Wilkinson's World

Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Everyone is familiar with measles, mumps, rubella and the like. These are minor, mostly childhood infections that are well under medical control and no longer a real threat to anyone with reasonable access to medical care. So, forget about those. Africa faces bigger challenges from bugs; from really small bugs to the somewhat larger.

The bite of the mosquito can transmit Plasmodium falciparum and cause malaria. The bite of the tstetse fly can transmit Trypanosoma brucei and cause sleeping sickness. The bite of a meercat can transmit the Lyssavirus that causes rabies. Tramping on a rusty nail can result in an infection with Clostridium tetani and cause tetanus. The list is endless and the threats diverse, and each infection is costly to treat.

But none is as costly as the infection with Peregrinatio cimex. Spread through exposure to the magnificent scenery; the blue skies by day and the star-filled skies at night; the wonderful assortment of animals and the incredibly diverse people, Peregrinatio cimex is deadly. Although physically painless, it eats up the family budget rapidly and is no respecter of pension funds, college funds or any other jealously hoarded sum of money identified for some well-conceived, all-important objective. For Peregrinatio cimex is the Travel Bug.

Just a single bite from the P. cimex causes itchy feet and restless legs; the need to keep moving on to see and experience new things. The need to see what is over the next hill, across the next river, down that interesting looking track. The need to visit places just because they have fascinating names, or because you heard mention of them sometime in the dim and distant past. Glazed eyes at the thought of work, clearing instantly at the sight of a road map of some exotic clime. The bite of the Travel Bug is largely incurable, and although sufferers may concede that it is nice to return home after a trip, a relapse is inevitable and they will soon feel compelled to move on, forever bemoaning the shortage of time and money.

A bite by the Travel Bug will lead to all manner of new experiences, including exposure to more bugs. Some of the larger bugs that will be encountered are interesting and less destructive than those referred to in the first paragraph; some are even large enough to be photographed. Let’s look at a few.

Here we have the fierce-looking (but harmless) Koringkriek, or Armoured Ground Cricket.  In some areas of Namibia there are armies of these wandering on the paths at certain times of the year, migrations may be seen crossing the road, many losing their lives under the rolling rubber of passing vehicles.

Then there are scorpions.  These little creatures have tails that curve up over their backs and their poison is potent enough to ruin a holiday.  It is always advisable to wear closed shoes after dark when they are most active.

And the infamous camel spider.  This  nasty little beast has a number of aliases because it isn’t really a spider at all, but a solifigud (a rather awkward name which apparently means ‘escaping from the sun’).  Also known as a sun spider or wind scorpion, this is not a gogga to mess with.  It moves very quickly and often appears to run after someone walking in the sun, although what it is really doing is looking for shade.  We were terrorized by camel spiders on Christmas night at Khamkirri on the Orange River (and it wasn’t only the ladies who were climbing on chairs!)

This first picture is of a female camel spider –

The male is much smaller and has a very ferocious-looking face.  Love the red hair!!!

On a larger scale and perfectly harmless, but a bit alarming to find climbing on your chair is the Turner’s Tubercled Gecko (not a bug per se but it falls into the creepy crawlie class).

In fact folding camping chairs seem to be magnets for bugs.  Put a hand on this hairy caterpillar and you could spend the next hour getting rid of its prickly hairs.

Post script:
For those with a scientific bent, the binomial Peregrinatio cimex derives from the Latin “Peregrinatio” meaning “travel” and the Latin “cimex” meaning “bug”. The Travel Bug. Of course it doesn’t really exist (as if you thought it did!), but doesn’t it make a wonderful excuse for all those rather expensive and pointless excursions?

I’m always excited to come across Agamas  and lizards on our travels.  They are usually such colourful subjects to photograph, but even those that lack colour are still fascinating because of their beautiful scales, spines and armoury, which the camera captures so well!  We are lucky in Southern Africa to have such a huge variety of these little reptiles so my delight is bound to be ongoing as we come across more and more on our journeys  around the country.

Agamas are quite common in Namibia, especially in the rocky areas, although there are arboreal and terrestrial Agamas as well.  In Southern Africa there are eleven species, all quite similar in appearance but with different colours and marking.  They tend to camouflage themselves by picking up the colour of the substrate they inhabit, however when they are breeding they are brightly coloured and it is easy to distinguish between the males and females. Did you know that Agamas can change their colours much like a chameleon does, with males being able to change themselves to resemble females when they are in danger?

The diet of the Namibian Rock Agama (Agama planiceps) consists mainly of insects – predominantly ants and termites.

Females lay between 5 and 18 eggs in the middle of summer and these take about two months to hatch.   Don’t you love the ferocious mock teeth markings on her lips?  Very scary!!

