This post now on Google News (10/9/09)

Chickens get a pretty bum rap as the dumbest of animals. Maybe that’s why few people have much sympathy for the plight of chickens in our food industry. Take, for example, the hatcheries that produce the hens that lay our table eggs. Male chicks from these hatcheries are superfluous, since table eggs are infertile. The egg industry needs females only, for the most part. So male chicks are tossed, alive, into dumpsters. Take a look at the film Peaceable Kingdom by Tribe of Heart for clear footage of this interesting phenomenon. Or the photos in Animal Factories by Jim Mason and Peter Singer.

Live male chicks in a dumpster. Photo courtesy of www.tomregan-animalrights.com

Anyway – this post is good news about chicks! Interesting news. I read in Science News that chicks only 3 or 4 days old show evidence of adding and subtracting. Italian scientist Rosa Rugani and her colleagues from the University of Trento Center for Mind/Brain Sciences designed experiments that involved adding and removing objects from little piles hidden behind screens. She reports in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that the chicks did a pretty good job of keeping track of the objects, equivalent to problems such as 4 – 2 = 2 and 1 + 2 = 3.

Rugani says this is the first demonstration of adding and subtracting in young animals other than humans. Other animals, such as dogs and chimps, have demonstrated mathematical talents as adults. Karen Wynn, of Yale University, says that Rugani’s work is “compelling evidence that numerical understanding comprises a built-in system of unlearned knowledge.”

So why would chicks need to know how to count? Chicks hang out in groups. As youngsters, they’ll even hang out with little plastic balls about the same size as a chick. In the experiment, each chick watched as an experimenter hid balls behind two screens, then moved some of the balls from one screen to the other. When the ball-moving was over, each chick was allowed to wander. Around 75% of the time, the chicks scampered over to the screen that wound up with the most balls – indicating that they’d been keeping track of the adding and subtracting.

Photo courtesy of Science News and Rosa Rugani et al.

I have serious reservations about animal experiments in general. But behavioral experiments such as these, that demonstrate animal intelligence, are valuable. I can’t help but hope that some day more people will “get it.” Animals, especially vertebrates, are sentient beings that deserve a lot more consideration than we give them.

Sources:
Susan Milius. Hatchlings may add, subtract: results point to built-in numerical understanding. Science News, April 25, 2009.

Jim Mason and Peter Singer. Animal Factories.

Tribe of Heart. Peaceable Kingdom.

Tom Regan – Animal Rights

Key words: chickens animal rights animal intelligence chicks can count

All text and photos by Sally Kneidel, PhD, of sallykneidel.com

Caiphus – a medicine man I consulted with in the African village of Welverdiend. This photo is with his little daughter, Queen, in front of his home in June 2009.

The village of Welverdiend, South Africa, is one of my favorite places in the world. I’ve never met a more positive, forward-thinking group of people, determined to bring about progressive change. In the two and a half years since I’ve known them, they’ve faced some daunting challenges, such as unemployment and vanishing natural resources, but have come up with solutions I would never have dreamed of. Ken and I were stunned when we learned what they’ve accomplished.

Ken and I first visited Welverdiend in 2007, at the advice of Dr. Laurence Kruger who directs an ecology program in Kruger National Park, and Dr. Wayne Twine who studies resource use by villages just outside of Kruger Park. Welverdiend is one of the villages Twine studies. During our first visit, I was enthralled by the conversations we had in Welverdiend – how willing the villagers were to talk frankly about their difficulties with diminishing fuel wood, diminishing river sand for bricks (due to drought), damage to crops and livestock by elephants and lions, etc. For people like myself who are curious about lives that are different from our own, Welverdiend is a hot spot of interest. If you visit, you’ll come away inspired and enlightened. Or at least I did. Click here and here to see my stories and pictures from our first visit in 2007. Click here for the pics and story of our June 2009 visit. What a wonderful group of people!

