November 8, 2007
Siding With The Shark: Fuming On A Fish's Behalf
As a long time resident of the Monterey Bay and a marine enthusiast, I got really excited when I saw that the TODAY Show was doing a piece on an incident with a great white shark in Monterey Bay. It's always interesting when our area makes the news, but I was hoping for a fresh perspective.
Not necessarily that they'd ask difficult questions like: Surfer, what were you thinking swimming where half the great white shark attacks in the world occur? Didn't you read the signs? Anyone who lives around the bay already knows the answers to these questions. We all know how far some will go for the perfect wave. I'm cool with Monterey Bay surfers doing what they do - just don't blame the sharks for taking a nibble when these wave-catchers in their neoprene seal costumes hit the beaches.
White shark occurrences happen pretty often here. The Red Triangle (north of San Francisco to the Farallon Islands to south of Monterey) has the highest concentration of the great white shark in the world – and it happens to be endangered and an apex predator.
They're here for the good eating: the Northern Elephant Seal rookeries like Año Nuevo, various seal and sea lion colonies, not to mention fish and whales. In point of fact, nearly all Monterey's beaches have signs that warn against swimming.
The TODAY Show story, which could have been an exciting tale of survival as well as informative about the area it happened, fell way short. The surfer, Todd Endris, was cool. He told his story, about how he was surfing, got attacked by a white shark (called a monster in the write-up but frankly, 12-15 feet long is average in these waters), fought his way free, and was rescued by a pod of dolphins and his surfer buddy. It was the TODAY Show interviewer,Natalie Morales, who pushed for gruesome details.
While the gorey details were revealed, what did the TODAY Show do? They showed stock footage of the Monterey Bay Aquarium great white shark on exhibit. That is a juvenile great white in the Outer Bay Exhibit and Monterey Bay Aquarium proudly boasts the ONLY great white sharks successfully held in captivity. They did not identify the footage as being from this amazing and unique exhibit, only as a backdrop to the gruesome details of the incident.
It would have been so easy to turn this news item into something a bit more informative and a bit less sensational without detracting from the amazing story of survival being told. But the TODAY show chose not to.
Shame on them. Shark PR is already bad enough. They need more support, not less. Even the late Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, regretted how his work influenced people's view on sharks.
If there's one thing that his research in Australia and off the coast of South Africa taught him, it's that he could not write "Jaws" today.
"I could not posit the situation now that I posited then - sort of a rogue shark that came around and wouldn't go away because it had found a steady diet of human beings," Benchley said in an inter-view over a seafood lunch (crab, not shark).
Scientists have learned that much of the shark behavior they used to ascribe to aggression is simply curiosity.
"I attributed to them a kind of marauding monsterism that became what 'Jaws' was," he said. "Now we know that sharks do not attack boats. The way they decide what to eat is by biting it."
More At: Peter Benchley: Jaws Today
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August 11, 2007
The House With The Mouse
So there's this house. And in this house, there is a mouse. Or should I say, mice. Plural. Because there's never just one.
Unfortunately, this house has been unoccupied for almost a year, and it's in the woods. So all sorts of little critters couldn't help but move in. Within the first week, we encountered a bear eating from old bird feeders left out all winter, mice, bats, and a nest of baby squirrels in the attic.
As much as we like mice and squirrels and bats, we don't particularly want to live with them. I could tolerate a few (not an infestation) in a barn or something, but not in my house with my food and future kids and toothbrushes.
So it seems like this house needs to be de-moused before anyone moves in. I don't like the idea of poisoning very much, unless there is a serious infestation, which there is not.
So I've been doing some research in order to have "options". Keep in mind none of these are going to do much about the existing problem, but it will deter and prevent future issues.
No Entry
Patch every single opening to the outside of the house. Don't just check around the base of the house. A mouse can scale a wall, or jump from a tree.
We got lucky. We found the squirrel entry point and we closed it up, covered it with hardware cloth, and cut back the tree limbs. We did it whilst the two baby squirrels were out playing for the day and they haven't been back since.
We sprayed this hardening foam stuff to close up some of the gaps, but they just chewed right through that. Now we're going with concrete to patch some floor cracks.
