A game of cats and elephants

[Kitsafari]

@@Tom Kellie, thanks for your kind words. I'm glad the report appealed to you. I went back again in 2014 and still plan to write something about it when I get out of hospital. Every year I have been has been different and this last time was perhaps more different and a suitable finale for my volunteering. More later...

 

@@JohnR, very much looking forward to it! and hope you are moving towards full recovery quicker!

[graceland]

So glad John Kellie brought this back

 

Good luck to you @JohhR, we are rooting for you!!

[RichB]

@@Tom Kellie, thanks for your kind words. I'm glad the report appealed to you. I went back again in 2014 and still plan to write something about it when I get out of hospital. Every year I have been has been different and this last time was perhaps more different and a suitable finale for my volunteering. More later...

Fantastic pics John...Hope you get well soon...

[michael-ibk]

So do I John, to a quick and full recovery!

[Tom Kellie]

~ Please do get well soon, @@JohnR.

 

News that you're on the mend will be welcome tidings.

 

After reading your Namibia volunteering trip report, I have the highest respect.

 

You who observed species far beyond my ken. May healthier days soon arrive!

 

Tom K.

[JohnR]

Thanks for all the well wishes.

 

I am improving steadily and might be able to go home next week. I still have two wounds which have not yet healed, a fasciotomy in my left calf which was done to relieve pressure on a bypass operation on the other side of the calf done to restore blood supply to my foot and a vacuum pump on the back of my left knee. My right leg which also had a bypass a month later to replace a blocked artery has healed quickly and I can walk on it. So for the present I can walk short distances on crutches. I hope this will improve substantially once the vacuum therapy is finished and I can bend the left leg again.

 

It was a scary time around Christmas when I was taken to A&E for an emergency operation on my left leg and the surgeon told me he didn't know if he could save the leg.

 

Only time will tell if I can get back to walking in the African bush looking for leopard poo.

[Tom Kellie]

“Only time will tell if I can get back to walking in the African bush looking for leopard poo.”

~ In it's own way as noble of an ambition as there might be, albeit unconventional.

Nonetheless Safaritalkers are the most likely to realize that.

Much appreciate the update, @@JohnR.

As sending flowers is impracticable, herewith an image bearing get well wishes from Beijing.

Photographed on 4 November, 2014 at 10:15 am on the Yuquan Road campus of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

ISO 4000, 1/800 sec., f/7.1, 135mm, handheld and manually focussed with a Zeiss Apo-Sonnar T* 135mm f/2 ZE telephoto lens on an EOS 1D X camera.

It was one of several late season roses photographed on my 61st birthday.

[RichB]

Thanks for all the well wishes.

 

I am improving steadily and might be able to go home next week. I still have two wounds which have not yet healed, a fasciotomy in my left calf which was done to relieve pressure on a bypass operation on the other side of the calf done to restore blood supply to my foot and a vacuum pump on the back of my left knee. My right leg which also had a bypass a month later to replace a blocked artery has healed quickly and I can walk on it. So for the present I can walk short distances on crutches. I hope this will improve substantially once the vacuum therapy is finished and I can bend the left leg again.

 

It was a scary time around Christmas when I was taken to A&E for an emergency operation on my left leg and the surgeon told me he didn't know if he could save the leg.

 

Only time will tell if I can get back to walking in the African bush looking for leopard poo. " Sounds a bit like myself John going around looking for tasmanian devil scats"..

 

[FlyTraveler]

Hi @@JohnR,

I just read about your situation and I wish you a quick and full recovery! Looking forward towards your next report about a future walking safari in Africa!

Cheers!

[Atravelynn]

Wishing you a full and speedy recovery so you can return to your normal routine, which I hope will include looking for leopard poo.

 

Those pangolin scales shown on the camera are very intriguing. So is the flying impala.

[Marks]

@@JohnR I'm just reading your thread now, but it's excellent so far. I'd also like to add my well-wishes for your continued recovery.

[Pennyanne]

@@JohnR I have really enjoyed this report. Some of those camera trap photos are amazing. It must be fun to see what goes on when you're not around.

Best wishes for a full recovery.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Pennyanne

[SSF556]

great report and very intriguing....get well @@JohnR

[Tom Kellie]

~ @JohnR:

 

I've never seen an aardvark, not even a captive individual.

Hence I have no basis for comparison.

You alluded to ongoing drought in Namibia, which presumably extends to reduced food supplies.

Does that include aardvarks? I ask because when looking at the aardvark photo above, the spine is showing.