But what I really wanted to write about today was one of the most interesting parts of the visit, both years. That was visiting the sangoma, or medicine man. I know that consumer demand for traditional Chinese and Asian medicines is a major threat to the survival of tigers, bears, rhinos and dozens or probably hundreds of other species. Traditional African and Latin American medicine also involve the use of animal parts, to some degree. I don’t know whether the use of animal parts by sangomas in Africa is contributing to the demise of threatened species, but it can’t be helping. For that reason, I didn’t accept any medicines on my first visit, and during my second visit I accepted only a couple of plant-based powders.

Welverdiend has more than one sangoma; I think two of them are women. I had no preference, and my friend Clifford made an appt for me to see the sangoma Caiphus. In 2007 Clifford and friend Robert went with me to translate, and Ken my husband went too.

Ken, Clifford, and Robert (l to r) with me in Caiphus’ consulting room, 2007

The 2007 visit was really more of an interview than a doctor’s appointment, but Caiphus did “throw the bones for me,” a diagnostic practice. He told me that there was nothing wrong with me, but he offered me a drink from a jar of fluid with some unidentified stuff floating in it, just in case. I declined politely and we all laughed. Then Caiphus said Ken was sick. (He was.) He recommended that Ken keep taking the medicine he’d brought with him from the States.

Caiphus in his “office” as a medicine man, with some of his tools in 2007

On my second visit, in 2009, I went to see Caiphus as a patient or client. I took only my friend from Welverdiend, Clifford, to act as translator. Caiphus greeted us in front of his house with little Queen. We chatted a while then I told Caiphus that there was a situation in my life that was causing me distress, and I wanted his diagnosis and advice, although I didn’t want to be prescribed any medicines made of animal products. (Sangomas treat non-medical problems too, such as mine.)

So we went into his front room, where he keeps his diagnostic tools and his remedies.

My friend Clifford and Caiphus, 2009

Most of his medicines looked like teas, or powders, or crumbled dried plants. We sat down on animal skins he had on the floor, Queen at her daddy’s knee. I asked what kind of skins they were; Caiphus said duiker and impala (local species of antelope) and jackal. Impala are abundant in the park, duiker are common. I know jackals are heavily persecuted by farmers who complain about jackals killing poultry, etc. I didn’t ask him where he got the skins (below).

He had a dried elephant foot that he said is used for people who come to him with foot ailments (visible as the gray blob on the white plate in the second picture of his bottles and jars). I know that Kruger Park staff at times shoot elephants who are destroying crop fields or causing persistent problems and give the meat to villagers. This is probably how he got the foot. Caiphus also had a wildebeest tail that he said is used to cleanse patients who have been “bewitched by evil spirits.” He said a lot of the “medicine” that works with the wildebeest tail is actually stuffed into the handle affixed to the tail.

The wildebeest tail with handle

He demonstrated how it works by holding the handle and sweeping Clifford with the wildebeest tail. We all laughed. We spent a lot of time laughing. Caiphus is friendly and funny, and he put me quite at ease.

Anyway, I described my problem to Caiphus, a problem which involved a situation with another person that was causing me some angst. To come up with the treatment for my distress, Caiphus collected his small bones, shook them vigorously, spoke to the bones in Shangaan, and then threw them down on one of the animal skins. He spent some time studying them and pointing out their meaning to us with his stick, as Queen began to nod off.

Below, a closer view of his bones (which include a domino, a few coins, a sea shell)

I asked Caiphus what the bones were, and he said they were the knees of sheep, goat, impala, duiker, warthog, lion, leopard, tortoise, and marula. Marula is a plant, so I don’t know what that meant. Queen at this point put her head on her dad’s knee, asleep (below).

I wish I’d asked him how he acquired the knees of these animals, but I didn’t. Why didn’t I? I was dismayed to hear lion and leopard in the list, though. I can only hope that the animals weren’t killed for the sake of procuring their knee bones for the sangoma. I know that villages living around the park sometimes kill predators who are killing their livestock. I’m guessing this is how he got the leopard and lion knees, or maybe he bought them. As I was ruminating over this, Caiphus reached behind himself, pulled out a cloth, folded it carefully, and tenderly placed it under Queen’s head.