Declutter
Mice thrive in clutter. Piles of wood, piles of grass. Keep these away from the house. Organize your kitchen and your attics so there are not a lot of nice places for mice.
The basement had piles of wood, which we moved out of the house to the shed. We moved all scrapwood out of the house as well. Just cleaning this up helped a lot. You also want to avoid keeping dead wood in the house because it can carry in carpenter ants - another lovely woodsy friend you'd rather keep outside.
When we first got to the house, I bought some nice 1x1 foot self-sticking linoleum squares. They are meant for making cheap flooring, but I cut them to size for underneath every sink cabinet. White was cheapest, but it also allows easy wipe-downs underneath the sink, and I could see immediately where the mice were at.
Starve 'Em Out
Review your food storage. Make sure pantry items are well sealed. Don't leave pet food out for other critters to sample.
If you use birdfeeders with seeds, make sure they are well away from the house and clean up beneath them to avoid attracting unwanted pests.
The previous owners of this house left gallons of sunflower seeds strewn about the perimeter of the house. I'm sure it was great for the birds, but it also advertised the house for a warm shelter to every critter in the nearby area - including a local black bear, who paid our property a visit.
Scare Them Off & Possibly Attract Some Outdoor Wildlife
Depending on your level of tolerance and the scale of your pestiferous problem, you may need to actively hurt some mice. However, if you do it right, you should only have to do it once. From then on, you use the deterants above, as well as consider introducing some real or imaginary mouse predators into the mix.
You need to get the population down before the critters manage to burn the house down. We found two lovely dead mice in a junction box - trying to keep warm through the winter, they had zapped themselves.
Releasing a mouse outside doesn't work, generally, because they will just run right back inside again. They can get through areas the size of a pencil. I've seen them do it now and it's amazing.
Remember Jerry Always Got The Best Of Tom
Everyone always says Get A Cat. As I'm allergic, that's not an option. Also, I've been reading that cats are not really effective as house mousers. Sure, they'll catch some, but its not enough on its own. On boats in past years they were more effective, partially because the cats were not fed and had to rely on the mouse population for their dinners. It was a closed ecosystem. Your house isn't.
Encouraging Wild Predators
Since we want to be able to attract wildlife outdoors anyway, we have some interesting alternatives to look into.
I've read that bobcat urine powder makes a great indoor mouse deterant. I'm not sure if I'm allergic to this, but supposedly it is odorless and not harmful to anyone but it scares mice right out of a house. Sounds good, and I wonder if it works. I also wonder if I can attract some wild bobcats with it so I can have cats without having cats. Here, kitty kitty.
I've also been looking into building some owl boxes on the property overlooking the open field. Many species of owls, including Barred and Screech Owls live in the area surrounding the house. Now I know what to do with my webcam.
Another owl you can attract is the Barn Owl. One study I saw showed that each owl consumes an average of 2000 rats and mice a year, or about five to six rodents a night.
Population Reduction
At the end of the day, you need to get rid of the mice. Everything I've seen shows that the old fashioned snap trap is the quickest, cleanest death you can expect. Glue traps seem to catch more mice on a single sheet, but they are a terrible way to die. Just because you're getting rid of them doesn't mean you shouldn't do your best to do it humanely.
I have never used a snap trap before now, but I have found them very successful when baited with a tiny bit of Trader Joe's crunchy organic peanut butter - only the best for their last meal...
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August 8, 2006
Moss Landing State Beach: Shark Attack
Great white sharks make their home in the Monterey Bay, but I have never see one in the Monterey Bay. Still, I know better than to swim anywhere near seals, nor near dusk. However, these otters didn't seem too bothered. Sorry I didn't get a better picture but at least you can see - the bigger splashing, the fin showing, and the very clear black and white coloring and bullet shape of the face. It looks to be a very young great white, given the size. It was not a successful attack.
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The Splash (Raft of Otters in the Background) |
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Snout, Black and White coloring, Pectoral Fin |
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- PERLGURL.ORG Podcast Episode #1: We're Going To Need A Bigger Boat - Great White Sharks
- Finally! Great Whites Get Protection
- Great White Sharks - More Footage
- Shark Cage Diving - Sketchy?
