat. On the house: wine, beer, soda, or gin and tonics (coffee, tea or cocoa in the morning). In the foreground is Dan, our knowledgeable and amiable driver (I’m glad I’ll have him the whole time). This ritual is known as a “sundowner”:

And. . . sundown by the lake, watching the hippos submerge and pop up again:

Last night I skipped dinner as I’ve been eating too much, and retired to my heated bed to read (The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham). As I read, the lions made their “here I am calls”, which sound to me like a combination of snoring and growling. You can hear it below. They do this, apparently, to let other males in their group know where they are. Here’s a video that Rosemary found:

Reading while hearing the lions call nearby was as close to paradise as I can envision.

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Another day, another two drives. This covers one we had this m0rning. We started off by passing one of a gazillion termite mounds. Aardvarks use these as places to dig their dens and burrows:

Then onto one of the Two Big Events of the Day. We were clued into it by nearby trees full of vultures:

Martim identified this vulture:

White-backed vulture Gyps africanus (from your photo, the diagnostic trait separating it from the less common Cape Vulture, G. coprotheres, is its black eye)

All the trees were full of vultures! Why? Because there was a dead elephant nearby, pungently rotting away but still recognizable as an African elephant. The corpse was apparently about a week old.

It may have died of old age, but Rosemary says that elephants may die from infectious diseases like “tuberculosis, haemorrhagic septicaemia, trypanosomiasis, pyroplasmosis, foot and mouth disease, pox, bacillary necrosis, salmonellosis, streptococcosis, babesiosis, helminthiasis and ectoparasitism”, as well as rabies and tetanus.

The rotting, stinking corpse was covered with vultures who were picking at it, as well as ripping off bits made available by several hyenas who were also gorging away at this pachyderm buffet.

Note that the elephant still has its tusks, which should be removed before poachers get them.

Note the hyena to the right:

Three hyenas to the left are devouring the corpse; one has its tongue hanging out. The smell, when the wind shifted, was digusting, but I’m sure the birds and hyenas find it delectable and tantalizing:

Spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) come in just two sexes, like all mammals, despite the female having a penis-like organ containing the urethra and vagina. Note: female are NOT a “new” biological sex.

Spotted hyenas are social, live in clans, and are both hunters and scavengers. And they are strong! Wikipedia notes this:

The spotted hyena also has its carnassials situated behind its bone-crushing premolars, the position of which allows it to crush bone with its premolars without blunting the carnassials. Combined with large jaw muscles and a special vaulting to protect the skull against large forces, these characteristics give the spotted hyena a powerful bite which can exert a pressure of 80 kgf/cm2 (1140 lbf/in²), which is 40% more force than a leopard can generate. The jaws of the spotted hyena outmatch those of the brown bear in bone-crushing ability,and free ranging hyenas have been observed to crack open the long bones of giraffes measuring 7 cm in diameter.

According to Martim, the bird below is a “Juvenile Saddle-billed Stork, Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis.” He added, “I hope you get to see the adults!”  Check the link above for the fantastic adult:

Our big spot of the day was a leopard (Panthera pardus), quickly surrounded by game vehicles as the drivers communicated with each other where it was. (I worry about this.) It is a rare sighting, and now I’ve seen four of the Big Five (all but the African buffalo).

But I’m not really ticking off a list, as I’d gladly see even the common animals over and over again. Their behavior is always changing and raises many behavioral and evolutionary questions (e.g. can anything take down a huge and alert giraffe? Answer: yes).

What a gorgeous cat! I was lucky to get a photo as they’re wary, skittish, rare, and there were vehicles nearly surrounding it, which clearly spooked it.  But visitors also help conserve the parks, so there’s an upside, too.

Finally, a good sighting of a Burchell’s zebra (a subspecies of the Plains Zebra). They live in small groups, described by Wikipedia as “harem” or “bachelor” groups, with the former containing one male and a passel of females, and the latter comprising two to eight stallions looking for love.

And now it’s time for lunch and then another game drive. There’s no doubt that we’ll see something interesting. More when I have enough for another post.

Out of Africa,
PCC(E)