Queen snoozes on the little pillow her dad made

Anyway, here’s what he said the bones told him about me: I need to appeal to my female ancestors to intercede in my behalf. He also said something of value is coming my way. In order to properly ask my female ancestors to influence my affairs, I need to get a white cloth and a checked cloth, put a 100-rand bill (South African money) between the two cloths and sprinkle some brown powder over the cloths. Then I need to ask my female ancestors to clear the way for this thing of value to come to me, whatever it is. The brown powder was a ground-up tree root, he said.

Secondly, I needed to put brown powder #2 (a different kind of tree root) into a bath tub of water. Then I needed to speak outloud to my female ancestors about the solution I would like to happen regarding the situation at home that’s bothering me. Next, I should put some of the yellow powder in a glass of water, sit down in the bath water, and drink the glass with the yellow powder in it.

He put the brown powder for the cloths in a used snuff can and gave it to me. He deftly wrapped the two powders for the bath procedure into separate packets make entirely of newspaper.

The packets of ground tree roots, and the brown tree root in the snuff can

We talked for a couple more minutes, then Clifford and I jumped up. We were going to take a ride through the Mozambique neighborhood of Welverdiend. The Mozambique population moved into the area as refugees from political turmoil in Mozambique, and they are not as far along the road to Westernization as the Shangaan Welverdiend residents. For example, I believe he said they have no running water, and their schools have fewer supplies, etc.

On our way out, Caiphus showed us some medicinal herbs he was drying in the sun

Then Clifford and I were off for our visit to the Mozambique area.

Children on the Mozambique side of town, walking home from school.

Would I recommend to anyone else to consult with a sangoma about a problem? If you have a latent anthropologist in yourself, like I do, then by all means Yes! Other ways of life fascinate me. About the matter of their using animal skins and animal bones (the wildebeest tail and elephant foot) – tell them that American tourists (or whatever nationality you are) don’t like the idea of using animal parts from animals that might be declining in number. I should have encouraged Caiphus to use only the bones of domestic animals or truly abundant animals, like scrub hares or impala.

I like Caiphus a lot; it’s impossible not to like him. I like him for being such a kind father to his little girl, for laughing so readily, for providing a good home for his family in a lovely town like Welverdiend, for suggesting that I call on my female ancestors who have power. I like that last idea. I like it a lot. Even though most of the people of Welverdiend will tell you that they are Christian, they blend the old with the new. I understand that their church services are quite an experience. I could hear them from a distance when I was there on a Sunday, but didn’t get a chance to attend. Next time I’m there, I will. I long to be in Welverdiend.

Check out on their website what Welverdiend is doing to prepare for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The village’s new resort will be ready to house and feed dozens of athletes from all over the world, with an Olympic-sized pool for exercising. By June of 2010, Welverdiend will also have a wildlife preserve with safari vehicles. It makes me want to cry. If you could see how much they’ve changed since 2007… These are people who have amazing drive and spirit. I just want to be around them. I want to be there…now.

All text and photos by Sally Kneidel, PhD, of sallykneidel.com

Now linked to Google News – time-sensitive link

All text and photos by Sally Kneidel PhD of http://sallykneidel.com

I was surprised at how simple it was. One of the men put his foot on the drugged rhino’s massive horn, pinning the horn to a wooden block on the ground.

Then another guy revved up the chain saw and sawed the horn off her face, leaving a stump that protruded about 4 inches from the rhino’s skin.

A small plastic sheet under the rhino caught all the shavings, which were considerable.

The circular stump, head on, looked like a bulls-eye with its dark center.

Then the man with the chain-saw turned his attention to the second smaller horn, and sawed that off too, once again catching all the valuable shavings and flakes. The rhino was awake enough to flinch at that one, which was much closer to her eyes and ears.

The stumps of both horns on the mother rhino.

