Listening for the Quiet of Nature

People who talk too much make me nervous. I have met that person many times in many different locations throughout my life. Given any topic on which to form an opinion, or merely a willing audience, and the talking starts. I am that guy on more than too many occasions. If someone is listening the convention is to keep talking. Although, I enjoy a good conversation, there is something alluring about a quiet place in nature to escape for a bit. The Mara seems like that sort of place.

When I first arrived, I thought that surely the Mara, isolated and bound from human intrusion by a formidable river, an international boundary, an escarpment, and a vigilant conservancy, would be a quiet retreat. The Mara is seldom quiet. It has inspired me as much as it has challenged me, and I have yet to figure most of it out. But in my time here I have been the audience to an ensemble of noise (and I have probably talked more than necessary as well). Some of what I have heard in the Mara, I will reflect on fondly, and the visual experience is far from complete because there is much to learn from what is heard…the key is to be quiet enough to listen.

The sounds I think I will not miss after leaving the Mara include: the cold crank of tired field vehicle that has no will to start; the whining whur of mosquitoes escorting you from the lab tent to the bathroom and back again during the wet season; the chiming fruit bat ‘alarm clock’ calls of Talek camp that are most loud exactly one hour before you actually need to wake up; a night long serenade of baseline thumping from the Serena hotel staff parties; the broken reception of a internet call or a far too expensive phone call to family or friends at home; the accelerating fan of an inverter signaling the end of your available power supply as the solar system nears over draw; the squabbling of baboons that have just raided your store tent; the midnight crunching of jerry cans (full of water or fuel) suffering loss of structural integrity to the curiosity of wandering hyenas.

On the other hand I think what I will miss the most being away from the Mara are also sounds: the churning stomach acids of a hippo grazing at arms length on the other side of the tent wall at night; the exploratory and experimental attempt of a 4 week old hyena cub whooping when excited by some unknown ecstasy at the den; the whistle of white-faced whistling ducks overhead (probably the longing for the 2011 duck season forever gone); the roar of a nearby (less than 10m) lion that you can feel rattle your diaphragm, the pop of champagne bottles at the end of a incredible balloon flight just before an exquisite breakfast in good company; the thermo-regulating? or competitive signaling? dewlap vibrating from my tent’s resident skink or gecko (not sure which one or why they vibrated the tent tarp); the Tusker inspired stories of grandeur and danger shared by Ian our mechanic; and my favorite sound… the territorial chugging, like sawing wood, of a proud male leopard reminding you whose camp you are visiting, but otherwise whom silently cruises through camp unnoticed with the exception of a brief eye shine if you dare to use the bathroom after dark.

 

And there are sounds which I have not formed such a strong opinion about, but they do exist and are worth paying attention to: the trumpet of an elephant suggesting that you have encroached too close; the sort of flexing hiss of an annoyed velvet green night adder; the screech of a fleeting plover that explodes in your headlights just barely avoiding being hit on the road, the asynchronous bellow of thousands of wildebeest happy to have crossed the river but fearing the gauntlet of hyenas and lions to come; the giggling, squealing, whooping, and yelling of hyenas sorting feeding rights at a kill.

Of course there are more sounds, but an exhaustive list would be just that…for both audience and myself. Anyway I need to finish packing but I am sure when I next talk of my time in the Mara I will have a lot to say. I wonder if I have been quiet enough to listen and learn anything? Alone in the middle of nowhere, the middle of the Mara, and over all that other noise the one person I could always hear was me. I think I/we talk too much and there is a lot to be heard in the quiet of nature. People who talk too much make me nervous… but thanks for listening.

A tourist's perspective

I enjoy listening to the guys at camp talk about life and animals. I think there is value in traditional knowledge that stems from experiences and cultures that are tied to nature. As a visitor I have not been here long enough to either believe or disbelieve their wisdom, but I have been writing it down to retell.

The clever ways of animals in the Mara as told by a few Masai...

• Jackals follow lions to eat their cubs.

