Of recent years the big trek of the zebra down the Rift Valley, from the Baringo region to Lakes Elmenteita and Nakuru has to a large extent been checked by the number of wire fences. Only a little time ago one might see thousands upon thousands of zebra as far as the eye could reach, for the most part feeding, but at the same time moving steadily en masse down the valley. I shall never forget marching at night from Nakuru to Elmenteita to surprise a party of Wandorobo hunters who were “wanted”. We started at about 2 am, and, as we followed the road, the stampede after stampede of huge droves of zebra fairly shook the ground. One lot, getting our wind, would dash off, and others taking the alarm, but knowing nothing of the cause, would rush almost over us in their blind terror. When daylight dawned the sight was extraordinary; the whole plains were alive with animals, which, now they could see us, exhibited far less alarm than they had done in the dark. The contrast between their behaviour by night and that by day was very curious. The sun risen, we travelled between the herds, which would open out to leave a passage of about 200 yards, and close up behind almost immediately after we had passed. Like all other game on trek in large numbers, they were extremely fearless.
A Game Ranger’s Note Book A. B. Percival.
Nature’s great master-peece,
An elephant,
the onely harmlesse great thing:
The giant of beestes.
John Donne
9.X.1903. Nyeri
I witnessed a marvellous migration of elephant this morning travelling from Mount Kenya to the Aberdares. When it was barely light and the sun not yet risen, one of my men hammered at the door of my hut shouting “Tembo, bwana, tembo nyingi sana! – Elephant, sir, many elephant!” I tumbled out of bed, and there was the black mass of Mount Kenya in sharp outline with the sun scarce risen behind it; the light was poor, but my man soon pointed out a long black streak of moving animals not a quarter of a mile off and on the north of the river, all slowly moving west from Kenya to the Aberdares. I quickly put on a pair of long boots and dashed out in pyjamas, ran down to the river and got swamped crossing it – a good cold bath; I had no gun with me. Creeping up a small gully, I found myself but 60–80 yards off this huge stream of moving elephant, going very slowly, sometimes in small groups of eight or ten, sometimes two or three together and an occasional solitary beast; lots of calves; and to right and left I could see no end to the moving mass, each following in the other’s trail. I tried in vain to count them, for the head of the column was in the far distance and the tail was approaching me, but I should say there must have been about 700 animals. They were moving at a steady walk, not feeding; the last beasts to pass me were a cow and a very small calf, and the rear of the column was level with Nyeri Hill as the sun rose behind Mount Kenya. I shall never again see anything like that.
Kenya Diary 1902–1906 Richard Meinertzhagen.
The spectacular migrations of former times followed the rain, and were Nature’s way of resting pastures in rotation; the Maasai with their cattle did the same. One such large-scale migration can still be seen, that of the wildebeest which move in armies across the Serengeti and the Maasai-Mara plains.
We came to the wildebeest migration soon after seven o’clock and were driving slowly through the glistening armies for about four hours. These pewter-coloured, white-bearded creatures move in long, close-packed columns at a steady pace and in a constant direction and, when the time comes to graze, spread out as far as the eye can see in every direction – and probably the eye can see for about twenty miles – like great hordes of ants speckling the plain. All the time, when on the move, they emit harsh grunts, something like the sound of frogs, something like that of old men clearing their throats. People have called them ungainly because of their high shoulders and sloping hindquarters, and also clowns because of their long pale faces and white beards, but in fact they move with grace and sometimes playfulness, leaping and cavorting with apparent joie de vivre. Their heads go down, their tails go up, they bounce like balls, kicking up eddies of dust. When disturbed they gallop off together and make curious jinking swerves, at the same time lashing their tails.
There are said to be about two million wildebeests or gnu (Connochaetes taurinus albojubatus) on the Serengeti. It seemed as if we saw them all that day. Of course, we saw only a fraction of their numbers; other armies, perhaps bigger still, were on the march across a front of maybe a hundred miles. Their numbers are increasing year by year. Hyenas, lions, cheetahs, wild dogs and leopards do their bit to keep them down, but prey has outstripped predator. Wildebeests are much like smaller, lighter bison, and this is what the plains of North America must have looked like a century and a half ago – minus the Red Indians.
Every year, the wildebeests migrate in search of fresh grazing within an area of perhaps fifteen thousand square miles. When rain falls on the open plains, they come in from the bush lying to the north, west and south to enjoy the short, palatable grasses which spring up immediately after a downpour or two, and which are rich in calcium. If the rains come according to plan (quite often they don’t) they start in December and continue, on and off, until May or June.
The wildebeests’ term on the short-grass plains is timed to coincide with their calving, so that the calcium will enrich their milk and give a good start in life to the calves. This calving is astonishing: it all takes place within a month. A positive deluge of calves overwhelms the predators. A great many are, of course, taken; hyenas in particular gang up and chew them to bits as soon as they are born; but a great many more survive….
