I was out to catch the wild dogs on the hunt while Kim stayed at the den yesterday morning, they ended up just chilling at the den so I did a loop around the Manuchi area and past Sosigi. The weather forecast showed rain, but they always say that and it never reaches us, it is still cloudy though, which seems to keep the heat in at least. In the afternoon the dogs were out and about as I followed them past Manuchi Pan moving in a North Easterly direction. The funny thing was that if they continued in the direction they were moving, they’d cross straight over the hyena den! I made a break for the den just in case; the first dog had already reached the den by the time I arrived.
There was not a hyena in sight, they pulled their typical scatter and run maneuver with the cubs hiding in the den. It’s kind of what would happen if somebody through a hand grenade…except there were no grenades…and no people with any power struggles…so maybe not. The dogs sniffed around the den for two minutes and continued on their way. I continued tailing them, but eventually lost them just before it was getting dark. I back tracked past the hyena den to see if everything was back to normal and was greeted by the usual inquisitive cubs playing and suckling their mother. It was quite odd to see the hyena cub setting filled with wild dogs instead.
Tanga was also near base camp last night and drinking down at Malilangwe Dam. I tried to catch up with Alan and the leopard this morning but he was in the hills. The Dogs were already long gone so I continued a drive around the hills until I reached Lojaan Dam, where there was a large herd of buffalo in the water – they scattered on arrival, but relaxed after I sat snapping pictures.
I’ve been meaning to catch up with no ears for a while so it was down to Nduna Dam from there. No ears was near the dam, but he looked down and out, there was no snorting, no charging, hardly any movement from the poor guy. He had taken another beating from another rhino and was looking in bad shape. Bruce, the vet, will be looking into the extent of his injuries, lets hope we can give him a top up so he can recover.
Poor earless! Mark, is there anyway you can tell about his hearing capacity, because external pinna can be malformed but innner ear/ tympanic membrane can still be functional.
Maybe it’s Darwanian selection IF this is a true malformation/ genetic anomaly (complete deafness), nature will select thus that he will never be able to compete with other males to have access to females. One of these fights will get to him, thus, ends the line of earless!
That poor rhino!! Too bad he doesn’t just stay out of the way…
Those dogs were lucky the adult hyenas were off somewhere. The grace of the dogs is amazing compared to the stockiness of the hyena.
Awe! Poor No ears! I hope you keep us posted on his condition! Too bad they couldn’t improve his eyesight or hearing to help him. But I am sure there’s only so much that can be done.
The hyena would have been pretty mad if they would have caught those dogs at their den I would imagine. I was glad they didn’t catch the pups. Thanks so much for letting us have a little window into the wildlife that you document!
I have visited your posts before. The more I learn, the more I keep coming back!
“To begin incomes dollars with your blog site, initially use Google Adsense but gradually as your traffic will increase, hold including more and more dollars making packages to your site.”
Could not thank you more than enough for the articles on your web page. I know you set a lot of time and energy into these and truly hope you know how much I enjoy it. I hope I could do exactly the same for someone else someday.
Hey - good blog, just looking about some blogs, appears a fairly good platform you might be utilizing. I’m presently utilizing Wordpress for several of my sites but looking to alter one of them over to a platform similar to yours as being a trial run. Anything in specific you would recommend about it?