Fortunately a hard drive crash is not as terrible as other types, especially when there is a back (or two or three). But I'm beginning to think my hard drive crash is indicative of bigger issues with my machine which is my means of creating and publishing all these posts.. So I'm working with Apple to find out what needs to be done ... and that can take time. Especially since I'm not willing to put all the rest of my life on hold just to deal with this issue.
So, stay turned. Eventually the next post will come here. Those of you with automatic notice will get notice. If you want personal notice and are not currently getting it, let me know: bichael@cal.berkeley.edu.
For those of us of a certain age and comedic bent, the thought of a hippopotamus brings the mind the song by Flanders & Swann (Google them if you don’t know them) called The Hippopotamus Song and which features the refrain:
Mud, mud, glorious mud, Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. So follow me, follow, down to the hollow And here let us wallow in glorious mud.
(If you Google the song you can hear several performances of it by Flanders & Swann including one where they cajole the audience into performing the refrain and then berate them when they mess it up. This particular performance is even better in video but while I own an old video tape of them, I haven’t been able to find either a link to the video or a means of purchasing it. And if I were to post it, it would be a violation of copyright (and You Tube would probably do all sorts of ugly things to me).)
It is true that hippos love to wallow in mud. Or at least they seemed to part of the time we saw them. These ones were in Chobe National Park in Botswana.
Hippos in the Mud
Notice the two birds in the field above the head of the hippo on the right.It reminds me of a very bad pun (which shouldn’t surprise those of you who really know me).It’s a birthday card with a picture of a hippopotamus, a bird, and two female sheep.“Hippo-birdie-two-ewes”For those of you slow on the uptake, just remember the opening line of the song sung (too often at a dirge-like pace) for a birthday.
OK – that’s probably the worst you’ll get for this entire blog. And to try to make it better, here’s a video of the hippos wallowing in the mud. Not much movement on the part of the hippos except that one twirls its ear and one gets up and move around a little. Watch the birds in this video as well.
And one last close-up of a hippo in the mud before we move on to hippos doing other things.
Hippo in Mud - Close Up
As I noted, these photos were taken in Chobe National Park on Day 20 of our trip.But we had seen hippos earlier in the trip, on game drives in Manyeleti Game Reserve.
Of course, sometimes you have to know what you’re looking for. Hippos love to lie in ponds and lakes with almost nothing showing – such that you might almost consider them as rock outcropping in the pond, as shown in these two photos.
A Rock or a Hippo?
A Rock or a Hippo?
Of course, depending on what part of the hippo is sticking out of the water, you can sometimes tell without much effort that you’re not looking at a rock.
Top of Hippo's Head (Definitely Not a Rock)
When the hippo is in the water, it will often slowly rise until a significant part of it is out of the water and then sink back down under the water.They can stay underwater for periods up to 5 minutes before needing to resurface.
Hippo Surfacing
The word hippopotamus comes to us from the ancient Greek and means river horse, noting how much of this animal’s life is connected to the water. It tends to remain in water most of the day, emerging at night to eat, primarily on grass. And while it is the third largest terrestrial based animal after the elephant and rhinoceros, its closest living relatives are marine – whales and porpoises. The average male is 3,300 pounds and female 2,900 pounds.
As can be expected of an animal of that size, even from a far distance they are visible.
Hippos from Afar
And closer up they are really magnificent looking animals.
(Note: The photos in this posting, as shown by the title, were all taken on the 20th day of the trip on the Chobe River.There is also a photo, taken in Manyeleti, with a crocodile along with other animals that will be shown in a later post.)
In his poem about a crocodile, Roald Dahl notes:
No animal is half as vile
As Crocky-Wock, the crocodile.
On Saturdays he likes to crunch
Six juicy children for his lunch.
And as we’ll learn in a bit, crunch is easy for Crocky-Wock.
