Field Notes: Mimic Magic

 

The Common Egg Eater has an arsenal of special adaptations to save guard it from many natural threats. They subsist exclusively on wild avian eggs and are totally harmless to even the smallest predator. Their eating habits are also extraordinary and a 50cm Egg Eater can swallow a fowl’s egg. The egg is punctured with a protruding vertebra half way down the throat and after the contents drained into the stomach the snake will regurgitate the egg-shell.

When threatened the Common Egg Eater will give an impressive display of viciousness and aggression, although harmless the snake is successfully mimicking a venomous snake and many would be predator’s have been fooled by  this star act.

The act will begin with the snake coiling its body against itself in a circular movement, thus creating a hissing sound. The hissing sound is a universal sound that all hearing animals will relate to as dangerous and will take evasive action on hearing it. If the hissing sound is not enough of a deterrent the snake will move on to its next act. With mouth agape, the Egg Eater will lunges violently at its attacker, protruding the black inside of its fangless mouth. The black interior of the mouth indicates to the deadliness of the venom and only the brave, or stupid, will continue to harass the snake. One animal that can see straight through the trickery of the Egg Eater is the Southern Ground hornbills. These birds will eat anything they can find on their walks through the bushveld, although they will avoid venomous snakes they regard the Egg Eater as an easy meal.

Dangerous to man is obviously untrue, but if you don’t know the different snakes in a particular area, rather do what they do in Rome.  You never know if you are facing a real venomous snake, so do not take chances and rather enjoy the sight of an Egg Eater at a save distance.

Rangerriaan

Field notes: Lion kill.

Field notes:

Date: 05 Dec 2010

Time: 11h35

Place: WGR, Limpopo Province, South Africa.

“The feeling of tranquility and peace that was experienced this morning was interrupted with the sudden appearance of two lions and their eland kill. The reserve I am conducting game drives are against the idea of off-road driving and I was bound by law to stay on the road. This resulted in a very close encounter with feeding lions.”

 

 

 

Dung beetles

Dung beetles belong to the Order, Coleoptera. This Order is the largest and most diverse of the Animal Kingdom and consist of 370 000 known species. In this article I want to take my readers on a tour in the life of the dung beetle.

Dung beetles are the most fascinating insects to observe on game drives. These busy little creatures are only concerned with their number one pass-time, “collecting fresh, smelly dung”. Most of my morning game drives I will stop at a fresh rhino dung heap, the coffee-box will be presented to my guest and we will watch these noble insects performing their important task.  Safari tip, make sure you unpack the coffee box downwind from the smelly heap.

The dung beetle belongs to the Family Scarabaeidae and is well represented in the Savanna Bushveld of southern Africa. In areas with large populations of big herbivores one can expect to find a buzz of activity around every dung deposit site. Because of their ability to follow the scent of fresh dung over huge distances, they literally fall out of the sky when there is fresh dung lying around. The dung of big herbivores is favored by dung beetles, because of the right consistency and huge amounts.   With a population of 14 000 elephant it is easy to imagine the enormity of only the amount of elephant balls scattered across the parks 2.5 million hectares. Luckily the dung beetles with their unique life cycles and amazing strength are responsible for the processing of 75% of all the dung lying around in the park.

Secondly the dung beetle favors the consistency of herbivore dung, because they need to transport the fresh dung to a safe area to be buried. To do this the beetles compress the dung into a ball, more dung is added until the ball is out-weighing the beetle 16-1. With their back legs the ball is rolled away for up to 100 meters. In comparison with the average weight of a man, the dung beetle is able to lift 12 000 kg. In the next picture the strength of the dung beetle is clearly visible.  The dung ball was rolled up an incline of 30 degrees.

 

The mating ritual of dung beetles is a messy affair and it boils down to this. The female will attach herself to the biggest ball she can find, even while the male is still constructing the ball.  The female will lay her eggs inside the ball while clinging to it; if she takes too long the male will bury the whole lot. Luckily the female has no problem digging herself out of damp soil and in a season the dung beetles can lay millions of these golf ball size dung balls. In the dry season these dung balls with their protein rich inhabitants are the main food source for the Honey Badger. These beetle nymphs are big and tasty and many an African carnivore regards them as a food source.  You will find animals like badgers, mongoose, civet and even Ground Hornbills sniffing the ground to detect these energy-packed dung balls.

Tasty “crubs”.