Is that due to reduced muscle mass, or rather is that a characteristic aardvark ‘look’?

The photo shows the proportionally large ears — fascinating image.

Tom K.

Edited April 17, 2015 by Tom Kellie

[JohnR]

Hi @@Tom Kellie,

 

Yes , the drought went on all that year and affected all the animals, changing their feeding habits. The reason we were seeing aardvarks in daytime was that they were extending the hours when they were foraging for ants and termites.

 

Creatures like the aardvark had to look after themselves and numbers will be reduced in succeeding years until the population recovers. The rains in 2014 came in abundance but too late for many animals so when I returned numbers were down and the grass long making it harder to see all but the larger game. Valuable animals like elephants and sable were protected by the farm owner by shipping in hay from South Africa but that was very expensive. Low value game was culled and sold to the meat trade but as you can imagine many game farms were in the same position so it was a buyers market.

[Tom Kellie]

Hi @@Tom Kellie,

 

Yes , the drought went on all that year and affected all the animals, changing their feeding habits. The reason we were seeing aardvarks in daytime was that they were extending the hours when they were foraging for ants and termites.

 

Creatures like the aardvark had to look after themselves and numbers will be reduced in succeeding years until the population recovers. The rains in 2014 came in abundance but too late for many animals so when I returned numbers were down and the grass long making it harder to see all but the larger game. Valuable animals like elephants and sable were protected by the farm owner by shipping in hay from South Africa but that was very expensive. Low value game was culled and sold to the meat trade but as you can imagine many game farms were in the same position so it was a buyers market.

 

~ @JohnR:

 

That helps me to better understand the situation.

As aardvarks eat ants and termites, how does drought affect them?

Are their food supplies reduced in number, or more difficult to obtain?

What I mean is that in other parts of the globe, during drought various ants and insects dig more deeply into the soil where moisture remains.

From what you observed in Namibia, was there any sort of insect die-off, which would reduce aardvark food sources?

Tom K.

[JohnR]

@@Tom Kellie I believe it is as you said that the food supplies get harder to reach though I didn't go into the question, just asked our local driver why we were seeing them in daylight. Another of our teams saw aardwolf too which have a similar diet.

[Tom Kellie]

@@Tom Kellie I believe it is as you said that the food supplies get harder to reach though I didn't go into the question, just asked our local driver why we were seeing them in daylight. Another of our teams saw aardwolf too which have a similar diet.

 

~ @JohnR:

 

As that's the case, then ants and termites must also be affected by drought.

The truth is, I've never before considered how drought affects insects, other than locusts.

The food chain being as it is, I ought to have realized this.

Thanks again!

Tom K.

[Tom Kellie]

~ @@JohnR

 

This week in several of my classes the topic under consideration has been ‘mammals who eat insects’. Last week was ‘birds who eat insects’.

A particularly gifted student who's a budding zoologist told the class that he understood the adult aardvarks are almost never sighted with one another, instead keeping out of sight of one another.

He added that he'd read somewhere that mother aardvarks are especially secretive with their young.

As we have no access to Google here and both Yahoo and Bing haven't been reliably functioning lately, it's difficult to confirm this one way or another.

From your experience in Namibia, do you ever recall that you, or others, ever had aardvark sightings which involved more than one aardvark at a time?

If aardvarks do indeed keep out of sight of one another, what's the primary reason for that?

Territoriality for safety? Seeking their own food resources? Another cause?

Please forgive me for asking you, as I don't mean to stereotype you as the go-to guy for aardvark questions.

Your remarkable Namibia experience affords you first-hand awareness of aardvarks.

Thank you for your consideration of my question,

Tom K.

[JohnR]

Hi @@Tom Kellie I am certainly not an aardvark specialist. My connection with them began on Ongos game farm when the expedition leader decided to have a game where we formed groups and each group drew the name of an animal from a hat. The names were kept secret and the following evening we had to do a presentation where the others had to try and guess our animal as we progressively revealed facts such weight, habitat etc. My group drew the aardvark.

 

During the day we read the various guide books (no internet!) so most of my information is from standard sources. We won the competition as so few people knew anything about the aardvark.

 

It has a huge range across the whole of the southern two thirds of the African continent so you can expect some variations in behaviour. The most common traits are that adults are solitary except for mating and the female raises the young in a home burrow and they will remain with her until her next period of sexual activity.

