Animals don’t read text books

A recent social media post by well-known guide, owner of Nature Guide Training and wildlife reference book author, Lee Gutteridge sparked a topic of discussion among many wildlife enthusiasts in Hoedspruit.

Gutteridge posted a series of photos of a leopard rubbing its face in buffalo dung, asking others for comment on the behaviour, “I have seen leopard, many times over the years, eating buffalo dung. Sometimes they also rub their faces in it. I haven’t ever really figured out a 100% straight answer as to why. Is it to camouflage their scent, or some kind of attraction to nutrients in the dung…or what?”

Even with all of his years in the bush, sometimes even the professionals come across behaviour that they simply cannot fathom.

A number of people replied with theories about the behaviour. The general consensus is that it must be some sort of attempt for a predator to mask their scent, with the behaviour also having been observed in lions. We have a plethora of wildlife books at our finger tips and Lee’s ‘Bushveld’ book is just one of the many incredible books that explain some of the things we often overlook. The fact of the matter is, even with all the studies and books on our beloved wildlife, sometimes the animals forget to read the manual.

Most people choose to conduct game drives in the early mornings and late afternoons. Although one of the main reasons for this is to avoid the blistering midday sun, it is also because most predators are generally less active during the heat of the day. That said, some incredible wildlife sightings happen in the middle of the day – predators are, after all, opportunists. They don’t skip an opportunity just because the books say they should be sleeping. Another out of the ordinary sighting was observed last year by Ian Owtram, owner of Antares Field Guide Training Centre. Owtram was driving a group of students along the banks of the Letaba river in the Kruger Park, hoping to locate the African Skimmers.

Despite their skimmer search coming up empty-handed, they stopped at a view point and noticed a crocodile about 20m into the river with a large animal in its jaws. At first the group couldn’t quite determine the identity of the prey, but had thought from the large ears that it could be an aardvark. “I suspected an aardvark due to the large ears but couldn’t believe so as this was 3 o’clock in the afternoon and any selfrespecting aardvark should be asleep inside it burrow. As we got close enough my thoughts were confirmed and sure enough here was this crocodile with a large aardvark inside its jaws, very dead but totally untouched,” says Owtram.

This led Owtram to believe that it had recently been caught. However what he found even more strange was that there was no evidence of the crocodile moving 20m away from the bank so how did the aardvark meet its demise?

“Some mysteries are maybe better left unresolved and we just enjoy the moment for what it is,” says Owtram.

Very true indeed.

The beauty of the bush is that it allows us the opportunity to observe new things every day and learn constantly!