Otter latrines and zebra dung middens

River otter scat
(Muller Field Station, Richmond NY 2/12)

Today's post ain't pretty, but IMO it is interesting. The last time I was at our Muller Field Station, we visited an active river otter latrine. This is exactly what it sounds like: a place where river otters repeatedly defecate. They are sometimes called toilet sites or just toilets. I always make sure I tell my students that otters do not exclusively defecate at toilet sites, but they do so often and for a purpose. Think of the amount of information that can be conveyed in scat. Certainly one animal could tell what another individual was eating, but the vast majority of information is chemical (largely scent). And don't think of the scat itself as the main source of info, but rather the other products that are left behind probably tell the story better. Cells from the intestines mixed into the scat, hair left behind either through the process of ingestion or through the animal rubbing and rolling, scent from glands on the animals body (often anal glands that purposely deposit scent with the scat), etc. etc. What a waste to think of scat as just, well, waste!. At left is a photo of some river otter scat. There is a large quantity of undigested fish scales mixed in with a few aquatic inset parts. We resisted the temptation to pull it apart as our guests from Jamestown Community College were there to collect such items for later DNA extraction. This particular scat was part of a very active latrine site. The next photo shows the whole latrine. Notice the muck that has been pulled up from the channel. At least river otter and beaver do that and it is often hard for me to be 100% certain which species is responsivble. Even at this latrine site, I would not be suprised to find that a beaver had done this.

River otter latrine site
(Muller Field Station, Richmond NY, 2/12)

River otter latrines are particularly interesting for several reasons. As seen above, the scats often contain lots of interesting stuff that provide information regarding the diet of the animals. Second, the latrines make great places for camera traps and last, otters often leave behind another substance besides scat: jelly. In 2009, I volunteered for a week on a river otter research project in British Columbia. Our main task was to find fresh jelly (called otter or anal jelly in the literature) and collect it for analysis. The jely is actually produced by the otters so it is 100% otter DNA as opposed to the scat itself that has the DNA of the animal(s) that were consumed to help confuse the issue. As a general rule, otter jelly is preferred for DNA analysis for that reason. Here is one particularly interesting photo of fresh otter jelly from British Columbia:

River otter scat and jelly
(Victoria, BC 7/09)

Have a look at that string of jelly. I have always imagined that the otter was standing in one spot and gave a mighty squeeze rather than the otter moving as it emitted the jelly. Regardless, that is what fresh jelly looks like (although it can come in slightly different colors as well as in clumps rather than strings -- we even found depostis that looked as if the scat and jelly were combined that were dubbed jelly-scats).

On our family vacation to Africa this summer, we witnessed a different species of mammal deposting scat in piles. The very first Grevy's zebra we saw showed us an interesting behavior. He walked right up to a large pile of scat, sniffed and then added his own to the accumulation. This is a common behavior among zebra males as a way of marking their territories. The books (and our guide William) say that these are created along the boundaries of two males' territories. They are called "dung middens" rather than latrines...

JVN:"Hey! A Grevy's!"

DVN: "Is eating that poop?"

DVN:"DAD! Stop taking pictures. This is gross."

In truth, not everyone was as excited to see this behavior as I was...

These Holidays are for the Dogs...

Black-backed Jackal
(Tanzania, 8/11)

Greetings all! I has been a while since I posted. The end of the semester is always hectic and then that rolls right into the holidays. I have enjoyed my time off. I sleep more than I should, I eat too much and watch more Netflix than one man should. I blame the weather. It has been so unseasonably warm. Kind of like the dog days of December. Which leads me to this photo. Just look at how FULL this jackal is! There is a reason they call it "wolfing down your food". Many (if not all) Canids can consume huge amounts of food at one time. In Africa, we watched scavengers fighting over remains -- vultures, hyenas, jackals and even lions. Simply having the ability to carry so much food in your stomach is an advantage. However, this guy looks as if it couldn't even outrun me at this point, so there must be trade offs. For a comparison, here is the same species (not the same individual though) without a full belly.

Black-backed Jackal
(Kenya, 8/11)

We were able to see four species of wild Canids in Africa : Black-backed, Golden and Side-striped Jackals as well as Bat-eared Fox (Note that Hyena is missing from this list. They are not dogs! But more on that in future posts...). The Black-backs were quite common and we saw them everywhere. We only saw two families of Bat-ears and distant views of single Golden and Side-stripes.

Bat-eared Fox
(Kenya, 8/11)

One of my favorite memories of our Africa trip was seeing our first family of Bat-ears. That is partly due to the fact that I spotted them :). Nothing beats getting the jump on your guide. But they are just amazing looking critters. These ones didn't let us observe them long. They seemed to want some peace and quite and picked up and left as soon as we pulled over. But I managed a few photos including the last one that shows how these fox go their name. They are small enough (they top out at about 12 pounds) to prey on insects as well as vertebrates.

Bat-eared Fox
(Kenya, 8/11)

The Big Five: Leopard!

This post is one in a series on Africa's "Big Five". You can view all my Big Five posts here. Although we were not particularly tuned into seeing the Big Five, all of the animals on that list (Elephant, African lion, Rhino, Leopard and Cape buffalo) were certainly on our wish list. But seeing the Big Five was not a priority per se. As it turned out, we saw multiple animals of each species of the Big Five, however the leopard turned out to be the least encountered. We "only" saw two leopards. I say "only" because it was conceivable that we could go on safari and see none.

