Big Six plus one?

 Michael – Alternate Thursdays

"Well, as giraffes say, you don't get no leaves unless you stick your neck out." - Sid Waddell

Reticulated giraffe browsing
Wikipedia

In my last post I argued that the Big Five (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino, and Buffalo) should be extended to the Big Six by including the Hippo. In a comment, Everett Kaser agreed but pointed out another animal with a claim of membership – the giraffe. After initial hesitation, I realised he has a strong point. Giraffes are iconic African animals and fascinating creatures, being the tallest living terrestrial mammal in the world, and boasting extraordinary physiology. It seemed to me that at the very least they deserved their own blog post.

Southern giraffe
Giraffe Conservation Foundation 

Everyone knows what giraffe look like. Most people also know that giraffe don’t make sounds – at least not vocal ones. Giraffe can and do snort to raise the alarm at an approaching predator, and very occasionally mothers make guttural sounds to attract the attention of their kids. However, in 2015, scientists discovered that giraffe actually do make sound from their vocal chords at night, a kind of humming snore. It’s postulated that this is a communication strategy to keep in touch with the other members of the tower. (Rather delightfully, the collective noun for giraffe is a tower.) My own perspective is that giraffe don’t make sounds because they don’t have anything to say. That’s a strategy certain humans might well consider.

Speaking of sleep, giraffe generally do it standing up and only for an average of an hour a day. Lying down is just too vulnerable a position for a giraffe.

Another common belief is that giraffe have a second heart – a sort of subsidiary pump that helps push the blood up the neck to the brain. That certainly seems reasonable given the height the blood has to go. The neck alone will be between two and two and a half meters (6 to 8 feet) for an adult. Giraffes do not have particularly large brains, but they are big animals and that brain needs food and oxygen. The actual solution to this issue is even more interesting than a second heart. Firstly, the heart is large (11 kg) and very strong, generating twice the blood pressure of a human. In addition, the jugular veins feature seven one-way valves that keep the blood flowing in the right direction whatever the orientation of the neck. Quickly lifting your head from drinking at a pool or browsing a shrub can’t lead to a moment of dizziness. That sudden movement might be because of imminent danger, which is exactly when you need full alertness.

It’s obvious what the long neck is for, or is it? Giraffe get to browse higher in trees than any other animals, even elephants. That’s a feeding advantage and Darwin suggested evolution selected for long necks for that reason. A modern alternative theory is that longer necks allow males more success in necking (neck fighting) and so are sexually important. Studies suggest that the competitive feeding advantage isn't as significant as it looks.

Either way, there’s no free lunch so to speak. Although giraffe obtain most of their liquid needs from the food they eat, they do need water every few days. Now that long neck is a big disadvantage. They have to split their front legs and bow as low as they can to reach the water. It’s a dangerous position in which to find oneself in the event of a lion attack.

Reticulated giraffe drinking in Kenya
Wikipedia

If that happens, giraffe have two main defenses. The most important is flight. Despite a rather ungainly lope with the legs on each side moving together, they can reach 60 km/hr over a short distance and 45 km/hr over a longer one. Lions are sprinters. They can reach 80km/hr, but only for about 100 meters. So they have to be pretty close to get a giraffe. The second defense giraffe have is kicking. Those large hooves can produce a hell of a wallop. If the kick connects, the lion will come off second best.

There are now four recognized species of giraffe and a host of subspecies. In South Africa, giraffe are doing well with numbers growing to over 50,000. In some other countries, numbers have declined over the past decade, but now seem to be stabilizing and improving. That’s good news for the giraffes and for giraffe lovers. We must preserve these beautiful, gentle giants of the African bush.

Drought

Stan - Thursday

It doesn’t matter what you believe the reasons are for why the climate is changing, the reality is that things are changing.  And changing quickly.  In all sorts of unexpected ways.

In a sense, it is the unpredictability of the changes that has caught us off guard. Throughout the world, weather patterns are weird - places having higher highs or lower lows; areas, normally dry, having floods; areas, normally wet, having droughts.  