Rhino horns are made of compacted hair, so removing one shouldn’t hurt if the growth zone at the base isn’t touched. The horn will regrow about 2 inches a year, maybe twice that much if the animal is given protein supplements. A typical horn on an adult white rhino is about 22 inches.

As she lay on the ground, the rhino was grunting softly, laboring to breathe. Feeling the urge to comfort, I put my hand on her shoulder. Her skin was tough, like it looked, but I was surprised at how warm it felt- even warmer than human skin. No wonder they have so many parasites, the blood must be right under the surface.

Ken and I had been invited on this rhino capture by a couple of science friends while in Africa, in June. We’d watched while a helicopter took off with a vet, a vet tech, and a pilot to locate two rhinos from the air and to fire a tranquilizer dart from a rifle into each one.

After a mother rhino and her year-old-baby were located and successfully darted, Ken and I and a group of other scientists had to find the fallen beasts in the dense African bush, not an easy task. The rhinos ran quite a ways before the drug brought them down. The plan was to take samples and measurements from the sedated pair, then inject an antidote to wake them and lead them into two cages on a flatbed truck.

The reason for the capture was that the rhino and her baby had been sold. They were moving from a wildlife preserve into private hands, to raise money for the preserve. The new private owner had requested that the mother have her horn removed to protect her from poachers. I had mixed feelings about that.

The new owner was operating under the theory that a rhino without horns is less likely to be killed by poachers, which may or may not be true – I don’t know. Rhino poaching is a real danger, having increased in southern Africa 3-fold between 2005 and August of 2009. In Kruger Park alone, 27 rhinos have been killed in 2009. Rhino horns stored at Addo National Park were stolen in a violent armed robbery in July of ’09. Just last night I got an email from a friend in South Africa that “Heidi,” the only white rhino at Thula Thula preserve, has just been shot and killed by poachers who hacked off her horn.

Rhino horn is extremely valuable, for two main markets. It’s sold to Asian countries, especially China, Taiwan, and South Korea, for use in traditional medicines. And it’s sold to Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen and Oman, where it’s used to make ornately carved handles for ceremonial daggers. We were told, while in Africa, that much of the rhino poaching is instigated by well-organized Asian syndicates, which may hire impoverished locals to do the dirty and dangerous work. It may take 3 days to track a rhino – which is invariably shot and killed before the horn is sawed or hacked off. An average-sized horn can sell for $24,000 on the black market. The scientists we went out with said the horns sell for $6,000 per kilo, and the mama’s horn that we saw weighed about 4 kilos.

So, does removing the horns protect rhinos from poaching? We were told by a variety of sources, including rangers and poaching guards, that removing horns from a rhino does little to protect it. Poachers will still go after a dehorned rhino and shoot it, because even the stump is valuable. And if the stump too is gone, we heard, the trackers will kill the rhino just so they won’t waste 3 days tracking the same useless animal again.

So back to the scene… the drugged mama and baby rhino…. as soon as we located the darted rhinos lying down and sedated, the group of scientists on the ground split into two teams to work respectively on the mother and baby. Cloths were tied around their eyes as blindfolds. A soft cloth ball the size of a tennis ball was stuffed into each ear to shut out sounds, to keep the animals calm.

Above, ear plugs for the mother (the black balls), put in place before the sampling and cutting began.

The teams took blood, hair, skin, and tissue samples, measured the animals’ temperature and pulse, inspected the teeth and various other body parts, and clamped ID tags to their ears.

The pulse is checked (below).

One graduate student plucked green Amblyoma ticks from around each rhino’s anus. Below, the round ticks are visible in the skin creases. The mother’s tail is in the lower right of the photo below. I’m not sure what the white stuff is – maybe an antiseptic or a pesticide.

The ticks on most of their skin are plucked off by oxpeckers – birds that specialize in eating external parasites from large African herbivores. But I guess the birds can’t get to an anus that’s covered by a tail. I like almost all animals, including invertebrates, but I have to admit that the dozens of ticks around the mother’s moist anus were a bit unsavory.