Once again it is clear that every little creature, big and small, are part of a integrate network that make up the different eco-systems on earth. The humble dung beetles took it on their strong shoulders to recycle thousands of tons of smelly dung, making sure that vast amounts of nutrients are produced for the next generation of creatures that make up the cycle of life.

Rangerriaan

Warning Signs…..

The word aposematic-colouring is not often encountered in the day-to-day vocabulary of the city dwelling person, yet to understand the word can mean a matter of life or death in the natural wilderness. The word open-up a fascinating world of survival strategies employed by many animals to use colours and patterns to fool their adversaries in their daily survival routines.

Aposematic-colouring is referring to the use of warning colours combined with visual enhancing patterns to warn other living things that the owner is poisonous and dangerous. These adaptations are so effective that many animals will copy the aposematic colours to be used for their own survival needs. The best example of the mimic abilities of insects is the Diadem butterfly found in the Waterberg region in the Limpopo Province in South Africa. The Diadem female closely mimics the coloration and pattern of the poisonous African Monarch. The African Monarch butterflies are toxic when ingested, because they feed on the poisonous Milkweed plants.

To understand the concept of aposematic-colouring, it is best explained with the following paragraph.

“Any animal that is doing it’s best to be notice in an unsafe environment, must be dangerous.”

The African Monarch butterfly knows its own toxicity and the idea is to tell the world about the fact. Interesting is that many young insectivorous birds are killed when eating the poisonous butterflies, makes you wonder how effective these warning signs are. The answer lies in the process we called “growing-up”. Every creature on earth needs to go through this growing-up stage and it is in this process that animals gather information on the countless dos and don’ts of their environment. The adult birds knows through experience that anything with a combination of the warning colours and patterns that are hard to miss, must be distasteful or worst, toxic.

The best known mammal with aposematic colouration is the smelly skunk. The highly visible black and white stripes on the body and tail of the skunk are clear warning signs of the unearthly smell the skunk expels if provoked.

The black, red and yellow bands on the coral snake advertise its toxicity in the day and at night the colours are invisible to the prey the snakes hunt.

In the African bush it is better to leave the colourful insects alone, rather admire them at a save distance. The Koppie Foam grasshopper excrete a lethal hart poison when disturbed and advertise the fact with bright red patterns on black. The blister beetle warns everything it might fly into with bright yellow lines; its name is derived from the painful blisters it can cause on the human skin.

Nature’s awesome display of colours and patterns are visible across the globe and animals make use of these colour combinations to send important information into their different environments. The wise and experience animals will adhere to these warning signs, ensuring the survival of their kind.

Rangerriaan

They walk with grace….

The name giraffe have its origins in the Arabic word xirapha, one that walks with grace. These ungulates are the world’s tallest animals and many a tourist is speechless when they see these beautiful animals for the first time. Enjoying sundowners with a herd of giraffe on the horizon is a sight to be hold and that is the reason for the collective noun, a journey of giraffe, very descriptive indeed. The species name, cameloparadalis, was the description the early explorers give to these tall antelopes. It means, walk like a camel, looks like a leopard.

Biologists are still puzzled over the fact why giraffes evolved the long neck. The latest explanation is the following; the long neck gives the giraffes the ability to spot predators more efficiently from the higher vantage point. The long neck also helps the species with their strongest instinct, procreation. The bulls will engage in a mating ritual called, “necking”. The males will stand next to one another and hit their opponent with the upper parts of the neck and head. The winner of the contest will have the right to mate with the females in his territory.

Gravity is the main force the giraffes have to contend with, what goes up must go down. Giraffes have some amazing adaptation for circulating blood through their body’s and the thickest skin in the animal kingdom is found on the ankles of a giraffe. The skin around their ankles is 13cm thick and the blood pressure is on average 250 over 320 diastole. If the skin around the ankles is not thick enough, the blood pressure will blow the skin and muscles right of their bones.

Pumping blood up to the brain is a major obstacle for giraffes and for a long time people thought giraffes have two hearts. This is not true, giraffes have only one massive heart and this heart  pump’s oxygen rich blood towards the head and brain. The aorta of the giraffe is muscular and can help to pump blood upwards by contracting in unison with the heart.



The giraffe cow is the only antelope in the world with a gestation period that exceeds a year. The cow will give birth after 457 days and will do so standing up. The calves weigh on average 105 kg  and are able to run with the mother 2 hours after birth.

Giraffes can be regarded as the true ambassadors of Africa and I will dedicate a couple of articles on these wonderful animals. Rangerriaan