• Hyenas put desiccated carcasses in water and return to a rehydrated softened meal.

 

• Baboons chase cheetahs off kills.

 

• Leopards remove the guts of kills in the tree to preserve the meat…eating first some of the intestine, which is hung on a different branch than the rest of the carcass.

 

• Giraffes are polite.

 

• Lions will pounce on a baby elephant while the mother is off feeding, urinate on it and then retreat to sit and wait. When the mother elephant returns it will beat the baby because of an association with the lion smell…then the baby will run and the lions will attempt to kill the baby once away from the mother elephant.

 

• Crocs won’t eat a cheetah that swims across the river.

 

• Nothing eats waterbuck because they have too many tendons and it chokes the predator.

 

I am not sure how regular any of these scenarios are in the wild. I still have not seen enough of the Mara to contribute much insight. Similarly after the past few months of hyena work I am uncertain if I should believe or disbelieve what I have observed and heard.

For example, ask almost anyone if spotted hyenas are nothing more than scavengers and they will tell you…

 A group of 4 lions encircled and chased a herd of zebra back into three crouching waiting lions, which then pounced on and killed two juvenile zebras. After the lions had fed for a few minutes, a rally call of whoops preceded the bristle tail arrival of hyenas. Approximately 30+ hyenas showed up and the lions were forced off one zebra carcass. (Pictures courtesy Noemie Lamon)

Not long after the cheetah disembowled its kill, a hyena (not from one of the clans that we study), catches wind of the dead gazelle. With no more than a half-hearted paw swat of resistance, the cheetah watched is breakfast walk away.

Since I have been in the Mara I have seen two successful hyena kills. I have seen numerous hyenas at kills (responsible killer unknown), and there have been multiple occasions where hyenas have stolen food from some other carnivore. My experience lends to a strong propensity that spotted hyenas are primarily scavengers, but for a less inhibited account of spotted hyena feeding ecology see the combined years of observations detailed in Kruuk 1972 and Holekamp et al 1997 (among others).

In addition to feeding patterns, other aspects of hyena ecology have not forthright unveiled their truth to me. An accurate delineation of a clan social hierarchy is another example of a pattern in nature that is best observed over a significant amount of time; arguably longer than the 9.5 months that I have been in the Mara. Take for example the organization of adult female rank for the Serena North clan … on paper it breaks down as such (highest rank to lowest rank, left to right):

RBC-->ZOEY-->SHRM-->SAU-->ANGI-->DIGS-->PEEP-->ARRO… and near the bottom AWP or some other invariably tattered eared low rank female.

This organization is not so clear in the field…

On August 31^st, 2011, RBC (supposed highest rank) was at a location with a number of her offspring, along with DIGS (supposed 6^th rank) and number of her offspring; all loosely associated around a small piece of food scrap. More importantly, the following transcription excerpts precipitate the fact that both RBC and DIGS were present and able to reinforce any rank discrepancies if they had occurred among their offspring. Furthermore, the rank associations of a youngest offspring outranking older offspring within a mother’s lineage, was upheld at this session; suggesting that these interactions were not altogether an outlier.

1839            MARI app t1 lk (fd) t1 st ov (fd) TYPH, eb oma

                    MARI t2 lunge (fd) TYPH, eb def parry bo

(In the interaction at 1829, MARI [DIGS cub who was about 1 year old] aggresses on TYPH [RBC’s cub who was also about 1 year old] and TYPH submits.) 

1843            DIGS st t1 lk (pesky) t1 pt (pesky) SANA, eb bo

                    SANA app t1 st ov (fd, scape) brt t2 chase (fd, scape) TYPH, stop fd scrap eb lope bo squeal

(A few minutes later DIGS aggresses on her older offspring SANA, who transfers that aggression to TYPH in a scape-goating reaction…RBC still did not to intervene)

1851            SANA TYPH coal brt t1 st ov (fd) SHRK, eb brt squeal bo

                    SHRK app t1 st ov/pt (scape) t1 displ (scape) STON, eb bo

                    SANA t1 lk (fd) SHRK, eb bo w/ fd

(At 1851 SHRK [who is most likely RBC’s offspring, older than TYPH] arrives and is aggressed on by SANA and TYPH…and this causes SHRK to scape goat on the un-involved cub STON [STON’s mother is of low rank].