The first wildebeest calves arrived on the Serengeti at about the same time as I did, in mid February. That first day, we saw scarcely any; a week later, a lot; by the end of the following week thousands of them were galloping beside their mothers or resting beside them on the grass. Although adults are silvery-grey, the offspring are light brown with black faces, and save for their sloping quarters look rather like Guernsey calves. The speed with which they recover from birth is amazing. One minute a calf, wrapped in a membrane and trailing an umbilical cord, is deposited on the ground. Within five minutes, quite often, and seldom more than six or seven, it is up and away, galloping with its mother on long spindly legs and shaking its head.
The process is fascinating to watch. The mother, who gives birth lying down, immediately gets up, thus rupturing the cord. She may gently nose the infant, but the first one I watched did nothing to help it to its feet. Within a few minutes it was struggling to rise. At first it fell over every time, but each try was better than the last until it managed to stagger a few paces before collapsing again. The mother just looked on. It got up again, still tottering; the mother walked away; unsteadily, the calf followed; within the regulation six or seven minutes it was galloping after her to join the herd. Wildebeest calves, scientists have said, gain co-ordination quicker than any other ungulate. This is a necessary condition of survival. Five minutes of helplessness are plenty for any hyena. The mothers try to fight off attackers, but seldom succeed.
With all these thousands on the move, it is not surprising that many calves get separated from their mothers. It is distressing to see these small creatures with their soft brown hair and long black faces stand alone on the vast plain and bleat, or run, towards every adult they see in the hope, only too often a vain one, of finding their dams. Meanwhile, there are mothers distractedly galloping about looking for their lost children with equal lack of success. Cows have been observed searching for a lost calf for as long as three days.
No cow will accept a calf not her own. How do mother and child recognize each other? By the sound of her voice, I was told, in the case of the calf; but the mother knows her child by her sense of smell. Two million wildebeests, each with a different grunt! It seems incredible. But then, one thinks of people. We can distinguish each of our acquaintances, if we shut our eyes, by the sound of his or her voice. In a hall full of Chinese, I should not be able to tell one voice from another, but each of the Chinese could do
so. Nevertheless I still find it extraordinary that each of those frog-like, wheezing grunts should sound a different note, undetectable to a human ear but recognizable by a day-old wildebeest.
Last Days in Eden Elspeth Huxley and Hugo van Lawick.
The Brotherhood of Elephants and Man
My brother Terence has always believed in the brotherhood of elephants and man, and when we were once discussing their virtues he told me about one he had found trapped in a well. His road building gang begged him to shoot it for meat but Terence told them to bring him barrows of stones which he dropped, one by one, into the pit. The elephant understood exactly what was happening and carefully lifted its feet as the stones raised the floor of its prison. The labourers fled as it reared up and finally heaved itself out but Terence had kept murmuring reassurance to the elephant throughout its ordeal and occasionally patted its anxious and questioning trunk. Once free, the elephant moved slowly towards him as if in thanks; it was some time before Terence could persuade it to return to its herd….
In moments of sickness, danger or death elephants show a loyalty to each other which moves me very much. I was once summoned to Marsabit where four marauding bulls had been robbing maize-storage cribs. It was not only costly but dangerous as the cribs were in the heart of the police lines. On the night I arrived I sat for two chilly hours, down wind of the maize, waiting for the elephants to appear in the moonlight. When they emerged into view I aimed at the shoulder of the leader and fired. He fell immediately. But then his comrades gathered round him and, supporting him, made off with him into the forest. It would have been futile, not to say suicidal, to have pursued them that night so I waited until dawn.
Lembirdan and I followed the spoor and splashes of blood till we came on the elephant lying dead in the forest. It must have taken enormous strength and determination to get him so far.
I was even more impressed to discover that elephants seem to attach special significance to death. An old Boran told me that he was familiar with a small group of bulls who always stayed together on the Tana. When the oldest died his companions kept watch over his body for more than a week. They then drew out the tusks and carried them off into the bush. Many years later I read Iain Douglas-Hamilton’s description of an elephant family taking away the bones of a relative in much the same way.
I found it more difficult to explain the sense an elephant has of human death. At Barsoloi a Samburu had been killed as he returned to his hut from the river. Halfway along the path he came across a fallen tree and as he picked his way over it he realized, too late, that it had been knocked over by an elephant which was hidden in the foliage. When the elephant went for him he tried to escape by burrowing under the branches but the elephant pulled him out with its trunk. Then it literally pounded him into the ground with its tusks and feet. The headman showed me where the elephant had repeatedly gored its victim and an area of about thirty square feet that looked as if it had been dug with a spade. He said that every afternoon since the tragedy the elephant had returned to the spot, and stood there until evening.
My Pride and Joy George Adamson.
The first road engineers.
