O'er moorland and brae: Animals all in a row

Searching for and watching the animals is hugely addictive. We never seem to tire of it. This trip there seem to be longer spaces between sightings though once we see an impala we reckon on seeing another animal within about two minutes, and so far that 'theory' has been pretty nigh infallible. But when we do see animals we see massive numbers of many of them. Amazing numbers.

At one lunch spot we watched what we thought was a single buffalo head down to a waterhole. He was huge, somewhere between 700-900 kg which is the typical weight for a mature buffalo. Within minutes buffalo after buffalo filed down out of the bush after him. There must have been at least two hundred of them, all in a row. It is amazing how they can appear so well hidden in the African landscape for so long. Close to the waterhole the younger ones became excited and raced on ahead, stampeding a little, but mostly the line to the water stayed slow and steady, determined and dogged.

What makes buffalo file down to the water in such a singular and ordered fashion? How do smaller groups know when the larger ones are heading to the water, so that all the animals in the immediate surrounds seem to appear at the waterhole together? This is but one of the mysteries of this animal world that haunts us.

After quenching their thirst, the buffalo grazed. Some came quite close to us and as we opened the car windows to take better photos of them they raised their heads in unison: they could smell us. They looked so fierce when intimidated and across their foreheads their 'boss' stood out even more heavily pronounced.

But we were careful. We knew that they are the most dangerous of the animals in Kruger, so we dealt lightly with them, barely leaving our scent, driving off, leaving them to happily munch on their grasses.

We have been lucky with our elephant sightings, too. Many groups have crossed right in front of us every day, no matter the roads we are on. In one large matriarchal group, two frisky adolescents started a noisy squabble on the road right in front of our vehicle. Their tusks locked, and there was much pushing, shoving and roaring at each other, until Mama came to sort the pair out, ordering them off the track, back into the bush. All completely oblivious to us.

These youngsters have 60 years of sparring ahead of them so they need to learn these skills now, while they are young. Their little tusks are actually teeth: incisors; and like handedness in children, elephants grow to be left-tusked, or right-tusked. And we can soon tell from many of the older elephants with broken tusks which tusk they prefer for fighting.

At another time two large old elephants found their way down to our lunch time waterhole, where we were in the car picnicking, waiting, watching for whatever moved. As they massively and royally plodded their way to the waterhole, the smaller animals who had been there first--the bushbuck, the impala, the zebra--sidled quietly and unobtrusively back off the bank into the bush, leaving their bigger friends to have a private drink. The hippos slid deeper into the water, leaving only their eyes out, ever watchful. Sometimes size definitely has its advantages.

We watched them drink. They consume some 200 litres of water in a single session when they are this big, this thirsty. That helps to digest the 200 - 300kgs of grass, shoots and bark that they need daily, and it is not hard to see why they deposit giant lumps of up to 150kg of dung all over the park each and every day.

These old bull elephants found their way to a muddy hollow on the far bank where they used their trunks to coat themselves with a fine layer of glossy mud, probably to act like a sunscreen. Or maybe just for the sheer pleasure of having a mud pack. Girls love the afterglow of it, so why not elephants.

The movement of their trunks is so versatile: we are constantly amazed by this. They have two finger-like appendages at the bottom of their trunks which are so flexible that they enable them to lift tiny round fruit from a tree if that is their wish. So wonderfully adaptive. Elephants have it made.

Another time, on another drying river crossing we watched a maternal group lead the little ones to drink, then draw them up on the bank from the water's edge for a suckling spell. Mama has two teats on her chest between her two front legs and the little ones throw back their trunks out of the way, and suckle with their mouths. Until they are weaned, somewhere between age 2 and 5. So very much like young children.