Nine Faces Of Kenya

by Elspeth Huxley

  Sound below the range of human hearing is called infrasound, that above ultrasound. While considerable work has been done on high-frequency sounds made by such mammals as bats, shrews, and porpoises, the elephant was the first terrestrial mammal reported to use infrasound….

  The discovery of the use of infrasound by elephants was fascinating in itself, but it also opened up a vast array of new interpretations of their behaviour. Joyce [Poole] has gone on to work with her own equipment and is primarily interested in the content of the vocalizations – that is, the messages that are being sent. It is known that low-frequency sounds travel over far greater distances and are less affected by trees and bushes than higher sounds. Theoretically some of the sounds that have been recorded in Amboseli (at up to 115 decibels) can carry for six miles, which could explain the coordination of movement and behaviour of separated elephant groups. Contact calls and answers no doubt help elephants within families and bond groups find each other.

  Another important function of long-distance communication may be in finding mating partners. Almost inevitably after a female has been mated she gives a long, loud series of post-copulatory rumbles. These vocalizations contain infrasonic components. Joyce speculates that they carry over long distances and thereby attract males to the estrous female, who would then have a greater choice as to whom she mates with during the remainder of her estrous period. Males in musth make a characteristic rumble which is both very low and very loud. Joyce thinks that this rumble communicates different messages to different animals. It may attract estrous females and warn subordinate males to give a wide berth to the musth male. Often several males are in musth at the same time, and Joyce has noted that they manage to crisscross the park in search of females and yet usually avoid direct confrontations With each other. Infrasonic communication may very well be the key element in this spatial arrangement.

  Elephant Memories Cynthia Moss.

  Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton lived for five years among the elephants in the Lake Manyara National Park.

  I was not afraid of elephants any more. I could stand up to a charging elephant and call his bluff with a wave of my arm, then walk away. It was not bravado. I just knew what I was doing. It was up to me to recognize danger and to get out of the way, or else I would fall to a really hostile elephant’s tusks, in the same way that they would fall to a hunter’s bullets. I could not help feeling a great admiration for them. I was drawn to them. Was it their size, their power, or their gentleness that attracted me? I could not tell. I just knew that I loved being surrounded by elephants and that this experience brought me great joy.

  On moonlit nights when the elephants came up the river to drink, we would often lie on a rock close by and hear the trickle of water as it slipped over the sand and into their trunks. Huge dark shapes, making sipping-squirting-spilling noises, stood motionless and then wandered on past us. On these special nights, I could absorb the long hours of nothingness in the half-light of the moon, where there was no sadness or boredom, and where I was nourished by silence, and felt rich in my simple way of life.

  By photographing elephants day in and day out, I soon discovered that they showed many of the old-fashioned virtues; loyalty, protection and affection toward each other. As we lived far away from our own species and became so deeply involved with the elephants, we both consciously and unconsciously drew parallels between their society and ours. The bond with my child, the tactile care of each other, the trust in leadership, the group defence if one of us were in trouble, all these increased.

  For elephants, the unity of a family is one of the most important things in their lives. I was deeply moved by the constant affection and care which they showed every day within the families; mothers, daughters, sisters, babies all touching and communicating with each other in a very loving way. Stability seemed to be the key to their security. Unlike us they do not have male parents or companions living with them; but perhaps for elephants this is an advantage because they have to deal solely with female problems. They frequent the males only when they need them for mating, which is after all the purpose of survival: to reproduce the genes, and when the bulls arrived, the same greeting and touching ceremony took place. The matriarchs not only perform the usual maternal tasks, but also the roles which we tend to think of as male – leading and defending the family units extremely efficiently. Whatever the reason, these female-led families remain united and extremely stable.

  I was no elephant expert, but at least during all the months that I lived with these animals, I was able to get a glimpse into the incredible complexity and sophistication that elephants show in their everyday activities. I not only learnt to understand and especially to respect them, I also longed to protect them. I could not bear to watch someone lift a gun to an elephant’s head and blow its brains out, for sport or for man’s greed. What a waste of life.