Reference to the “elephant-path” over the heights of Kenya invites mention of one of the animals’ most interesting habits. In districts where they are numerous, elephants use the same route regularly, and in course of time form the most perfect roads. In the dry season on the plains these roads are generally good enough for a bicycle; all grass and vegetation trodden down, all thorns destroyed, they are as smooth and pleasant tracks as man can desire. But it is in hilly country that the elephant displays his real skill as road engineer; he possesses an instinctive knowledge of the easiest gradients, and invariably adopts them. If an elephant path lie before you, take it, and rest assured you cannot improve upon it. I don’t know how they get their information on this point, but they have it! If a tree should lie or fall across the chosen route they step over, or when too high for that, go round one end and resume the original direction; the smoothed bark shows where their hind legs rub in the act of stepping over.
The finest roads I know are those on Mount Kenya. Some of these are really marvels: ground beaten flat and smooth, all branches and overgrowth cleared away – eaten by the passing beasts, I apprehend, for the elephant is always feeding. Now and again you may have to cut away a branch which is too stiff to tempt elephant appetite and not stiff enough to hinder his passage, or cut through a fallen tree-trunk, over which elephants, but not mules, can step, but that is all. On an elephant road you may travel in the comfortable certainty that where it leads, pack animals and porters with loads on their heads can go with perfect ease. Other wild animals use these roads regularly, one reason for their patronage being that sooner or later they lead to water….
On my first visit to Meru, in 1904, we followed elephant roads almost the whole way; there was no recognized track thither in those days. Twice we met the makers, but they gave us a wide berth, much to the relief of the men, for the district had a bad reputation at the time; people had been attacked by elephants on their roads – so the report ran. My own belief is that the scare was established by a single rogue, and his offences were set down to the whole species.
A Game Ranger’s Note Book A. B. Percival.
The first well diggers.
The families drifted slowly upstream until they reached the clear water. There were young bulls who dared not come too close to the females and who stood at the water-holes where the river stopped flowing. Since at this season the water was only inches deep and not all the elephants could use the top pool, I noticed for the first time how they began digging holes along the river’s edge. The well diggers were usually bulls or old cows. Using their feet as shovels to loosen the earth, they kicked the sand backwards and forwards, until a wide hole was formed. At times they would dig down three feet or more with their trunks and feet, their toenails acting like a spade. They would push the sand with the side of a foot on to the curved end of the trunk, which they used like a cupped hand to throw the sand to one side. When the sand got damp and the water began to seep into the hole, they used the tips of their trunks, like fingers, to dig a deep, narrow, clean hole. The muddy water was rapidly sucked up and spewed around in circles or blown out like a suction pump and with the same noise. It was amazing how professional they were at the job. Within about a quarter of an hour little wells had been dug all over the place, some only a few feet away from each other….
Elephant families walking up and down occasionally stopped to greet each other with their trunk to mouth gesture, while young babies walked up to a big bull and one by one greeted him. In return the bull put his trunk to each little mouth, or touched the babies on their heads in the way in which Maasai elders greet their children. A small cluster of elephants stood a little way from Boadicea waiting patiently for her to leave the water-holes, their trunks slung over their tusks, or just hanging like a length of hose from a fire engine. None showed any sign of aggression, except when the young bulls ventured too near. The only ones who never seemed to be able to get any water out of the holes were the smallest calves, who spent most of their time pushing, pulling or walking around their mothers. The older calves either drank elsewhere, or started digging holes themselves.
When Boadicea and her family had had their fill, they quietly ambled off to the flat piece of sand, where they threw trunkfuls of dust over themselves.
Covered in a rough loose-skinned armour the colour of stones, rich in ivory, Boadicea’s polished tusks stood out like weapons, and I could imagine this great pachyderm preparing for battle. At one end hung a whiskered tail, sought after by man for its few hairs to twist into a bracelet. At the other end hung that masterpiece of the elephant – the trunk. It must be great to have a body of that size and also to be endowed with so rare an organ as a trunk, to do all the work the body needs to keep it always full and clean. Partly lip and partly nose, with two fingers on the tip, it is used as a worker’s arm a
nd hand. It has double hoses for sucking in and spraying out water or dust, and can test the wind. It can push down trees or pick off the smallest leaf. It can be as gentle and as loving as the most tender arms, to greet and tickle, to scratch and rub, to smell and caress, always twisting, moving, rolling in an infinite variety of postures. At the same time, it can change into an efficient weapon to kill, and when it detects the smell of man, rears back above the head like a serpent preparing to strike.
Among the Elephants Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton.
Elephants, although unmatched for strength, are never arrogant, and will extend great tolerance and consideration to other species, even preferring to stand aside rather than risk a confrontation with a cantankerous rhino or an old bull buffalo. David once witnessed a ridiculous scene from the air, when five elephants were grouped around a tree in a semicircle with only their heads in the shade and their bodies exposed to the burning midday sun. A closer look revealed the reason for this rather strange sight. A sounder of warthog were stretched out luxuriously enjoying the deep shade at the base of the tree, and the elephant were prepared to accept this situation, although it must have caused them a good deal of discomfort….
The Tsavo Story Daphne Sheldrick.
Books about elephants often refer to “tummy rumbles”, but these distinctive noises may emanate from the throat and be a means of communication between elephants.
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 36