- Great White Sharks One of Many Victims In Multi-Billion Dollar Wildlife Black Market
- Fast Fishes: Great White Shark Speed Record
- Isolated Ecosystems: The Farallons Are California’s Galapagos
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March 12, 2006
It's A Predator Party!
When I visited Kruger National Park, my South African friends told me that Satara Restcamp was the predator camp. Located in the center of the park, it's where you go to see the lions, leopards, hyena and cheetah. And see them, we did. In our game drives, we saw several kills, at least five different groups of lions, and two spotted hyena dens.
And it got me thinking, what kind of animal density would give the spot such a good animal-sighting record. Are there other hotspots as well? I went about trying to find out about lion population densities on the web, and it was not particularly easy. So let's look at the numbers I found, shall we?
Lion Densities In African Parks
| Location | Country | # Per 100km² | Source |
| Kruger NP - Central | South Africa | 13 | Siyabona Africa |
| Selous Game Reserve | Tanzania | 8-13 | African Journal of Ecology |
| Chobe NP | Botswana | 37 | AWF Carnivore Project |
| Maasai Mara NR | Kenya | 30 | H. Dublin |
| Ngorongoro Crater | Kenya | 21 | The African Lion Database |
| Queen Elizabeth NP | Uganda | 12 | Lions Of Queen Elizabeth NP |
Counting The Cats
The densities usually just include adults and sub-adults, not cubs (the Uganda report seemed to contain both). This is likely due to the fact that it's hard enough to count lions laying in the shade. Most are counted in sightings of them on the move, hunting, etc. Some do aerial surveys or counts from the ground, but lions are especially difficult to count this way, as are most noctural predators. One study even counted the lion roars in order to determine the population. Here's an example of a lion survey Serengeti Lion Survey.
As an apex predator, one of the major factors in lion population density is the density of their prey. Some researchers have found A Common Rule for the Scaling of Carnivore Density, showing that it takes about 111x as much prey (by weight) to support a given weight of carnivore. Not that the carnivore eats that much, but to scale and support predator-prey populations in an ecosystem.
From what I can tell, low African lion density is about 1-6 lions per 100 square km, medium density is about 7-14, and high lion density runs from around 15-30 lions per 100 square km. There are some great density maps toward the bottom of this report on Estimating The Global Abundance of Top Predators: The Lion In Africa.
In comparison, the mountain lions of the US range from like 0.26-0.59 per 100 km2 in Big Bend Ranch State Park in Texas to upwards of 10 per 100 square miles in the prime mountain lion habitats in California.
You can read more about the African Lion in my special assignment entitled African Field Notes: The Lion.
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February 8, 2006
Plight of the Polar Bear
Keeping with our discussion on changing weather trends and the melting ice of the poles, there's been a bit of good news this week about polar bears.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has announced it will look into whether or not the polar bear should be listed as a threatened species on the Endangered Species List, given the considerable warming going on in their native environment has had a negative impact on the bears.
This move is definately a step in the right direction. With polar bears at the top of the Arctic food chain, they are a natural litmus test of the health of the ecosystem.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said protection “may be warranted†under the Endangered Species Act, and began a review process to consider if the bears should be listed.
The agency will seek information about population distribution, habitat, effects of climate change on the bears and their prey, potential threats from development, contaminants and poaching during the next 60 days before making a decision on whether to list the bears.
The decision comes after the Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition last year that said polar bears could become extinct by the end of the century because their sea ice habitat is melting.
The wildlife service said that the petition “presents substantial scientific and commercial information indicating that listing the polar bear may be warranted.â€
The group, joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace, also filed a federal lawsuit in December to seek federal protections for the polar bear.
More At: MSNBC: U.S. eyes protecting polar bears from warming
If you think about it, the warming of the ice can have all sorts of effects on the bears. With the Arctic's warmer winters, some regions never form ice bridges, leaving populations isolated from other bears and their prey, like seals.
Also, one of the ways that polar bears hunt is to stake out a seal air hole in the ice and wait for a seal to come up for breath. Warmer weather would also make for a less solid ice layer, making this kind of hunting less successful as more holes would be there.
Lastly, there's also the fact that the warming of the Arctic has effected many other native species, like the Gray seal, sometimes with disasterous results. If the polar bear's natural prey is threatened, then so is the polar bear.
