Reader Phil Frymire sent more photos from his recent African animal-viewing trip, which coincided with mine but was in a different park. Phil’s photos are of mammals, his IDs and captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them:
Continuing a series of photo submissions from an August trip to South Africa, here are some warthogs and antelopes.
Common warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus):
A female impala (Aepyceros melampus):
A male impala:
A female nyala (Tragelaphus angasii):
A blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus taurinus). Palance, our guide at Kambaku River Sands, was not impressed with wildebeest intelligence. Prey species often herd together and take advantage of each other’s alarm calls to flee an area when a predator is detected. Palance told us that wildebeest often turn around and come right back to where they were and get killed.
Steenboks (Raphicerus campestris):
Waterbucks (Kobus ellipsiprymnus ellipsiprymnus) showing the characteristic “white toilet seat” around the rump:
A resting male waterbuck:
A greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) with two oxpeckers:
Close up of a male greater kudu showing the magnificent spiral horns:
Of all the antelopes we saw on the trip, the klipspringer (Oreotragus oreotragus) was my favorite. Klipspringers are the sentinels of the kopjes, uniquely adapted to that environment. Kopjes (pronounced like “copies”) are small granite hills that rise steeply from the surrounding flatter terrain. Klipspringer translates to “rock jumper” and that they are. We saw one leap across a large gap, land on a slick, steeply sloping granite surface, and casually walk to the top of the boulder. We were stunned. There are three klipspringers in this photo:
A klipspringer posing on a granite boulder:
A close up of the same klipspringer:
Thank you for sharing these photos, Phil. How do you get them to pose so nicely for you?
Artificial selection from a multitude of photos. I went to Kenya years ago in the film era when you had to be selective in what shots you took and were never sure what you had until you got them developed. The beauty of digital is that you can fire away at will and later sort through the photos to select the best ones.
Breathtakingly gorgeous!
Nice photos! Thanks!
Beautiful photos. Steenboks ears and Greater Kudu horns are amazing!
I was struck by the different patterns on the inside of the various antelope ears. Is there an adaptive significance? Species identification?
That’s an interesting question. A quick search on Google Scholar wasn’t fruitful, but the interspecific differences shown in the photos here are suggestive.
Fantastic photos! I love all the different shaped horns. I’m amazed by the hoofs on the klipspringers in that last photo. It doesn’t look like I would expect for gripping boulders.
Wow! Amazing!
Magnificent!
Great collection. The spiral horns are amazing.