It was during this sampling and measuring that the mom’s horns were sawed off. The shavings and flakes, which were considerable, were saved because of their value. We were told that they will be stored in a secure vault. For what, or until when, I don’t know.

After all the sampling was done, a vet injected the antidote into the 10-yr-old mom and her yearling son, leaving the blindfolds in place.

After just a couple of minutes, the rhinos started to wake up. A bunch of people started trying to roll the rhinos so that their legs would be under them (the mother, below).

The rhinos were then urged and pushed and pulled into a sitting position (the mother, below).

Then the two animals were pulled and prodded toward the cages and truck that would take them to their new home (the mother, below).

As I ran beside the mother rhino, she passed saplings – and trampled them. She didn’t go around anything, but smashed everything in her way. Of course she couldn’t see where she was going. I felt sorry for her – she had no idea where her baby was, unless her keen sense of smell told her.

We soon arrived at the cage for the mother. She was pulled with the rope, and pushed from behind , and walked easily enough into the cage.

The heavy cage door was lowered by a crane, and then the crane lifted the cage onto the flatbed truck. The baby was already in his cage on the truck, which had room for both cages (below).

Then it started to drizzle. So instead of driving the rhinos 80 some miles in a drizzle and risk their getting a respiratory infection, the decision was made to release them temporarily into a nearby holding pen that was forested and quite extensive. We drove there, the crane put the cages on the ground, and the blindfolds and earplugs were removed. Mom and babe were both released, and the rhinos rejoined one another immediately (below).

They then began to trot away from us (below).

But baby stopped, and turned around to stare at us.

“What the heck was that?,” he must have wondered. He may have never seen a human before. Someone clapped and yelled to shoo him and he turned to follow his mother (below).

Rhino conservation: the good and the bad
I didn’t know when we were in Africa how threatened or endangered the southern white rhino is. As it turns out, they are classified as Near Threatened (NT) on the IUCN Red List. I did know that they’re the largest land animal, after the African and Asian elephants. They’re larger than any other rhino species. We saw them on lots of outings in reserves – they were fairly common in southern Africa. I knew that white rhinos are really named for their “wide” and squarish upper lip. Africa’s black rhinos, which are much more rare and may be extinct in the wild, have a narrow prehensile upper lip that they use for browsing. Black rhinos are particularly vulnerable to poaching because they must have water daily and they return to the same water hole every day. Sometimes water holes are poisoned to kill the rhinos (and everything else that uses it).

Although the white rhino population in southern Africa is doing relatively well at present, they almost went extinct. In 1895, there were only 20 to 50 animals alive in the wild. Today, the population of white rhinos in southern Africa has grown to 17,500, with 750 more in captive breeding programs around the world, according to ARKive. I don’t know how they got from 50 to 17,500, but it’s a nice success story.

Still, white rhinos remain in danger due to habitat loss, the recent surge in poaching, and widespread poverty which affects human priorities. Africa is the only continent where poverty is increasing, due to human population growth, recurrent droughts, HIV, and a history of colonization and exploitation.

Poverty is a contributing factor
In some of the rural villages we visited in southern Africa, we were told that local people often enter national parks illegally to poach wildlife for food or for sale, and to gather firewood to use or to sell, when nearby sources are depleted. It’s the hierarchy of needs….if your kids are hungry, you do what you need to do to feed them. If you can. We also heard that rhino poachers are often shot on sight by poaching patrols. You can tell a rhino poacher, we were told, because they carry high caliber rifles – not the snares and homemade traps that local people use to catch smaller animals.

But the main driver of rhino poaching is the demand in consumer countries Recently, Vietnamese operators have been especially active in poaching rhinos from southern Africa, or in hiring local people to do it. That’s according to TRAFFIC, an international NGO that monitors illegal trade in wildlife. David Newton of TRAFFIC reported that “very senior members of the Vietnamese government claim to have been cured of certain terminal diseases by the use of rhino horn……so that seems to be where the demand is coming from.” Newton added that rhino horn has no medicinal qualities. It’s hard for me to stomach the news that government officials are promoting the poaching of rhinos. Do they know that rhino horns are no different chemically than hair??

