Tanzania, Day 6

February  28, 2012

Last night we fell asleep to the sweet sound of rain with the earthy smell of grass and mud wafting through the window. Frogs bellowed and bats chirped, while not far away someone else was kept rudely awake by the sound of rambunctious baboons running and fighting on the roof over their heads. 

Yesterday we had gone to bed feeling unwell, but today we woke up feeling refreshed. This was very fortunate as today was a great day, not only did we get to drive through the Serengeti and look for animals, but it was a great day for spotting predators!

Just a few minutes into our drive we came across some spotted hyenas. One was eating some prey, perhaps a young impala? The other carried a small cub away from the road, casting wary looks at these strange naked monkeys gawking at them from a metal box with wheels. 

Our guide, Stephen, told us that hyenas can hunt big game together, but they don't do very well because they don't use any strategy. 

I didn't realize it at the time, but this actually isn't true. What I learned about Hyenas while in Tanzania is that they are very taboo, most folks won't make or sell anything that has to do with hyenas, as they are considered thieves and scavengers. But this isn't at all true. I brought along a book with me to read should I have any spare time called A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky. The book is about a young scientist who is studying stress related health problems and the behavioral structure of baboons in Kenya, but he mentions a good friend of his in the book who studies the misunderstood hyena.

Turns out, hyenas DO have strategy, and in fact they are more proficient at killing prey than even the mighty lion. The reason why people don't know this is because hyenas hunt at night, and scavenge in the day. We didn't see this night time hunting behavior until night vision cameras started being used for research..

so all those times we saw a bunch of hyena fighting with lions over some prey in the early morning, it wasn't the lions who killed that prey, it was the hyenas. The LIONS are the thieves! 

With tourists taking more of an intrest in hyenas, some locals might every now and then sell a hyena related item, but more often then not hyenas are seen as evil and lazy creatures.

They're pretty strange looking. Also worth noting, they are not in the dog family, but are more related to cats. Their closest relative is Herpestidae, the Mongoose family

We saw two lions today, one was far away and sunning himself on a rock, and the other was also far away and barely seen over the grass. 

Here are some lion tracks!

Here is the lion sunning himself on a rock

We saw a lot of vultures, and we even saw an eagle owl that was sulking in the shade of a tree. He was calling back and forth with another owl that was far away.

We came back for lunch, and then went out for another drive, seeing many more different kinds of wildlife.

Here, a baboon looks through the grass, perhaps for food

A baby is following its mother

A scenic view of the Serengeti

We made a stop to stretch our legs, and this because a photo opportunity! 

This baby zebra was laying all the way down when we first drove by, and we worried it was dead. We watched as all of the other zebras started moving into the forest, with only the "mom" and "dad" presumably, staying with the sleeping zebra. It woke up before it could get left behind though, but the situation left us asking whenever we saw a still animal: "Is it sleeping, or dead?"

This is an impala brothel! It has one dominant male protecting the females, while the other males live together in a separate Bachelor herd, which can often be found not far from the females. 

This, is a hyrax. They can climb trees, rocks, perhaps even buildings. They're roughly the size of a groundhog, except in my opinion, evil looking. 

A black faced vervet monkey was hanging around the lodge.

Our guide told us a story while we were out on our drive. It explains how the zebra got their stripes.

The story begins with donkeys wishing that they were pretty. Their coats are brown and boring. So they talked to the hare, who asked his friend the tortoise to paint the donkeys, because the hare is lazy.

So, the tortoise painted half of the donkeys, but got tired, so he told the other half he needed to go to town and get more paint. 

...But the tortoise never came back. The unpainted donkeys waited and waited...

Meanwhile, the donkeys who had been painted said "hey, we look great, let's go show off!" So they lived in the Serengeti and became zebras. While the unpainted donkeys grew angry, and swore death upon the tortoise. 

The hare, hearing this, told the tortoise that the donkeys planned to kill him, so the tortoise merely shrugged and said "then I shall just carry my house around with me for protection"

So that is the fable of why the tortoise has a shall and how zebras got their stripes.