1859            TYPH app brt t1 st ov (fd) SHRK, eb gig av w/ fd

                    TYPH brt t2 chase (fd) SHRK, eb av w/ fd

(Finally at 1859 I saw TYPH aggressing on SHRK who responded submissively and this suggested that age related rank of mother’s offspring was being upheld.)

Coming away from the session on August 31, 2011, it would seem that DIGS was of higher rank than RBC. On November 1, 2011 the North clan social structure was further disrupted. During this session SHRM’s lineage was involved in a number of aggressions with other high-ranking females while I was at the communal den. The important individuals to note in the following excerpts are SNIP, who is SHRM’s youngest cub, and HKR, SHRM’s adult female offspring.

0705            HKR groan app t1 st ov (unk) RBC, eb snf

                    RBC eb grm phallus HKR, groan ll

                    SNIP app snf RBC, eb sp

                    SNIP t1 pt (unk) RBC, eb

                    HKR join in t1 pt (unk) RBC, eb

(Simply put HKR and SNIP aggress on RBC, who submits…that seemed unlikely if RBC was the clan matriarch)

0709            HKR groan app t1 pt (unprov) ZOEY, eb sp

                    HKR groan snf ZOEY, eb sp bo

                    HKR SNIP coal brt t1 pt (unprov) ZOEY, eb

(Again if SHRM was the 3^rd highest ranking adult female, it should not be that SHRM’s offspring would be able to aggress on and cause ZOEY to submit, who is ranked number two.)

Highest to lowest rank revised…

…SHRM-->ZOEY/DIGS-->RBC?--> other North clan females in some unknown rank order. That all makes about as much sense as the time I recently saw RBC, in what seemed to be an act of food provisioning to DIGS. At this point in time if any bets are called my money goes to the ‘lions-urinating-on-baby-elephants scenario’ as the most predictable odds.

The more familiar I have become with the North clan, the less I know. Happy Zebra however, after having gone missing for months and losing their matriarch, now seems to be falling effortlessly into a stable social hierarchy.

After previously observing COEL’s displacement from rightful matriarch as KOI’s youngest daughter and heir to dominance, it was still uncertain whether SNAP or PIKE (KOI’s older daughters) would be the newest dominant female in Happy Zebra. On November 30^th PIKE arrived at the communal den and after greeting with an excited SNAP, PIKE proceeded to aggress on SNAP. Not only did SNAP submit to PIKE’s aggression, but SNAP was then aggressed on and bitten by BOOM (PIKE’s oldest female offspring), to which SNAP again responded submissively. In each following interaction, PIKE and BOOM succeeded in dominance over SNAP, who was left to vent her aggression on a few other lower ranking individuals at the den. These first observations of the social reorganization of Happy Zebra are little more than glance at the possible hierarchy delineation. But after a number of observation sessions around the communal den, I would say that I am now sure that PIKE is the dominant hyena in Happy Zebra clan.

I was also sure this would be last picture of BARR taken after KOI (BARR's mom) died. 

Siblings COEL and BARR, lying together in July not long after their mother (KOI) was killed.

Coming up on six months since last seen, BARR, was about to be moved into the missing or presumed dead category…

  BARR with two of the newest hyena cubs from Happy Zebra clan.

…welcome back BARR

 

In my last days in the Mara I would do best by remembering that, ‘…studying spotted hyenas requires an open mind and a willingness to recognize that, in the natural world, things are not always what they seem’ (http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/why-study-hyenas/#more-11367).

I would agree that even with careful observation, what we see and experience in nature is rarely straightforward, and that may be the only validated thing I have yet posted…of that I am sure.