Traffic jam at leopard sighting
Photo: Danika Van Niel
(Samburu National Reserve, Kenya 8/11)

Our first leopard siting was in Samburu National Reserve. William, our guide, was alerted to its presence over the radio. By the time we arrived, there were at least a dozen safari vehicles already present. The only problem was, all of the guides around us had also just arrived and no one within earshot of us knew where the leopard was. You have to picture the land rovers packed in close to each other and guides asking back and forth in Swahili "Ambapo ni chui?" (or something like that) while the tourist tried the same in English. All I learned was that SOMEWHERE on the rocks ahead of us was a leopard. I began to carefully scan with my binoculars and finally it popped out of nowhere! Once I saw it, everyone else wanted directions as to where it was. So despite there being so many people there, it was exciting to "refind" the leopard on our own.

Leopard
(Samburu National Reserve, Kenya 8/11)

The photo at left was taken when the leopard was on the move. It is not the greatest photo as the light was low and I was hand holding my big lens, but it is our best :) Our only other leopard was in the Serengeti. It was far away, but 1) our guide found it without any help and 20 it was in a tree! No photos but fond memories of that one.

Cheetah
(Samburu National Reserve, Kenya 8/11)

Leopards can only be confused with one other African animal and that is the cheetah. However, there are several ways to tell them apart. Look closely at this cheetah. I took this photo on the same day as the leopard pic above. Cheetahs are more sleek overall. They remind me of greyhounds. Also, look at the black "tear streaks" on the face of the cheetah. Finally, look at the difference in the spots. Leopards have spots in clusters or rosettes on the torso. Of course, there are other differences. Leopards are ambush predators while cheetahs are known for their incredible bursts of speed to cathc their prey. And cheetahs are the only cat int he world that has claws that do not fully retract. One final difference: cheetahs are not known to attack humans, while leopards do. This last fact is what puts the leopard in the Big Five and excludes the cheetah.

The Big Five: African Elephant Part I

It has been SOOO hard to keep up with blogging. We returned from Africa only to have all the craziness that goes with the start of the semester. So far, I have only managed a single safari post and that was just an overview. Tonight, let me start a series of posts regarding the "Big Five". I was only vaguely aware of the term "Big Five" before researching our safari and knew it had something to do with trophy hunters. In fact, the term refers to the five game species hunters sought that were both dangerous to humans and provided fascinating trophies. From the hides of lion and leopard to the horns of rhinos and buffalo to the tusks of elephants, the Big Five seem to still be the standard many safari-goers judge their experience by. We saw several tour companies that incorporated the big five in their name and/or logo and many more that took great pains to feature those species on their websites and in their itineraries. Don't get me wrong, we wanted to see them too. But that is only because we wanted to see EVERYTHING.



African elephant with injured trunk
(Serengeti National Park, Tanzania 8/2011)

 Of the Big Five, it is usually the leopard that is hardest to spot. That was true in our experience. We only saw two leopards (one in Kenya and one in Tanzania... but that will be the subject of another post!). In contrast, we saw hundreds of elephants. We visited seven parks/reserves and I believe we saw elephants in all of them. This posting includes some of my favorite elephant photos:
Short trunk: Laura was the one to notice that the elephant pictured to the right had an extremely shortened trunk. It appeared to have been severed. Our guide guessed that perhaps it had been accidently caught in a poacher's snare. The elephant appeared to be healthy and since they live so long, this injury could have been sustained many, many years ago. Still, one has to think this is a hinderance! We saw the elephants do some truely amazing things with their trunks. This girl seems to have thrived despite her injury.



African elephant in the "swamp"
(Amboseli National Park, Kenya 8/2011)

 "Swamps": In several parks, most memorably Amboseli National Park in Kenya, wetlands were present that our guides called "swamps". In the US, we would call these areas "marshes" as they were dominated by soft, emergant vegetation (that is, plants that grow up through or emerge from the water). Swamps are dominated by standing timber (dead or alive). The softer vegetation would be easier to digest and although we saw elephants of many different ages in these African "swamps", they are most essential to the oldest elephants who have worn teeth and can no longer process the tougher foods found elsewhere. It was amazing to see the elephants  feeding as they were partially submerged in the water. From a distance, it appeared that they were standing in high grass. But the white cattle egrets walking on the ground would give away the true situation (There is one under the ear of the elephant in the foreground and two near the elephants int he background.). The elephant in the photo above has just gathered a large trunkful of soft vegetation and is about to bring it to his mouth (Imagine how the elephant with the injured trunk would accomplish this!?!). Note how the trunk looks dark because it is wet.


African elephants
(Amboseli National Park, Kenya 8/2011)

 Family: In the final photo for this entry, have a look at the dark line on each of these elephants. They have clearly just gotten wet, perhaps from a river crossing or perhaps from venturing into a swamp. Since each elephant was a different height, each faced a different challenge when negotiating the water. You can almost trace a straight line through each of them and imagine the depth of the water! Well, almost all of them. The little guy looks completely dark and must have been completely submerged at one point :)

We all agreed that the "ellies" (as our Australian relatives would say) were favorites and we simply did not tire of seeing them. I will have to write another post or two about them to do them justice.....