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October 19, 2005
Living With Predators - Tigers
As Asia struggles with overpopulation and hunger, people move farther and farther into the wilderness to live and work. Farmers, hunters, and loggers increasingly come in contact with wildlife. This results in more and more conflicts between tigers and humans.
Villages have sprung up in and around national parks and wildlife preserves where tigers live. The villagers brave the tiger reserves at night to illegally collect honey and wood in order to make a living. Unlike most wild tigers, the swamp tigers of the Sundarbans between India and Bangladesh are famous for being man-eaters.
What makes a tiger a man-eater? Most tigers who attack and eat humans are sick or have been injured in some way. However, once they've aqquired the taste - and perhaps realized how easy the hunting can be - they are likely to continue to hunt humans.
Risking Life & Limb To Feed The Family
Tigers live in areas where people are often the most impoverished. Sometimes locals will hunt wildlife like the tiger just to feed the family. There have been several high profile cases lately of tigers killed to be eaten out of hunger and because consuming the flesh of animals such as tigers have long been thought to help improve health and vigor.
In the swamps of the Sundarbans, these man-eating tigers exhibit all sorts of traits not common in your average wild tiger. They're known for sneaking up on the men while they're foraging - often by swimming up to boats and climbing aboard and dragging some unsuspecting villager away. They've have taken to wearing masks on the backs of their heads in order to confuse the tigers and keep them from ambushing them from behind.
Villager Vengeance
Unfortunately, when someone is taken by a tiger, their family and village often retaliates by hunting down the tiger and killing it. This can lead to not only destroying the man-eater, but also other tigers along the way.
Authorities are trying to educate villagers about the tiger situation and how having tigers benefits the local economies by providing tourist income as well as jobs. Parks and reserves are also teaching the locals how to avoid becoming a meal and attempting to condition tigers to avoid humans - for example, by setting up human dummies that cause electric shocks.
Organized Poaching For Profit
Tiger heads, skins and claws are sometimes collected as wildlife trophies, but that's not the only threat facing the tiger today. Tiger parts are considered to have all sorts of medicinal uses - some of which are legit and some of which are myth. The bones of a tiger can be used in all sorts of Chinese medicine, and certain sexual organs are thought to be aphrodisiacs and cures for impotence. Tiger skins are often used in Chinese ceremonial costumes.
Silly as these uses may seem to us, there are a lot of people in the world who really believe in these remedies, and so where there's a demand, there will be a supply - regardless of the protected status of the tiger.
Since Environmental Investigation Agency's visit last year, there has been a massive increase in the availability of tiger and leopard skins in Lhasa, TAR. In the 46 shops surveyed, 54 leopard skin chubas and 24 tiger skin chubas were openly displayed, 7 whole fresh leopard skins were presented for sale and, within the space of 24 hours, investigators were offered three whole, fresh tiger skins.
More at: Tigers under threat from skin trade
Unfortunately, the punishments for tiger poaching are not particularly stringent. As tiger sales become increasingly lucrative, the poor villagers may sometimes come to the conclusion that the opportunity to bag a tiger outweighs any potential punishment or environmental concerns - especially when the proceeds might feed the family, or even the village - for quite some time.
Poachers come from all over the world to hunt the tiger. Much like drug rings, they can be ruthless in their black-market activities. Organized poaching is perhaps the most significant threat to the tigers today, even more than habitat loss. These mafiaesque gangs can systematically wipe out whole tiger preserves, as well as act as a middleman for the independent village poacher. Due to bribery and intimidation, the locals often do not report these poaching gangs to authorities. In one recent case in India, an entire park of tigers up and disappeared over the course of one season.
The raging scandal over the missing tigers of Sariska has shocked the country. Where have the tigers gone?
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According to the official census, in 2003 there were 25 to 28 tigersand in the 2004 census, 18 tigers were reported. In 2005, all were missing. Nobody knows what happened to the tigers. Perhaps those who knew just kept quiet.
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Sariska lies between two major cities — New Delhi and Jaipur — with two State highways running through it. Nearly 50 villages lie within its limits and around 40,000 people live in those hamlets.
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"An international racket behind this. The marble quarry lobby, backed by political tycoons, also does not want tigers there. The forest department is ill-equipped. Then how can the tigers survive?" asks E. Kunhikrishnan, zoologist and environmental activist.
