Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Kids do the darndest things

The other day in the Serena North clan, we had time to watch an adorable group of cubs and subs playing together.  Scientifically, play behavior is interesting because it expends valuable energy, and yet does not immediately benefit the individuals involved.  Personally, I think romping and social play is one of our spotted hyenas’ cutest activities.  This time, we got to see a special kind of play behavior…cubs playing with elephant dung!

Shoot Her chasing Uzi, who avoids capture
Shoot Her really wants a piece of that dung!
Clever Girl play-mounting Ramone, dung momentarily forgotten
Clever Girl decides to cool off with a dip in the pond
A soaking wet Clever Girl, getting ready to shake it out
Uzi, Jude, and Ramone playing tug-of-war with the elephant dung
First one out: Jude!
Uzi wins the tug-of-war and
comes to show us his prize

2 comments:

EmilyThomas said...

I love UZI (and the rest of these cubbies)!!!

Thanks for the super cute photos and updates about north cubs/subs.

Are TEDY and GUMY still doing well!?!

Unknown said...

We haven't been seeing Tedy and Gumy very much lately, and they have entered the unbelievably fluffy stage, but we've seen them both in the past couple of weeks and they look good!


Michigan State University | College of Natural Science