Here’s what I learned about the bush from my guides over the last four months…
Baboon
Olive baboons can be very naughty. At Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp, the sherry used to disappear out of the bottles in the tents on a regular basis, and the management suspected the room stewards of drinking it on the sly, but one day over lunch four baboons walked up hammered.
They passed out in the fireplace and woke up with hangovers! They usually left the bottles intact, but this time they must have had a party as they smashed all the bottles.
Bee-eater
Bee-eaters catch bees, give them a ‘death shake’ and then squeeze the bee between the head and the body to squeeze out the sting
Cheetah
There are between 35 and 68 cheetah in the Masai Mara (depending on whom you believe!), compared to 825 lions.
Cheetah hunt during the day when the lion, leopard and hyena are sleeping as they can’t protect their kills.
Collective nouns
Troop or flange of baboon
Herd, troop, gang or obstinacy of buffalo
Coalition of cheetah
Bask or float of crocodile
Convocation or aerie of eagle
Stand or flamboyance of flamingo
Leash, skulk, earth, lead or troop of fox
Journey or tower of giraffe (depending on whether the animals are moving or not)
Band or troop of gorilla
Confusion of guineafowl
Sedge, siege or hedge of heron
Bloat of hippopotamus
Cackle or clan of hyena
Bachelor herd or harem of impala (depending on whether they’re male or female)
Exaltation or ascension of lark
Leap of leopard
Pride, sault or troop of lion
Lounge of lizard
Troop, barrel, carload, cartload or tribe of monkey
Parliament or stare of owl
Prickle of porcupine
Crash or stubbornness of rhinoceros
Den, nest, pit, bed or knot of snake
Cluster or clutter of spiders
Mustering or muster of stork
Colony, nest, swarm or brood of termites
Venue or kettle of vulture (depending on whether they’re perched or circling)
Pack of wild dogs/painted wolves
Confusion of wildebeest
Crossing, cohort, herd, dazzle or zeal of zebra
Dik-dik
Dik-diks usually come in pairs, so, if you see one, look out for another.
If one is killed by a predator, the other will often commit suicide by standing out in the open where an eagle or a cat could easily kill it.
Elephants
Elephant tusks can weigh up to 110kg each.
Elephants live to 60-70 years.
At the age of 14, males are kicked out of the herd.
You can sometimes tell if an elephant is right- or left-handed by the length of its tusks. If it’s right-handed, for instance, the right tusk may be a little shorter from being used more often to dig up minerals or debark trees.
Elephants eat around 400lbs of grass a day, which means they spend 20-22 hours eating.
People make paper from elephant and rhino dung.
Although elephants break down a lot of trees, they also plant a lot through dispersing seeds in their dung.
The trunk has over 100,000 muscles, and it needs six people to lift one.
Males have a rounded head, whereas females have a squarer head.
When male elephants are ‘in must/musth’, it means they are in season or in heat. At that time, they want to mate with a cow. If they can’t, they might take out their frustration on safari trucks!
Elephant herds or parades are led by the oldest female elephant, which is known as the matriarch. When she is about to die, she trains the eldest daughter or sister.
Elephants grow six sets of teeth. Once the last one is worn down, they die. They go to the swamps (which is how the myth of the Elephants’ Graveyard originated), and the others perform rituals. They come back every year to hold the bones.
Calves are sometimes looked after by babysitters or aunties. If the mother is killed while it’s still nursing, the calf won’t survive, but otherwise it’ll be looked after by an ‘auntie’.
Elephants communicate through low-frequency sounds.
Giraffe
Gazelles and other prey animals often stay with giraffe. They are tall and have good vision, so they provide an early warning of predators.
Great Migration
The Thomson’s gazelle, Grant’s gazelle, zebra, wildebeest and eland are the only species that take part in the Great Migration in Tanzania and Kenya.
Hippopotamus
Hippos can weigh up to 2,000-2,500kg, and eat 40-120kg of grass a day
They sit or stand in the water as they can’t really swim. Their bones have no marrow, so they’re quite heavy.
They can hold their breath and stay underwater for 5-10 minutes.
Their lifespan is 35-50 years.
Hunting
Success rates for selected cats:
Black-footed cat: 60%
Serval: 49%
Leopard: 38%
Cheetah: 33%
Lion: 26%
Impala
One male has a harem of up to 100 females, but constantly looking after it and mating means he doesn’t get to feed very much, so he can only stay with them for 60-80 days.
The other males form a bachelor herd and fight one another to find out who the challenger should be. That impala kicks out the dominant male, and the cycle starts again. The former dominant male can either rejoin the bachelor herd at the foot of the hierarchy or live alone.
The dominant male will allow the bachelors to guard the harem at night but then kicks them out first thing in the morning.
Leopard
Leopards use humans to find food. They follow them home and might see the dog greeting them. The next day, the dog is missing!
Leopards’ eyes are green when they are adult, but they start off blue
Leopards can be identified by the number of spots behind the whiskers on each side of their faces
Lilac-breasted roller
Lilac-breasted rollers are very territorial and have even been known to chase away an eagle!
Lion
Lions have a bone inside the end of their tails that is rather like a claw. The Masai warm youngsters that lions can use this to attack them if they’re surrounded.
Masai
Masai men can have more than one wife. One of my guides knew one who had 16 wives and 88 children, some of whom he’d never even met!
The Masai wear red because a long time ago they used to cover cow skins with red ochre to smoothe it.
They put holes in the tops of their ears to identify dead warriors on the battlefield.
Daily routine
The Masai men wake up, check lions haven’t taken any livestock, milk the cows, drink a cup of milk, take livestock to grazing areas, have no lunch (except wild sour plums or acacia honey), come back to the village at around 1830-1900, have dinner and go to bed.
The Masai believe that seeing an augur buzzard in the morning brings good luck. It’s also good luck to see a pangolin, but you have to build a ‘boma’ (or enclosure) out of grass around it to ensure that you have many cows! I actually saw one, and my guide and spotter did exactly that…
Ostrich
An alpha female builds a nest, lays usually 10-12 eggs and then invites other females to lay their eggs in it. The alpha female and her mate will then look after all the eggs and then the hatchlings. Sometimes, though, there are so many eggs that the alpha female will roll away some of the ones that don’t belong to her.
Rhino
There are only 25 black rhino in the Masai Mara and no white rhino.
There are 46 black rhino in Serengeti and 24 in the Ngorongoro Crater.
Verreaux’s eagle
Verreaux’s eagles lay two eggs, but only one chick survives. The stronger one simply pecks at the weaker one until it dies. The same happens if hyena have two female puppies. It’s an alpha female not an alpha male in hyena clans, so it’s a fight for dominance.
Wildlife
Only 30% of Kenyan wildlife lives in national parks and reserves.
Zebra
The male Grévy’s zebras is territorial. He tries to own an area with lots of natural resources that will attract females. He then mates with them, and they move on.
Plains zebra are different. The males form a boys’ club.
They have stripes:
for temperature control
to provide a ‘fingerprint’ for the young calves to imprint on
to protect against flies
to confuse lions, which choose an individual to hunt - once the herd gets mixed up, they lose track.
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