After the Sariska story broke out, the government machinery suddenly recognised the existence of the poacher route that extends from New Delhi to Nepal, Lhasa (Tibet) and China.
"First it must be recognised by everyone that there is no substitute for good protection. An organised, well-connected mafia is involved in poaching. Punishment must be severe and swift," points out Dattatri.
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"Tigers aren't safe anywhere in India. Three years ago, a gang of tiger poachers from a village near Katni, Madhya Pradesh were caught red-handed at Nagarahole, the premier game sanctuary in Karnataka. This came to light only because a tourist happened to film a tiger limping with a jaw trap attached to its foot," says Dattatri.
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Poisoning the kill, trapping and shooting are the most common methods used to kill the big cats.
More at: The Hindu: Spot the tiger
Living With Predators is a series of posts on this blog, covering a myriad of situations in which humans and dangerous animals live together, and how they cope. You can read more in this series, so far we've got:
Living With Predators - Crocs
Living With Predators - Hippos
You can also read more about the The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans on my earlier post.
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October 7, 2005
Gator Gluttony: A Python's Fatal Mistake
You buy a cute little baby Burmese python at the pet store for $20. It likes to weave itself through your fingers and watches TV from the comfort of its own personal ficus tree in the living room. It becomes a part of the family.
You feed it little mice from the safety of your bathtub, so it doesn't learn to hunt in its cage and bite you. Then you feed it bigger mice. After a while, you're feeding your snake dead rabbits.
It begins to occur to you that your python is going to live for up to 25 years, growing to 15-20 feet long and 100-200 pounds. By this point, your snake has it's own room.
At some point, you decide your pet is ruling your life. It's too expensive, and maybe it's scared you a bit with its aggressive feeding behavior. Perhaps you read a story about a python killing its owner, like Grant Williams or Rick Barber.
You decide it has to go, but where?
Few people are willing to take in such a large animal, especially a snake. The humane society won't take it, so you decide to let it loose in a nearby swamp. It's the only humane thing to do, right?
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
You have just aided and abetted the second most important force driving plant and animal endangerment and extinction in the world (the first being habitat loss). When an exotic species is introduced into a new environment, it's very unlikely to have native predators. Instead, its populations can grow, unchecked, while it devours the resources of the native species. For example, people keep dumping pet Burmese pythons into the Florida Everglades, and they're competing with the native gators for food and territory. Lately, visitors to the park have witnessed some very violent battles between the exotic snakes and the big scaly lizards.
The Burmese python is just one of thousands of non-native animal and plant species that have invaded the United States in the last decades. Florida teems with exotic creatures that have no business living there. Other regions have their own problems.
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Burmese pythons are popular—and legal—pet snakes. In the past five years, the U.S. has imported more than 144,000 Burmese pythons.
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Since the mid-1990s park rangers have captured or killed 68 Burmese pythons in Everglades National Park. The pythons are now most certainly breeding in the park.
More At: Huge, Freed Pet Pythons Invade Florida Everglades
Rangers know that the pythons are breeding in the wild, as they have found snakes with umbilical cord scars. Tracking down and eradicating the pet python population in the park (alliteration at its finest, eh?) is a huge problem, but Florida park officials are trying a couple of methods.
The state agency's law enforcement division recently authorized its officers to kill exotic reptiles, specifically pythons, found on lands under its management, said Kevin Enge, a scientist with the commission.
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In December scientists plan to capture and tag several pythons with radio-tracking devices to reveal their exact whereabouts inside the 1.5-million-acre (600,000-hectare) national park.
More at: Invasive Pythons Squeezing Florida Everglades
Introducing exotic species, especially formerly captive ones, can have other strange effects as well. Animals that have been hand-fed since birth (especially pre-killed stuff) may have odd feeding behaviors. Recently, a 13-foot Burmese python tried to eat a 6-foot long alligator. The gator was just too big, and the python's stomach just burst, making a very gruesome photography opportunity which has been featured on National Geographic's website:
Unfortunately for a 13-foot (4-meter) Burmese python in Florida's Everglades National Park, eating the enemy seems to have caused the voracious reptile to bust a gut—literally.