A white rhino with its horns intact.

Do rhinos need the horns?
As I watched the mother rhino and her youngster led through this bewildering series of events that left the mother hornless, I wondered about their safety. Doesn’t she need her horn to protect the baby from predators? Maybe. But we were told, and observed for ourselves, that rhinos will trample whatever they want to trample. The trampling is more likely to kill you than the horn. Each dangerous animal has its way. A Cape Buffalo will pick you up with its horns and toss you into the air. A hippo “will bite you in half” we heard, if you get between the hippo and its river. But a rhino will just run right over you as though you weren’t even there. Each animal deserves distance and respect for different reasons! Rhinos do use their horns in social confrontations, but usually only in slight horn butting, false charges, and displays.

As the two wandered off into the trees after their ordeal, neither mom nor baby seemed to pay any attention to the absence of her horn – but who knows what was in her mind…or what their future will be. At least, I feel confident that she won’t wind up on a “trophy” shooting reserve. For who would pay thousands of dollars to hang a rhino head with a bulls-eye stump on his living room wall?

All text and photos by Sally Kneidel PhD of http://sallykneidel.com

Post script from a friend at TRAFFIC:
After I wrote this post, I got this e-mail from friend and colleague Richard Thomas, who works for TRAFFIC The Wildlife Monitoring Network:
“You may have seen that we [TRAFFIC] submitted a technical document, with WWF and IUCN, to CITES in July, highlighting the sudden alarming urge in rhino poaching — and issued a press release about its main findings that got a lot of publicity. The release is here, where you can download the
report too:

http://www.traffic.org/home/2009/7/9/poaching-crisis-as-rhino-horn-demand-booms-in-asia.html

Vietnam is certainly emerging as the country that’s driving the rhino
horn demand. Whilst you’re right to flag that poverty is a significant
factor in poaching of animals, research by TRAFFIC indicates that the
main driver is actually the demand for the products in the consumer
countries; and the Vietnam situation appears to be following that model.”
I amended my post above slightly after receiving this helpful point from
Richard Thomas.

Sources:
Personal communication with game control scientists, vet techs, biologists, poaching guards, rangers, wildlife guides in Africa.

ARKive: Images of Life on Earth

Rhino Horn the Cure for Serious Diseases? International Rhino Foundation, Aug 6, 2009

TRAFFIC: the wildlife monitoring network. www.traffic.org

More resources:
International Rhino Foundation:
http://www.rhinos-irf.org/white

IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group:
http://www.rhinos-irf.org/afrsg

Keywords:: white rhino poaching threats to rhinos habitat loss Africa

An adult male leopard full and sleeping.
All photos and text by Sally Kneidel, PhD

In my last post, on lions, I said that most of the wildlife-watchers we met in Africa seem to have cats at the top of their “must-see” list – although none of the big cats are easy to find. I wrote in that post that lions are rapidly declining. But in southern Africa, leopards and cheetahs are even more rare than lions. The “Visitors’ Guide to Kruger National Park” says the park has only half as many leopards as lions, and only 1/10 as many cheetahs as lions! (2000 lions, 1000 leopards, 200 cheetahs)

Even though rare, leopards have the broadest range of all the world’s big cats. They live across both Africa and Asia, from deserts to high mountains, in warm and cold climates. Leopards are much more adaptable than lions. I’ve read that leopards can survive with only the water that’s in their prey – no drinking water. Not sure if that’s true, but it is true that they need very little drinking water. Their adaptability has helped them survive droughts and loss of habitat in Africa and Asia, although apparently all subspecies of leopard are listed as endangered by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), according to Earth’s Endangered Creatures.

Because they are so widespread, and because there are at least nine subspecies across Africa and Asia, I couldn’t find an estimate of the total number of leopards remaining just in Africa.

