When life gives us rain...

...We look for animal tracks in the mud and make plaster casts! 

As a reference, the lion front paw is as big as a female hand with the fingers stretched out!

So Serena Camp is faring much better than Talek Camp. Our complaint of not being able to make it to 2 of 3 hyena dens seems very trivial compared to the midnight evacuations of Talek!!! Really, we can't complain, the rain has brought more carnivores to camp than usual! We have had lions come through camp during the night and early morning, including one big male whose roar literally made me fall out of bed. A hyena casually walked by the dinner table one evening and now hangs around the shower area at night. The usual herbivores still come around occasionally. We had 13 giraffes in camp one afternoon! THAT was noisy as they noticed us and ran away! I literally scared the crap out of one when I emerged from my tent brushing my teeth one morning. We have had many elephants, one of which has taken on the duty of forester/landscaper, trimming the trees along the driveway. 

I also recently discovered a new way to add a video since the original way most likely requires high-speed internet and foiled my plans. So expect many more! This one is of one of our South clan subadult females, Ranch, whooping. She received several whoops in response and shortly after, her mother, the infamous Clovis, showed up!

And this is one of North clan's cubs, Ratchet, the Master of Multitasking- scratching his/her back while grooming his/her belly!

An unexpected addition to this post: On Monday Noémie and I performed our first necropsy on a male from Happy Zebra, Loverboy (LBOY). We suspect he was killed by lions, although I will spare you the gruesome details. He was initially discovered in a torrential downpour at night, covered in tens of thousands of carnivorous army ants, so upon returning the next morning with Doom insect killer, we learned that army ants disappear during the daylight...but maggots persist regardless. Hyenas sometimes smell like dead animals when they're alive. A dead one was much worse. That smell did not wash off easily... or at all in fact. 

As a tribute to Loverboy, we will now present his life in pictures!

....Just kidding. 

I am also incapable of leaving a cheetah photo out of a blog post. So here is a video of the female cheetah who gave birth to a new litter in the first week of April! The video was taken March 29th, just days before she gave birth!

Welcome to the world!

Tracy and Brian and I were driving home from a foray this morning into the territory of the Mara River clan, when we stumbled upon a female giraffe standing out in the middle of a hug tall-grass plain all by herself. Or so we thought until we noticed a wee head with huge ears poking out of the grass at her feet. This female giraffe had just given birth a couple of minutes earlier; the afterbirth was still emerging, the baby was coated in amniotic fluid, and it couldn't yet stand up. The mother kept scanning the horizon as though on the lookout for potential danger to her newborn. She repeatedly switched between scanning and nudging her infant as though to encourage it to get up. As occurs in many species of mammals, it appeared that this female had given birth at a place and time of day when her baby would face the fewest risks. Although the Mara is teeming with large carnivores that would happily take advantage of a vulnerable infant like this one, none were about on this plain at 9:30 this morning.

We were all thrilled and fascinated to be so privileged as to witness this initial interaction of a newborn giraffe with its world, so we stuck around and watched for awhile. The baby tried several times to stand, but kept tumbling back into the grass at its mother's feet before it finally made it up onto its very wobbly legs. The mother promptly began licking the amniotic fluid off the calf, but that was apparently just too much for it, and the baby tumbled back into the grass again. Finally, the calf made it to its feet again, and this time seemed a bit steadier.

After standing against its mothers' forelegs for a few minutes, the calf began nosing around until, after several minutes, it finally stumbled upon the mothers' teats. It appeared to take several minutes of suckling (quite noisily!) for the mother's milk to start flowing, but when we drove away the calf was happily nursing below it's mother's belly.

The crazy things guys do for girls

They pick fights.


They twist themselves into knots.


They puff up and strut around.


They dance (awkwardly).


They're willing to get down and dirty.


They help scratch that hard-to-reach itch.


They even get down on bended knee.


After all that - if they're lucky - they get the girl.

I'm out

Well I've been writing for over five months now, and by blog standards I think that means I've earned a sabbatical. So I'm signing off until May or June, when I'll return in full force. Now now, dry your tears! It won't be that long, you will make it. Until then, I'm leaving you with a sampling of some of my favorite photos that I've taken here. Actually, all these photos are from last year, because I haven't had a chance to go through this year's batch yet. So those will have to wait until next year.



















I'll catch you all on the flip side. Until then...
...do not disturb.

Battle of giants

Giraffes are odd creatures in many ways. They are one of the only things I know that can look completely awkward, yet subtly graceful at the same time. They are a joy to watch as they go about their business in their slow, yet deliberate manor.

Before I arrived in Kenya, Dr. Holekamp had told me a very interesting story about a giraffe fight she had witnessed. I had high hopes for seeing these giants have a round of fisticuffs. I have been fortunate enough now to see giraffes battle for dominance on two different occasions. Last year I came upon a scene with about 15 giraffes standing around, watching two giraffes slug it out. It reminded me of high school fight, with many people standing around watching, but nobody is brave enough to break it up and most don't want to get close enough where they could become part of the action.

Giraffes have a fighting style only they can have. The swing their long necks at each other, trying to deliver blows with the thick, blunt horns on top of their head. It may look futile the first time you see a giraffe take a swing with its gangly neck, but I am quite sure if you were hit by the swinging giraffe head, you would be out of commission for a long time.

During the most recent fight I witnessed, I had trouble deciding which animal had won the fight. Looking back through the 90 pictures I snapped off in about 5 minutes, it was clear who was the champ. In the battle I saw last year, the fight went on for about 15 minutes, then another contender walked up. One of the two original fighters quickly sauntered away. Contender number two stood its ground, sort of. When the new challenger approached, the remaining contender gently placed its neck over top of the dominant animals neck.

It may seem strange that the subordinate animal would place it neck on top, but after I thought about it a bit more, it made sense to me. With its long neck on top of the dominant animals neck, it was in a completely defenseless position. The dominant giraffe could have easily taken a swing with its wrecking ball head and inflicted major damage. This is how many dominance interactions play out. The weaker animal shows its subordination by placing itself in vulnerable position. This is what I have worked out in my head about giraffe war. If anyone has read or been told differently, I am always interested in learning new things so feel free to write me. Or just see if you can pick the winner in the pictures, the one on the left or the one on the right.