More at: Photo in the News: Python Bursts After Eating Gator
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September 27, 2005
Parasitic Worms Prompt Grasshoppers To Leap To Their Deaths
Okay, so this story caught my interest because the National Geographic article said that that parasitic worms were "brainwashing" the grasshoppers into jumping into people's pools, causing them to commit suicide.
This is a great example of how writing and word usage in an article can greatly effect the slant. Brainwashing? This word implies intent, intelligent design (heh,heh), not to mention it has "evil" connotations.
Scientists say hairworms, which live inside grasshoppers, pump the insects with a cocktail of chemicals that makes them commit suicide by leaping into water. The parasites then swim away from their drowning hosts to continue their life cycle.
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This biochemical tampering appears to drive the grasshopper to water just when the hairworm is ready to reproduce.
More at: National Geographic: Suicide Grasshoppers Brainwashed by Parasite Worms
What if I were to say that a type of parasitic worm makes you hungry, causing you to eat a lot. Would that be brainwashing? Or would it simply be a biological response to not getting enough energy from food consumption because the parasite is stealing some of it?
Now let's say that the parasite makes you thirsty - or makes you feel like you've been set on fire. You jump into a pool - either to drink or to cool off. Were you brainwashed or just incredibly uncomfortable and acting on it?
According to Answers.com, brainwashing is to teach something to accept a system of thought uncritically. I don't think brainwashing applies here for several reasons. First, you'd have to believe that grasshoppers have critical thinking abilities. Secondly, what are the chances that a parasitic worm used mental coercion to compell the grasshopper to act?
I think it's more likely that the side effects of the parasitic worm - the chemicals it produces make the grasshopper feel something that would cause it to jump into water (thirst, heat, ask a grasshopper expert). The side effect could be a mutation that has continued to be passed from worm generation to generation because these are the worms that successfully make it into the next stage of their life. It's just survival of the fittest, or at least the cleverest.
Parasitology is a type of symbiosis (living together). There are three general kinds of symbiotic relationship: phoresis (travel together, no real benefits), commensalism (it benefits, host is neither helped nor harmed), mutualism (both benefit), and parasitism (lives at the expense of the host).
I guess I was just tweaked by the wording of the article, but I have to admit, it's an interesting, if creepy, example of adaptation.
So, in a little side note... my husband Shane and I try to read each other's blog posts whenever we can, but it often takes too much out of our days, so we instead we talk about how we haven't kept up with posts over dinner or on walks and discuss some of the more interesting topics. Sometimes this can be really funny, like when we're talking about brainwashing parasitic worms while serving ourselves yummy asian lettuce wraps at the local salar bar Fresh Choice (a personal dining favorite).
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May 20, 2005
Living With Predators - Crocs
First they thought the disappearances were the result of the tribal war being waged in the area. Then they thought the bizarre occurrences the work of a serial killer. Lake Tanganyika in Burundi is home to Gustave, proported to be the largest freshwater croc in Africa - some seven meters long. The locals rely on the lake as a water source - for drinking, washing, fishing, and bathing; but they live in fear of the great beast. More than three hundred deaths have now been attributed to Gustave's hearty appetite - not to mention that he supposedly once ate a full-grown hippo. Some even claim he pulls fisherman from their very boats! Repeated attempts have been made to capture Gustave, who may weigh as much as a two tons, but all they've managed to capture is a bit of video.
People live with crocs throughout the world, but while the people of Australia and the United States think of them as a bit of savage wildlife that might occassionally swallow a pet, the people in Africa have a much closer relationships with this predator. The tender meat and rough skins have significant value to the villagers, and the removal of these creatures can often increase the safety of the peoples who live along the rivers and lakes of Africa.
This tenuous relationship between people and crocs makes it difficult to work for conservation of crocs. Few people feel warm and fuzzy about these snaggle-toothed lizards. Now many species of crocs are declining, threatened or extinct.
The crocs are not doing anything wrong. They are just being crocs. In that area, their historic food supply is gone. People have overfished the lake.
We saw very few fish of any size. And a big croc isn't going to make a living by just eating fish. It will sometimes pull down an antelope or a baboon—something like that. But we saw no animals there—literally none—other than people.