For many people arguing about the role humans have played in climate change is the extent to which they get involved.  Their involvement is academic.  Certainly they read about what may happen if the oceans rise a metre or so.  What will happen to Miami or New York City, not to mention many Pacific Ocean islands and island nations that may disappear all together?

They may also notice a rise in some food prices.  But few actually experience what climate change can really mean to a community.

South Africa is experiencing a terrible drought this summer – not all of the country, of course, but much of the food-basket areas in the centre of the country, as well as the area around Cape Town, where severe water restrictions are in place.

I read about the fact that the farmers of the Free State province won’t have any crops this year.  

Non-existent crops in the Free State

Dams are empty or nearly so.

Dead sheep

I see hundreds of plastic bottles of water outside filling stations, all donated, that will be transported to the affected areas.  

There are hundreds of water collection points around the country.

People queuing for water.

Waiting for water.

I see photographs of cracked, arid soil with nothing growing.  I speak to people who normally use local beef to make biltong - the South Africa equivalent of jerky, but who now are importing beef so they can keep their businesses alive.  Many of the local cattle have died.

However, other than paying increased costs if I don’t cut my average water consumption in Cape Town by 20%, I don’t actually experience the effects of the drought firsthand.  I can still get water whenever I want it.

This week, for the first time, I saw for myself the effects of the drought firsthand.

I travelled to Ingwelala, a private game reserve bordering the famed Kruger National Park.  Normally it is rich in game because of its abundant grazing and browsing, as well as its dams, full of water pumped from boreholes.

This year, the dams are still full, but there are few animals because there is no grass to eat.  Having water to drink is nice, but if there is nothing to eat, it’s time to leave and find something better elsewhere.

What is strange is that the bushes and trees seem to have found water deep underground and are in decent shape, but there is no grass whatsoever – just barren sand.

No grass

Nothing for grazers to eat

The most noticeable difference from normal times is the devastation of trees and bushes by elephants desperate for something to eat.  Hungry elephants have toppled hundreds of trees just to get to the few delicious leaves at the top.  The same elephants have uprooted hundreds, if not thousands, of bushes to get to the moisture of the root systems.  

Apparently elephants find some moisture around the roots

Could be a scene after a WWI bombardment

More devastation

Elephants are breaking through electric fences into camp to get to the fresh-water pipes.

Baobabs store water in the trunk.  Elephants often dig into the trunks to get to the moisture.  Rocks placed around the base of the tree are designed to keep the ellies away.

Concrete pyramids to keep ellies away

To make things worse, the elephants are so stressed that they are behaving unpredictably.  An Ingwelala member, casually watching some elephants, was chased for no reason for over 600 metres by an irritable elephant, which needed to blow off some steam.  Fortunately nobody was hurt.  My co-author, earlier in the year was also charged, and friends Aron and Jenny had their car damaged by an irritated ellie - while they were in it!

Elephant charging Aron and Jennie's car - photo by very scared passenger (Roger Taylor)

We normally have a few hippos on the property, but they’ve also left because here is nothing to eat.  A friend who just returned from Kruger told me that the hippos there are in such bad shape that they are foraging during the day (instead of at night).  Many are severely undernourished.  In fact, Kruger is considering culling hippos because of the drought.  Read more about it here.  

Kubu would definitely be short-tempered if he found himself in such a situation.  

Even though it is a very depressing sight to drive around Ingwelala, there are a few bright spots:  the impala and kudu are doing well, probably because they can browse as well as graze; the giraffes are fine because they can reach those succulent leaves high up, and the lions and leopards are in hog heaven (that doesn’t sound right!) because all they have to do is hang around a waterhole and dinner comes to them.

Giraffes are browsers - fortunately for them.

The kudu are in good condition - they browse as well.

The warthogs hogging a small pond.

The point I’m trying to make is that if you want to understand the real effects of climate change, go and stay somewhere where changes are having a dire impact, where lives are at stake, where the future is uncertain.

PS.  After I had finished writing this blog, I came across this video of a game park, Madikwe, in another part of South Africa.  As I said, the weather is weird everywhere.  Click here to watch.