We have the term “crocodile tears” meaning insincere expressions of emotions supposedly coming from the belief that crocodiles shed tears when eating their prey. Well, while crocodile do have tear ducts which help moisten their eyes when they’re out of water for an extended period, there is some evidence that tears can be triggered by eating as well. What the crocodile actually is thinking (if it is capable of that at all) when eating its prey is, of course, unknown.
The species of crocodile (the word comes from the ancient Greek meaning lizard) seen in southern Africa is the Nile Crocodile. And they are among the most biologically complex species, more closely related to birds and dinosaurs than other reptiles.
In this photo of the Chobe River in Bostwana, note the island in the middle of the river, then look about mid way down the island and you’ll see the crocodile in its favorite position – waiting for prey.
Crocodile from Afar
Crocodiles are what are known as ambush predators.They wait for their prey to come close and then rush out to attack.
This crocodile has just come out of the river.
Crocodile Coming Out of River
While this one seems to be just resting – perhaps waiting for some delicious prey to come wandering by.
Crocodile Waiting for Prey - 1
And another crocodile that appears to also be waiting for prey.
Crocodile Waiting for Prey - 2
They really are quite fearsome looking creatures.
Fearsome Crocodile
efore we look at the next three photos of crocodiles, let’s talk about their teeth. A crocodile has 80 teeth and during their 35-75 year life span their teeth can be replaced up to 50 times. The bite is very powerful – reputed to be the strongest bite by far of any animal. We did not test this but those who have (measuring on a Nile crocodile like one seen here) report that the bite is nearly 15 times stronger than that of a Rottweiler, 7 times stronger than a great white shark, 6 times stronger than a hyena, and twice as strong as an American alligator.
Crocodile and Teeth - 1
Crocodile and Teeth - 2
Crocodile and Teeth - 3
I did get one video of a crocodile on land and moving into the river where he eventually disappears. Fortunately we were on a boat and out of reach.
Now that we've seen giraffes and learned a bit about them, let's see some videos. The first video shows three giraffes eating and most definitely not taking advantage of their long necks.In fact, one could even say that their necks constitute a bit of an impediment in this case.
Giraffes walk in a way that appears to me both elegant and awkward.They walk by moving the legs on one side of the body together forward, and then moving the legs on the other side of the body together forward.This is shown in the following video which also includes a nice view of our spotter riding in his location over the front left fender of our vehicle.It also raises the question, why did the giraffe cross the road.
The remaining videos show a form of behavior among male giraffes known as necking. And it really is a form of combat. Those who study giraffes say that necking is used to establish dominance, and that the dominant male generally has great access to females during mating. To me, the necking bout can seem either fairly intense or nearly choreographed. Again, giraffe experts divide necking into low and high intensity necking. Low intensity necking has the giraffes rub and lean against each other with the giraffe that holds itself more erect considered the winner. In high intensity necking the animals spread their front legs and swing heir necks at each other, attempting to land blows with their ossicones while the other animals tries to dodge and then get ready to counter.
Let’s look at some vidoes of necking. Can you classify these as either low or high intensity?
The experts tell us that most necking bouts don’t result in serious injury although there are records of broken jaws and necks and sometimes even death.
A curious aspect of giraffe behavior is found after a duel. It is apparently common for two males to caress and court and even mount each other. In fact male-to-male mounting apparently takes place in up to 94% of all giraffe mountings.
I was able to get one example of a necking bout that ended with one male briefly mounting the other.
Toys-R-Us notwithstanding, the giraffe is not a cute little animal that can talk.It is the tallest land animal and is known for its extremely long neck and legs, ossicones (which we’ll talk about later) and distinctive coat patterns.In fact, the nine subspecies of the giraffe are classified based on their different coat patterns, which correspond to where each subspecies lives.
The giraffe subspecies that we saw was the South African giraffe and its coat pattern consists of dark, somewhat rounded patches with some fine projections on a tawny background color with spots extended down the legs and decreasing in size as they do so.