The crocs are survivors, so they've turned to the next available food source. Unfortunately, that means humans.
Of course the people [there] are just trying to survive as well, so it's a delicate situation.
More at: Croc Capture Offers Lessons on Living With Killers
Many people deal with crocs and gators everyday. Read the latest news at Underwater Times. You can also learn more about crocs at Crocodilian Biology Database.
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Living With Predators - Hippos
Most people think hippos are fat, squat docile creatures that bob up and down in the rivers and lakes of Africa much as the manatee, or sea cow, does off the coast of Florida. Cute pastel versions are portrayed in the Milton Bradley pre-school game Hungry Hungry Hippos
But do you know what African animal kills more people per year than any other? Surprisingly, it's not the lion. Hippos are the most feared animals in Africa. Each year more people are killed by hippos than by all the other animals combined. They bite people, trample people, flip boats, and otherwise inspire fear in people throughout Africa.
On my last visit to Africa, I got to experience these creature - up close and personal. During one rather foolish encounter on our part, we left the safety of our vehicle to look over a rise, only to see a herd of hippos grazing on the other side of a river, about 1/8 of a mile away. We were standing upwind of the herd, and within seconds they had scented us, and went charging into the river in such a violent fashion that we also went charging - straight back to the car. Another day, when we were taking a guided walk in Kruger National Park, South Africa, we walked quietly along a riverbank (quietly so as not to attract the crocs) and came upon some rather disgruntled hippos in the water. Despite being trained otherwise, the armed guides braved the hippo's displeasure and approached very close - ignoring warning signs like snorting, wiggling their ears and showing teeth. Our party hung back, poised to bolt for safety. Yet another experience involved an adult female hippo and a newly born calf. Just after dusk, a rather foolish lioness attacked the pair, only to be thrashed soundly by mama.
Hippos are very fierce and very misunderstood. For example:
Claim: Hippos stay in the water all the time
Fact: Each evening, hippos leave the water and graze on the land, sometimes miles from their primary water source. They also like to sun themselves during the day, but don't often stray far from the safety of the water.
Claim: Hippos are excellent swimmers
Fact: Hippos don't actually swim very well. Instead, they bounce off the bottom. Young calves often bounce on their mother's back in order to breath more often, and in deeper water.
Claim: Hippos are slow & clumsy.
Fact: Hippos are agile both in and out of the water. Outrunning them is often futile.
Claim: Hippos are very fat
Fact: Although they're barrel shaped, they actually have very little fat on them.
Claim: Hippos yawn because they're tired
Fact: Hippos show their teeth as a threat gesture
Male hippos are highly territorial and actually have rather complex rituals for confrontation between challengers. I've also seen adult hippos (very likely mothers) mock-fight with their young. In National Geographic's Most Amazing Moments
But one of the most affecting features of the hippo for me has always been its vocalization. I spent some time at Shimuwini bush camp on the banks of the Letaba River. A heard of hippos lingered along the banks, not 100ft from our backdoor, making the snorts and grunts.
Check out our Frolicking Hippos podcast - a video program highlighting these playful animals!
Check out our Kenya Waterhole podcast - a video program experiencing a sunrise in Africa!
Posted by sorsha at 1:37 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
May 17, 2005
Deer - Not Just Prey Anymore
Wasn't it Jurassic Park that had the line, nature finds a way? I guess it should not be surprising that the deer of Scotland would find a way to get their vitamins by eating flesh, but digestion is an area I always felt was exceptionally sensitive to evolutionary pressures. How could a noted herbivore ever just spontaneously "go carnivore"? What about all the digestive organs necessary to process foods that way? Has this deer changed biologically in order to adapt to eating flesh or what? Then again, many mammals all originated from a couple prehistoric creatures that were likely rat-like opportunists, I bet it's more likely that all mammals have the necessary equipment to process flesh as food, but years have passed and mammal species have focused on specific foods (like plants for deer). Therefore, this new carnivorous deer is just reaching back into it's past in order to leverage evolutionary traits it always had.
Red deer on the Scottish island of Rum may be eating the heads and legs of live seabird chicks as a way to get minerals they need to grow their antlers.
More at: Scottish Deer Are Culprits in Bird Killings
Posted by sorsha at 3:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack