African Travel Articles
Twinkle,
twinkle little star…I wonder how the rhinos are?
There are probably about one hundred thousand
million stars in our own milky way galaxy. On the darkest and clearest night in
the Kruger we can probably see 2 500 of them with the naked eye.
The
closest one to us, besides our sun, is Alpha Centauri (or Proxima Centauri
depending on how technical you are).Alpha Centauri is about 4.3 light years
away from us, that's very far away! At 1 079 252.42 kilometres per hour, light
from Alpha Centauri takes four and a quater years before we can see it - as a
star in our sky on a dark, clear night.
That's 1 079 252.42 X 8 760
hours in a year X 4.3 years away. Even the closest star to me when I look up at
the African sky makes me wonder…and then a lion roars, or I suddenly hear
the distant whoop of a hyena scout, or even the small, methodical clink of a
fruit bat and those sounds bring me back down to earth to nearer, more
definable messages from life around me.
Then back into to the
conversation around the campfire - what do we do about all the starving
children in the world? How can we keep the Kruger safe? Once again we are
engulfed in a never ending search for knowledge - for thousands of years
astrologers and astronomers studied the stars - debating whether these stars
had forcasting powers, or whether they were simply physical heavenly bodies
that could be defined. The astronomer-priests of ancient times believed there
was a bond between man and the universe. - I believe that the stars above us
have connected us, and directed our thoughts and spiritual motivations. They
have allowed us to be scientists and they have allowed us to be mystical
forecasters. But we still don't know for sure, we are still overwhelmed by the
stars.
So the starving children of the world, global warming, and other
highly emotive topics almost always come up as topics of conversation while we
look up into the stars and it seems that we are also not getting any closer to
answers. How many stars? How many more starving children? How much more time?
How much more space?
The conversation is always facinating, if only
Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Christian Doppler could sit with us for clarity
sake, or if Sigmond Freud, Charles Darwin or Kahlil Gibran could interject. -
No, what makes us tick is exploration, interpretation and experience, so when
the lion roars closer to the fire, we throw another log onto it, perhaps shine
a flashlight (we'll need speed) and become a little more alert. Our very own
interpretations of how we interact with our surroundings, and in the Kruger -
how our surroundings interact with us. These are lessons in the bush, lessons
that we no longer learn unless we are there.
So where am I going with
this? I'm not sure - I just thought I'd drop you a line and say "Twinkle,
twinkle little star…"
On my last safari two bull rhino's -
square-lipped or white rhino's - were doing battle. One in defense of his
territory, and one who needed a bit more space to ensure reproductive success.
The battle was severe, and as my guests and I watched the rhino's engage in
ritual sparring, threat and displacement moves - our own interpretations and
values and motivations became evident - there were those did not want to watch,
there were those who were OK until one of the animals began to suffer, and
there were those who were glued to the awesome power of the rhino's, and the
inevertiblity of the situation. At the end of the sighting - the dominant bull
rhino had a severly damaged hind leg, blood flowing from wounds to his flank
and face - but he had succefully defended a boundary. The younger bull ran away
- perhaps having done enough to come back later, or simply unaware that he had
won a physical contest?
You should have heard us after the drama! We
wanted closure, we wanted knowledge, we wanted to help the injured rhino, we
wanted to know if it would die, what would happen next, etc, etc..
So my
newsletter this month is about the White Rhino in Southern Africa.
In
the order Perissodactyla - odd toed/hoofed animals (ungulates), we have the
families of Rhinocerotidae - rhinoceroses - black and white, and we have the
family of Equidae - zebras and relatives. I'm writing about rhino's, and the
white rhino, Ceratotherium simum specifically, the largest pure grazer of grass
that lives on the African continent. For me witnessing rhino bulls fighting
leads directly to understanding their social organisation because it is
undoubtedly that which has lead to the conflict. So lets call white rhino
social systems sedentary, semisocial, territorial and satellite bulls. They
kind of work together, hang about together in the same area but with conflict
when territories are defended by territorial bulls.
So if you can
imagine a territorial bull that spends a large part of his day demarcating a
piece of real estate that he wants dominant habitation rights on. This bull
doesn't mind females or even other males on his territory, as long as the other
males behave submissively, and do not make any advances towards females.
Females in turn have what we call home ranges - they overlap and are not
defended - the territorial bull will associated with 'rhino crashes' from time
to time but more specifically when there are females in oestrus
present.
Agression between white rhinos is normally mild except on the
part of a territorial male - this male will investigate the credentials of
every other rhino on his territory, except perhaps for very young guys, etc.
The territorial bull will agressively approach another rhino - stand horn to
horn with him, and then slowly begin moving the other rhino off the territory -
the other rhino, satellite or not will normally face the trouble and scream for
mercy - slowly backing away until theres a gap where he can run off, etc. This
gets a little different when:
A) the sattellite or other bull rhino
does not want to back off submissively,
B) when two territorial bulls
meet at the boundary of their respective territories because of an approaching
cow rhino in oestrus.
I suspect we witnessed one of these two events,
and that's why the physical contact was severe. It is not usual to see fights
between rhinos resulting in serious injuries. That's why I was so enthrawled by
the sequence of events, and that's why my interpretation of the interaction
allowed for the following analysis.
A territorial bull removing a
satellite bull who didn't act submissively Two territorial bulls at the
boundary (perhaps a woman involved - oblivious to her part in the sudden
increase in testoterone levels)
No matter how we see what happened we
can agree that it induced several different reactions from us as a group, and
our view of rhinos will now always include that moment, those sounds and the
knowledge that sometimes these natural processes can be quite violent.
Written by Neil,
a professional safari guide in South Africa
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