Hey, folks, we’re fast running out of photos. Please send yours in if you have good ones. Thanks!
Today we have pictures from two reserves in South Africa, sent in by Alex Skucas. Alex’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
These are from our summer (their winter) safari to Timbavati Private Reserve in South Africa. Timbavati is adjacent to Kruger and some years ago they took down the fence between the two so that the animals could come and go freely. We saw all of the Big Five on our first day.
Juvenile black rhinos playing at the watering hole.:
The whole family on their way to the watering hole:
Lion family nap time – two brothers and a sister. They didn’t seem to care that we were just feet away in our vehicle:
And, of course, lots of African bush elephants. They were everywhere – and doing quite a bit of damage to the ecosystem by knocking over trees. There is an over-abundance of elephants in this area, and it is a concern for the parks:
These are a few pictures from a trip we took to Zimbabwe and Zambia this summer, right after spending time in Timbavati. We had a special guest join us for lunch at Victoria Falls [JAC: a vervet monkey]
This leopard in Zambia was resting and had a fresh gash on his left flank, possibly from a fight with nearby baboons. We were assured he would be fine:
Giraffe getting a drink. Giraffes can only maintain this posture for a short time due to the increase in blood pressure on the brain:
An elephant walking over a Nile crocodile. The elephant was taking a long slow walk along a berm and there was a croc in its path. The elephant momentarily paused before stepping right over the croc – the croc never even flinched and kept sunning itself:
The elephant continued unfazed. You can see the marks where it crossed through some deep water:
Elephants can swim using their snouts as a snorkel. Here are two on either end of a calf, protecting it from crocs (and presumably the hippos too):
And the three safely emerging from the river:
elephants – a few are good, too many is bad?
from the WWF
“As strange as it seems, all that eating and apparent destruction help the forest pull more carbon out of the air,” says Alison Pearce Stevens in the Animal Climate Heroes book.
Elephants have large appetites and eat more than 400 pounds of food a day, so they spend a lot of time foraging.² As these megaherbivores lumber through the forest eating, they do a lot of damage to the surrounding vegetation. Stepping on, knocking over, and stripping leaves and branches off trees, elephants dramatically reduce the density of vegetation, particularly smaller trees, which contain a lower carbon density. Less competition for water, light, and space makes way for the growth of larger, slower-growing trees with denser wood and branches that form higher and wider canopies. These factors lead to the survival of trees that can absorb and store more CO2.
Awesome pictures! Thank you!
Great pics! The leopard is camouflaged in the bushes. I guess camo is good for the predators too.
I like the interactions between the different species.
Great pix. Thanks!