What I know for sure is what I’ve seen. Spotting a leopard is different from seeing a lion or a group of lions. First of all, unlike lions, leopards are solitary. Adults meet only to mate, period. They never hunt together as lions do, even if two leopards’ territories overlap. Leopards are elusive, slinky, graceful. Clever. If you see one cross the road way ahead of you, keep an eye on the road behind you. You may see him recross the road after he thinks you’re gone and not paying attention.

We didn’t expect to see leopards on either trip to Africa, but we did, on both trips. In June this year, the first one we saw was hiding in tall grass, in the morning light. (Leopards hunt at night or early morning.) The black rosettes on his tawny fur were effective camouflage – the cat was hard to spot. But there he was, dozing, eyes shut with his head held erect. Maybe he was listening for prey, I don’t know. They do eat scrub hares and sometimes rodents or even invertebrates. I say “he” because it was a big leopard, and males are much bigger than females.

The big male leopard was dozing – or listening for prey – in the morning sun.

Later that morning, in a protected area just west of Kruger National Park, part of “Greater Kruger”, we saw a different leopard on the move. She was going somewhere, walking at a brisk pace (below). As you can see in the photo, the leopards in southern Africa have squarish rosettes on their coat. (East African leopards have roundish rosettes.)

But that night, we came upon a female leopard hunting. It was a moment of electric excitement for me. She was trotting down the sand road we were slowly driving down, in front of us. We turned on the parking lights and followed her at a distance. The leopards there are accustomed to animal-viewing vehicles in the bush, they don’t pay much attention as long you stay in the car. After a couple of minutes we came to a herd of impala in a dark field beside the sand road. Impala are mid-sized antelope, just the right size for a leopard.

Impala in the area, but not the same herd we saw that night.

The leopard saw them, too, and she stopped. We turned off the parking lights and cut the engine, behind her. It was now pitch dark, and the impala didn’t see her. They could smell her, though, because they started making the wheezy alarm snort they make to each another when they’re freaked out, when a predator is near. And this really shocked me: the leopard dropped to a crouch on the road, ready to pounce – right beside our vehicle! I swear she was only 5 feet from the front left tire (photo below).

She was watching the impala, ready for the right moment to spring. I thanked God fervently that I was still alive to experience such a moment. I tried to just soak it in. I thought about all the hours I’d spend at my desk at work to pay for this trip!! But here I was! Yay!

And then we waited. And waited. And waited. We sat for probably an hour waiting for her to decide that it was the right moment to pounce. I’ve read that leopards prefer a distance of 5 meters before pouncing. Anything farther than 20 meters is too far. I guess she was waiting for one of the impala to wander to within a distance of 5 – 20 meters, and maybe that never happened. I don’t know. We could still hear the impala snorting the whole time, although we couldn’t see them in the dark. We could only see the leopard when I turned on a tiny red light on my camera (or the one time I took a picture).

Anyway, we finally gave up and left. It was well into the night and we were tired.

The next morning we went back and I hoped so much we’d find her with an impala carcass up a tree. But we didn’t. Maybe we just didn’t see it.

In 2007, we had a leopard experience that was even more startling. We were on a game drive in an open jeep, in a protected area not too far from the area I just described – west of the park, in Greater Kruger. Driving along a sandy dirt track in the bush, we crossed a river at a shallow spot, then driving uphill, we came upon a dead warthog hanging on a branch in a tree. Leopards typically drag their prey into trees to keep hyenas and lions from stealing their prey, neither of which can climb as high or as easily as leopards. So we stopped and waited. Within five minutes we saw an adult female leopard walking calmly out of the riverine bushes and reeds on our left toward the tree with the warthog, crossing the dirt track in front of us (below).