Happy Zebra clan and clues to social organization

Most of the end of October I was in Nairobi and that was long enough. By the time I returned to the Mara the migration activity had begun to subside and Happy Zebra clan was relocated in my absence. Uncovering the whereabouts of the Happy Zebra communal den seems blog worthy just given the amount of time and effort we have invested in pursuit of these animals. From call play backs, to checking old dens, to driving the most extreme edges of this clan’s suspected territory, and waiting nights after dark trying to pinpoint the location of distant whoops… we tried for the better part of September and October to find Happy Zebra. The unknown with this clan did not however begin when CSBY (the last adult female to occupy Alamo Den) was last seen with her two 4-week old cubs at the previous communal den. As earlier discussed on the blog, the death of KOI by lions removed the highest-ranking individual from the clan. This opened up Happy Zebra to uncertainty (at least for us observing) or possibly opportunity (for other females in the clan) as the social organization was determined to shift.

At the time of KOI’s death, Happy Zebra was composed of 11 adult females, 9 cubs, 6 subadults, and 4 adult males. KOI and her lineage comprised about 33% of the total Happy Zebra clan. All else equal and following the conventional inherited social rank descendent from KOI, COEL (KOI’s youngest female cub) should have been successive dominant female of Happy Zebra clan. However, given that COEL was less than a year old, this cub’s survival, far less its dominance, was not certain. The possible other successors to dominance could in theory have been any female in the clan, though most likely it would be some relation to KOI that arrived at the top. A breakdown of KOI’s lineage and prospective inheritance of dominance in Happy Zebra were organized in a list from a previous post, http://msuhyenas.blogspot.com/2011/07/kois-legacy.html. To discern the newest rank relations we would have to observe and record a series of dyadic interactions and tally aggressions and submissions between individuals in a matrix. The first steps…observe behavioral interactions.

 
On October 31^st, 2011 I saw Happy Zebra present at their communal den. Most notable in this session was the confirmation of PIKE (one of KOI’s older daughters and a likely candidate for the highest rank individual in Happy Zebra) having two 4 week old cubs. Also of interest were a number of interactions which occurred between the female members of KOI’s lineage. PIKE’s cubs were confirmed after they were seen nursing from PIKE. Also nearby was BOOM, a previous female offspring to PIKE. Like many female subadults interested in the business of babies, BOOM was being pesky and bothersome to the nursing PIKE. Not very note worthy in and of itself. However, a good context to achieve a brief, instantaneous glance at the social hierarchy is through a cascade of aggressions. For example if a high rank individual aggresses on a mid rank individual, and then the mid-rank individual takes out that aggression on low rank individual, we note the latter aggression as a scape goat context. It could be like, when my girlfriend reprimands me, and in my frustration I vent on my dog (that is assuming my dog doesn’t out rank me…data is still out on that); either way the aggression filters down through the ranks, clearly revealing who is dominant. Anyway my point, was that in being pesky to PIKE, BOOM was aggressed upon. It was also the case that COEL (KOI’s youngest cub and technically rightful heir to dominance) had recently arrived at the den.


 

COEL cautiously approaching one of PIKE’s newest cubs (the small black one on the right).

 

The good news is that the 9 month old orphan persisted through the migration season unaided by her mother. However, after being aggressed on by PIKE, BOOM redirected that aggression to COEL, who submitted and retreated. Shortly after words PIKE and BOOM, in a coalition aggression, again displaced COEL.

PIKE and BOOM in the background before they aggress on and displace COEL, who is already beginning to go ears back (a sign of submission).

Although far from conclusive, at the surface it seems that without the support of her mother to reinforce her social standing, COEL may not befall the highest rank spot in Happy Zebra. Other clues, like COEL arriving and flattening her ears as she approached to greet PIKE and BOOM also suggests her subordination to these two. More evidence is needed, including the observation of interactions between PIKE and some of the other adult females in this clan, but this was a good start to reorganizing the Happy Zebra social hierarchy.