Tree Agamas (Acanthocercus atricollis) usually have large blue heads and their diet consists of flying insects like grasshoppers, beetles and other goggas that inhabit the bark of trees.

Although I photographed this albino-like Agama in a tree, it’s colouring is a mystery to me and I’m not sure whether it is a rock or tree Agama.  It could be a juvenile still getting its colours, or an adult doing its chameleon camouflage trick!

In central Namibia we came across this attractive Jordans Girdled Lizard.  Girdled lizards need the warmth of the sun to raise their body temperature, so they are known as heliotherms and as a result they are diurnal.   They tend to eat anything that they can catch which means that their diet is wide and varied, even including vegetation if no insects or small invertebrates can be found.  Note how well he blends into his environment.

This Black Girdled lizard (Cordylus niger) was basking in the sun at Langebaan in the Western Cape.  Its dark colour serves the purpose of allowing it to absorb heat more effectively because it lives in an environment that has a lot of rain and mist.

Finally, I’ll end off with a magnificent specimen of an Augrabies Flat Lizard (Platysaurus broadleyi), which, as its name suggests, was found in the Augrabies Falls area in the Northern Cape.

Unlike their girdled cousins, flat lizards have smooth skin that has an almost velvet finish.  They also need the sun to initiate activity and then they spend their day searching for food, basking or interacting with other lizards.  Flat lizards tend to live on rocks as these quickly heat up bringing the lizards to their preferred temperature.

Africa is not called the ‘dark continent’ for nothing.  It is a continent of dark secrets and legends. The legends cover not only the people, but the animals, rivers and trees.  And the tree with more legends hanging on its branches than baubles on a Christmas tree has to be the enormous Baobab (Adansonia digitata), found in just about every country south of the equator.

I personally love Baobabs and feel so excited whenever we come across them on our travels.   They transport me back to my childhood in Zimbabwe where I had the utmost reverence for these giant gnarled, funny-looking ‘upside down’ trees.  To me they represent Africa and mystery, and I’m obviously not the only one from whom similar feelings are evoked.

Any number of legends abound about Baobabs, from their origins to their magical powers.  Every tribe has their own version of the good and bad things associated with Baobabs – which is why they are so venerated and feared.  Many believe that benevolent spirits and ancestors dwell in them, whilst others fear the more malevolent spirits of both the trees and their Gods.  Offerings of food and gifts are placed near the trees to pacify angry spirits or to show gratitude for bountiful harvests.  Rituals are held in hollowed out Baobab trunks, with drums being beaten and prayers offered up for protection, and communication is made with dead ancestors and spirits.  Animals seek shelter in them and up to forty people have been known to crowd into one hollow trunk.

In northern Namibia Baobabs are even responsible for keeping the environment clean, for legend has it that anyone who pollutes the area around a Baobab will be engulfed in its large trunk.  He or she can only be rescued by a hardworking woodpecker (and this is highly unlikely as woodpeckers apparently resent humans for tearing down trees without asking their permission first) or by a hornless mooing black cow, which is extremely hard to find.  The natives often say they hear victims crying in the trees.  This ties up with yet another urban legend that has the evil spirits lying in wait amongst the branches.  If one listens up close to the trunk one can hear the spirits laughing inside (a noise most likely caused by bees nesting in the hollow trunk).

In Botswana the Bushmen believe that the flowers, which only bloom for one day, are inhabited by spirits and if  anyone has the audacity to pluck one  they are sure to be eaten by a lion!  Yet other Bushmen believe that one’s fate for such a crime is to be eaten by a tick.  If Bushmen are hunting an animal and it passes under a Baobab tree, the hunt is immediately stopped and another animal killed to preserve the life of the one that received the protection of the tree.

There are many different versions of the origin of the tree,  like God being angry because when he planted the tree in the earth it kept on walking, so he uprooted it and threw it onto the ground upside down.  It didn’t die but continued to live with its roots in the air. Yet others believe that the God, Thora, flung the Baobab down from paradise (because it was always complaining) and it landed on earth upside down.  Its elephant-like appearance apparently came about because its maternal creator was startled by an elephant when she was making the tree and it assumed the grotesque shape and dimensions of this large animal.

Talking of dimensions, Baobabs can reach heights of twenty meters and have trunks with a diameter of twelve meters. Their trunks, which absorb vast amounts of water (up to 120 000 liters in an adult tree), vary considerably in size during the dry and rainy seasons.  Because of its watery properties, as well as the food that one can get from it (Cream of Tartar), the Baobab is also known as the ‘tree of life.’  Providing shelter, medicine, rope, cloth and protection it is no wonder that it is held in such high esteem by the people of Africa.  In addition, if one drinks the water that seeds have been soaked in, one is guaranteed not to be eaten by a crocodile!