She totally ignored us, crossing the dirt track, and sprang nimbly up the slanted tree trunk with no effort at all to start to work on the warthog. But then, but then…..a huge male leopard sprang up from the dense brush. I’m not kidding. It was his warthog, apparently, or else he had stolen it from the female. In an instant he was up the tree, lying on the warthog’s head, and snarling at the female so viciously that she backed hastily up a small branch to get away from him. In the photo below, you can see the female at the top of the picture backed up a narrow branch, her left front paw dangling in the air. The male is in the middle of the picture, just below the female’s dangling paw. The dead warthog’s entire brown back is visible, draped across the branch. You can see his skinny right rear leg hanging at the bottom of the picture. (Click on any picture to enlarge it.)

After an awkward moment the female lept to the right onto the main branch, and made her way down the branch, away from the angry male.

The male stood up and snarled at her as she lingered on the branch. In the photo above, the warthog’s neck is bent to the left, hung over the smaller branch. You can see his head and snout just below the leopard’s belly. His body dangles below.

Then the male lay down and clutched his warthog, glaring at the female (above).

The male leopard relaxed then, lay down on the branch near his dead warthog, closed his eyes and snoozed. His belly looked full, although the warthog looked intact. I guess he was saving it for later.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever see another wildlife sight as dramatic as that, unless I see a predator actually make a kill. Maybe one of these days. But I do thank God that I am alive in a time when these incredibly inspiring animals still walk the Earth. I don’t know how much longer that’ll be. What if I was born 100 years from now instead? Or 50 years from now? Would they still be here?

What are the threats to leopards?

The biggest threat is habitat loss for their prey animals, due to human population growth and human activities such as agriculture, raising livestock, mining, etc. Then there’s the biggie that will ultimately alter all habitats: climate change.

Beyond that, leopards have long been preyed upon by humans. Leopards are killed for their soft, beautiful fur which brings a high price on the black market. The tail, claws and whiskers of leopards are popular as fetishes, the whiskers used in potions. Like other powerful animals, leopards’ body parts are used in traditional medicines to (supposedly) confer on the user some characteristic of the leopard. The illegal trade in animals and animal parts is the third most lucrative black market trade in the world, second only to drugs and arms, according to Interpol.   (See the website of TRAFFIC and my prior posts on Veggie Revolution for more info about that.)

Like lions, leopards are popular with trophy hunters too, on “canned” hunts. Just click google images for “leopard trophy hunt Africa” and take a look at the photos of “trophies” (guys with rifles holding dead leopards) and ads for canned hunts.

In some areas farmers try to exterminate leopards to protect their livestock, with snares, traps, or poison. Kermit the Frog said “It’s not easy bein’ green,” but how about this: It’s not easy being a big cat in Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly every country has an agrarian economy, and livestock play a big part in that. Cats can be the enemy. They do eat livestock if they can’t find their natural prey.

So, as I said with lions, solutions must include reimbursing farmers and herders for livestock lost. Solutions can include community groups that take turns watching for predators. And hopefully, solutions will include grass-roots tourism. Helping local people transition from livelihoods that destroy, overgraze, and otherwise degrade habitat to livelihoods that depend on keeping habitats and wildlife alive and intact. Americans, Europeans, and Asians bring billions of dollars into Africa every year, looking for wildlife to photograph. What if all of that went into the hands of local people who would otherwise be raising livestock to feed their family? What if?

If you go to Africa, or any destination that’s a wildlife hotspot, find out where your dollars are really going. If you need help, leave a comment after this post and I’ll respond.

From home, you can join conservation organizations that protect big cats and their prey. You can encourage stores not to carry fur coats; encourage people not to buy or wear fur. You can also do what you can to reduce the human impact on the environment. The actions of people in industrialized nations profoundly affect people and wildlife in developing nations all around the world.

Sources:
African Wildlife Foundation (www.awf.org)

Hunters take out Kruger’s animals. African Conservation Foundation. (www.africanconservation.org)

South Africa: Limpopo Leopards in Danger. African Conservation Foundation.
(www.africanconservation.org)

Earth’s Endangered Creatures
http://www.earthsendangered.com

Additional resources:

TRAFFIC:  the wildlife trade monitoring network

Key words:: leopards Africa South Africa conservation endangered habitat loss global warming