Today’s photos from Africa come from Phil Frymire, whom I met in line flying from Newark to Capetown. He and his brother went on to the Kruger area immediately, while I went on to Capetown for a week before heading north. Today he shows photos of South African mammals. Phil’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
I wish I could continue the big cat series, but we didn’t have Jerry’s good luck. We didn’t see any cheetahs. Here are some white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) and African bush elephants (Loxodonta Africana). As Jerry mentioned in his posts, the rhinos in the area are systematically dehorned to deter poaching, but many remain intact.
An intact Timbavati rhino:
Mother and nursing calf:
You can see why they’re called the square-lipped rhinoceros:
You wouldn’t want to see this if there was anger involved (there wasn’t in this case):
We saw many rhinos in Timbavati, but only these four in Mala Mala, all dehorned. There is a starling (I’m not sure what species—there are many in South Africa) on the far left ready to grab any flushed insects:
Just as Jerry observed at Manyeleti, the elephants at Kambaku River Sands would come down for a drink from the swimming pool:
Doing what elephants do all day long, eating:
Look at those eyelashes:
Another elephant showing the long eyelashes and some remnant secretions from the temporal gland behind the eye:
Down for a drink at the river in Mala Mala:
A large herd in Mala Mala. The female (angular forehead) in the foreground has an unusual, asymmetric straight right tusk:
A mother in full flap cooling mode:
Youngster with extended trunk:
Baby less than a month old, still covered with hair:
A wonderful reprise
Magnificent photos of magnificent mammals.
Thank you for these photos.
Wow! The rhinosauruses are so cool! (Yes, I know it’s rhinoceros, but they look for all the world like living Tricerotops.)
Lovely collection! But the baby elephant— what is the advantage for them to be born with hair?
I wouldn’t assume there is any particular advantage to the baby elephant born with hair. Nature happened to work out a developmental sequence for which most, though not all, baby elephants are born with the lanugo. By contrast most, though not all, human fetuses shed the lanugo before birth. But I’m not aware that an untypical baby elephant born without a lanugo or an untypical baby human born with a lanugo is in any way disadvantaged.
thank you!
I’m not sure. I’ve seen a couple of ideas. One is that it’s lanugo, a phenomenon which Jerry discusses in his book. Another is that it has to do with temperature control: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3468452/
thank you. Just have never seen a photo of one before!
Beautiful! Takes me back to my trip to East Africa, many moons ago.
Nice rhino photos!
Great photos! Thank you.
Great collection. The baby elephant is really cute.