Each giraffe has a unique coat pattern which is recognized by other giraffes. And while the coat pattern does serve as camouflage, this is primarily important to calves. Adult giraffes depend on their size and ability to defend themselves (including by kicking). Lions are the major predator of adult giraffes while the calves are also subject to being taken by leopards, spotted hyenas, and wild dogs. Male giraffes darken with age.
By the way, the name giraffe comes from Arabic and means “fast-walker.” We’ll talk more about giraffes walking in the next post where we have videos of them walking and necking.
Since the giraffe’s most notable feature probably is the long neck, let’s look at that a bit. The neck can be 6-1/2 feet in length. And the length results not from more cervical vertebrae but for a lengthening of them after birth, with each being nearly a foot in length. It is important to note that the lengthening of the vertebrae occurs after birth as otherwise mothers would have difficulty giving birth to babies with the same neck proportion as adults.
With such a long neck, the heart of the giraffe has a lot of work to do to be sure blood gets to the head and brain. The heart of a giraffe weighs more than 25 pounds, is about 2 feet long, and provides about twice as much blood pressure as in a human.
So, why does the giraffe have a long neck? (other than serving as the answer for why giraffes only eat a little. Remember the joke in post 37? If not – look it up) Well, unsurprisingly when we come to a very unusual physical attribute, the reason is probably either the will of the deity or Darwinian natural selection, depending on your political leaning.
So, turning to natural selection, what would be the competitive advantage to a long neck that better enabled ancestral giraffes with long necks to reproduce and pass on their genes. While you think you might know, there are at least two theories and neither one is ideal.
Darwin himself suggested that the long neck meant that giraffes could eat higher up on the tree where other animals could not reach. And while there is evidence showing that giraffes eat more efficiently at the high level of trees, there is not good evidence as to how much time they spend feeding at such levels. There is also some evidence that long necked giraffes suffer greater mortality in drought conditions.
The other theory is that long necks are a secondary sexual characteristic giving males an advantage in necking contests (see next post) and thus an advantage in obtaining access to sexually receptive females. And males tend to have longer and heavier necks than females of the same age. But if this is the reason, then why do females have long necks at all? (Compare the peafowl in which the elaborate tail is only found in the peacock and not the peahen.)
Now, if someone has access to the explanation of the deity’s choice theory, I’d be happy to hear it.
Let’s look at some giraffes. Here are some along the Zambezi river, feeding at a rather low level.
Giraffes Feeding Along River
And here are some in the bush country away from water.
Giraffes Feeding Away From River - 1
Giraffes Feeding Away From River - 2
Here are two giraffes showing camouflage.
Giraffe Camouflage
The giraffe on the right, behind just some scrawny trees, is much less noticeable than the giraffe on the left.
And here is a view of a giraffe from the rear.
Giraffe from Rear
Now let’s look at another characteristic of giraffes.In the next photo you can see the horn-like structures on the top of the giraffe’s heads known as ossicones.These have a base of cartilage that has ossified and then is covered in skin.
Giraffes Showing Ossicones
The ossicones of the two giraffes on the left appear to be fully covered in hair while the giraffe on the right seems to have ossicones that are missing the hair on the end, almost as if it had been rubbed off – which it had.This is a very accurate way to judge either age or sex of a giraffe.If the ossicone has the hair on the end, the giraffe is either a female or a young male, as better seen here.
Ossicone on Female or Young Male
If the hair is missing from the end, then the giraffe is an adult male, as seen here.
Ossicone on Male
There is a reason for this “male pattern baldness” in giraffe ossicones.The ossicones are a weapon in combat.And here is a picture of several fairly young males engaging in this combat.Notice that the ossicones while not fully bald (thus the males are still fairly young), are already showing signs of wearing off that happens in combat.And in the middle of the photo is one giraffe that has turned its head to but against another one in combat.
Male Giraffes in Combat
OK.Enough of this violence (until the next post).Let’s end this post with some photos of a mother and calf (and remember that the mother is effectively the exclusive caregiver for the calves).