[Tom Kellie]

Hi @@Tom Kellie I am certainly not an aardvark specialist. My connection with them began on Ongos game farm when the expedition leader decided to have a game where we formed groups and each group drew the name of an animal from a hat. The names were kept secret and the following evening we had to do a presentation where the others had to try and guess our animal as we progressively revealed facts such weight, habitat etc. My group drew the aardvark.

 

During the day we read the various guide books (no internet!) so most of my information is from standard sources. We won the competition as so few people knew anything about the aardvark.

 

It has a huge range across the whole of the southern two thirds of the African continent so you can expect some variations in behaviour. The most common traits are that adults are solitary except for mating and the female raises the young in a home burrow and they will remain with her until her next period of sexual activity.

 

~ @@JohnR

 

What you've written above corroborates what my student described.

My home field guide collection is fairly thin when it comes to aardvarks.

The sole unconfirmed point is his claim that they stay sufficiently distant from one another to be out of sight.

Your points about a solitary lifestyle and the young raised in the home burrow, hence out of sight, tends to corroborate.

That your Ongos game farm group happened to draw aardvark turned out to be advantageous...for the group in winning the competition...for me in knowing you, as near as I'm likely to get to an aardvark aficionado.

In next week's class I'll relay your response. In doing so I'll be sure to note that you're somewhat unusual in having actually seen an aardvark.

Many thanks for this. I'm grateful that Safaritalk doesn't assess a hefty specialist consultation fee or I'd owe you a hefty sum!

Tom K.

[JohnR]

I'm grateful that Safaritalk doesn't assess a hefty specialist consultation fee or I'd owe you a hefty sum!

 

Now there's a thought!

 

They may well avoid one another but I haven't seen it documented. Their diet is so specialised and their food sparsely distributed that they can travel 10's of kilometres in one night. The farm was not that huge and did hold several aardvarks so they must have overlapping home ranges. I have not heard of them being territorial. It sounds like a subject for a dissertation but I don't think they are much studied so data may be hard to come by.

[Tom Kellie]

They may well avoid one another but I haven't seen it documented. Their diet is so specialised and their food sparsely distributed that they can travel 10's of kilometres in one night. The farm was not that huge and did hold several aardvarks so they must have overlapping home ranges. I have not heard of them being territorial. It sounds like a subject for a dissertation but I don't think they are much studied so data may be hard to come by.

 

~ @@JohnR

 

One wonders how they natural selection shaped an organism with such a rarefied diet.

Ants and termites must accordingly have been plentiful and readily accessible when aardvark ancestors lived.

An article noted that they effectively tear up the soil in their search for their insect prey. In s doing, they're in effect tilling the topsoil.

Such wide home ranges!

Were one a zoology doctoral candidate at an African graduate school, they would make a superb dissertation subject!

Their doctoral committee might even include an entomologist or an ecologist.

That you saw aardvarks remains special to me, as aardvarks are as scarce in Safaritalk trip reports as flowers blooming on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Tom K.

[Tom Kellie]

~ @@JohnR

 

The number of days remaining in 2015 will soon be in single digits.

Has your convalescence continued apace, with gradual improvement?

I've often thought of you, hoping that your vigor will return to the point where 2016 might see you once again far from home, albeit perhaps sidestepping the beaches and nightlife of Ibiza or Cancun.

This particular trip report has been appreciated by several graduate students here, as a model of going out into the wild while supporting wildlife conservation.

They especially have appreciated your inclusion of logistical details beyond the highlights of firsthand observations of rare mammal species.

May 2016 be a fine year for your wildlife observation and photography!

Tom K.

[JohnR]

@@Tom Kellie Thanks for asking. Sadly progress has slowed right down. I have been back in hospital for keyhole surgery on one of the bypass grafts which had shrunk somewhat. Hopefully that is now stabilised.

 

I saw two specialists last week, one a plastic surgeon who wants an MRI scan of the left knee to see why it is no longer healing, and the second a neurologist who wants the results of the first surgeon's study as it will tell him what nerves are still capable of functioning and perhaps which can be repaired. I think there has been quite a bit of progress in the nerves of my foot but one major nerve, the tibial, is not connected.

 

However with the holiday season beginning and bringing casualties from drunken parties which people seem to indulge in at this time of year blocking normal hospital staff, it could be some time before I receive an appointment. So I am already writing off the first quarter of 2016 and certainly not making any arrangements until I can replace the crutches I now use with a walking stick.

 

My camera remains in the kitchen for now, though with the mild weather I have nothing more exotic than a few tits and finches.