When the South African army was present in Katimo Mulilo in the Caprivi region of Namibia during the Bush War, they held no reverence or fear of the mighty tree as they fitted a flush toilet into one, thereby defiantly showing the world what they thought the of the superstitions and legends.  The tree had the last laugh though, as its trunk grew over the door, making it difficult to open.

“He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: ‘Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!’”

Congratulations if you recognized that quote from the short story in “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling, a description of the heroic Rikki-Tikki-Tavi that leads a short while later to the graphic description of the little mongoose’s fight-to-the-death with Nag, the cobra. No prizes for knowing who won! Written well over a hundred years ago, the Jungle Book remains an absolute classic.

The story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is, of course, set in India, but Namibia too has an abundance of mongooses.

We are always interested to see which of our blogs attract the largest number of hits, and one of the most searched items is the humble mongoose!  This is quite surprising as a mongoose is not a  particularly exciting animal to look at, but obviously it generates a lot of interest on the Internet.

These little mammals are quite common in Namibia and we even see them in the grounds of our townhouse complex on the outskirts of Windhoek.  The most common variety in this area is the yellow mongoose, easily distinguished by its light yellowish coloured coat and the white tip on its tail.  They are very shy animals and will scurry away quickly, or duck into whatever shelter is closest, as one approaches   We often see them in pairs when we go on our walks to the nearby Avis Dam.

Further north at Etosha, in the Caprivi region and on the eastern border of Namibia the banded mongoose is more common, very similar in looks to the slender mongoose, except that it has a number of stripes on its back.

This creature, unlike its cousin the yellow mongoose, prefers woodland and riverine forest as its habitat.  It also breeds during the summer months and has between two and eight young.   The gestation period for all breeds of mongoose is approximately eight weeks.  Their diet consists of lizards, beetles, termites, birds eggs, mice and fruit.

Eggs present no real challenge.and the mongoose will often pick up the egg in its front paws and then slam it  onto a rock or onto the ground to break it open.

At the Harness Wildlife Foundation we were amused to see dozens of slender mongooses follow the voluntary helpers around at feeding time – it looked like a scene out of  the Pied Piper of Hamelin!

They are extremely sociable animals and live in groups of twenty or more.

We unfortunately don’t have photographs of yet another variety of mongoose found in Namibia, namely the black mongoose, due to it’s elusiveness and rarity.  The black mongoose is endemic to Namibia and is found mainly in the Erongo mountains.  Not much is known about this species so a number of scientists are conducting studies on the black mongoose at the moment.  We have seen them on three different occasions, which makes us feel extremely priviliged.

Encountering African wild dogs on a game drive is about as exciting as coming across a lion or a leopard.  These animals are endangered and it is a rare privilege to see them.  They travel in packs of  between six and twenty, so one is always going to see more than just a lone wild dog.

We saw our first African wild dogs at the Harness Wildlife Foundation in Namibia, an ex-cattle farm now dedicated to saving endangered wild animals.  The orphaned animals that they rescue are housed in large enclosures so they maintain the appearance of living in the wild.  All the proceeds taken from tourism are ploughed back into the project and into helping the surrounding local communities.

Excited to be able to observe them being fed, we climbed up to a lookout platform above their feeding area and were amazed by their strange behaviour when they sensed food was in the offing.  The dogs started to run around each other making strange high-pitched growling noises that sounded decidedly eerie.  Within minutes they were in a feeding frenzy and soon gulped down the food that was thrown into the enclosure.

They are formidable hunters and their strong jaws make short work of their prey.  In the wild they tend to go for the weak and sick animals.  They work as a team to down their targeted prey and never show aggression towards each other during the hunt.

No two dogs have the same markings, which makes them quite unique.  Unlike domestic dogs that have five toes, wild dogs only have four toes on each foot.  They have magnificent mottled brown, yellow and black coats and bushy tails with white tips.  Their hearing is enhanced by their large bat-like ears.

We came across a pack of wild dogs quite by chance in the Mdumu National Park in the Caprivi.  We’d had a dismal day of animal spotting and the birding wasn’t offering up much either, when we rounded a bend and saw the dogs lying quite near the road.  The excitement that this generated made up for the disappointing hours before and we left the Park later feeling like we’d hit the jackpot!

The Mdumu Park has the typical habitat for these dogs – woodland – where they are able to prey on young buck, warthogs and any other small animals, birds and rodents.

There is usually only one breeding pair in the pack.  The rest of the group consists mainly of male dogs, as females tend to leave the group in search of their own packs once they pass the nurturing phase.  Occasionally there will be a secondary breeding pair, but this is rare.  Female wild dogs give birth to between ten and sixteen pups (usually more males than females) and these are reared by all the males in the pack.