  Months of living with and observing these animals taught me something that no text book could ever do. As a result I now felt a great deal more civilized.

  When meeting elephants face to face, we found one of the secrets was always to keep still, to make no noise, and then to move very slowly towards or away from them. Elephants like Virgo and Right Hook, and well over a hundred others, accepted us as harmless. But even after five years of living with them, only Virgo actually came into friendly body contact with us. The others always stood a few feet away. When Saba (Oria and Iain’s daughter) was three months old, and before our departure from Manyara, we met Virgo and her closest relatives one evening. I walked up to her and gave her a gardenia fruit, in a gesture of greeting. She was a trunk’s length from me, took the fruit, put it in her mouth, and then moved the tip of her trunk over Saba in a figure of eight, smelling her. I wondered if she knew that Saba was my child. We both stood still for a long while, facing each other with our babies by our sides. It was a very touching moment. I feel sure that Virgo will remain a life-long friend of ours, even if we do not see each other for years….

  I knew that once I left our life with these animals and returned to live in a city, it would be hard to find the intensity of these relationships again. Like millions of other human beings, Iain and I would have to face an overcrowded and over-complicated environment and be ill-adapted for the complete change of living. Yet like those millions we also would survive.

  Among the Elephants Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton.

  Lions

  Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade,

  And the whisper spreads and widens far and near;

  And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now –

  It is Fear, O little hunter, it is Fear!

  Rudyard Kipling

  A broad valley stretched to the west. Gathering at its rim, the lions surveyed the scattered herds of wildebeest and zebra and then waited while the plains changed slowly to a shadowy purple and finally grew dark. As if on signal, the lionesses fanned out and dissolved in the grass, each moving toward prey on her own, yet each taking part in a cooperative effort whose strategy was predetermined by many hunts. I waited beside Black Mane and Brown Mane, who stood there staring into the night with inviolable dignity. Suddenly hooves drummed and the wild scream of a zebra shattered the darkness. The males and I hurried in the direction from which the sound came. Driving rapidly cross-country without lights, never knowing when the car would drop into a hyena warren or straddle a termit hill, was a minor adventure in itself. When I reached the kill site, the air was already heavy with the odour of blood and rumen contents. The tawny mass of lions filling the night with menacing growls, as each animal fought for a share of the meat, was a drama of such naked emotion that the hair on my nape and back raised itself in subconscious apprehension for my safety. I was witnessing a pitch of passion that was almost foreign to human experience. Thirty minutes later the zebra was dismembered and each animal was cleaning meat off some bone; Brown Mane with a lunge and growl had taken possession of the whole ribcage, neck, and head. I fe
lt myself relax suddenly and realized for the first time the silent and ancient fear this primitive scene had evoked for me. It is not so much what we see but what it suggests that arouses us. Almost palpably my racial memories rose of a past when man crouched vulnerably in the dark, listening to the growls of his enemies, and of a time when the smell and sight of red meat meant survival. Here under a pale rising moon the past met the present.

  Golden Shadows, Flying Hooves George Schaller.

  Royal Mail.

  There was an occasion when one of my Turkana mail runners came all the way from Loyangallani to Barsaloi on his feet, travelling the whole of two nights and lying up for one day in between; we called the distance 124 miles or thereabouts. He was a wonderful athlete, a man of utter integrity, and with all the courage of the best men in his tribe. Why had he come at such a mighty speed, was what I wanted to know when I noticed the time and date-stamp of his departure. He explained that he would like to spend a day with his wife before going on. “But I am not a driver of slaves! You have only to ask and you can have a day off, or two or three whenever you want it!” “I have a duty, and if I want time off, I do my duty in less time, so as not to take pay for work that I do not do!”

  I sent him off to stay with his wife, and then the interpreter said he thought I would be interested to hear of his encounter with a lion during one night of his journey. This intrepid runner had come across a lion on a kill; the kill was a buck, and the runner thought he would like some of it to eat himself, so he drove the lion off and sat down and had a meal. At the end of the meal he put the remaining haunch over his shoulder and set off down the trail. The lion followed at a respectful distance, making a few spits of annoyance from time to time, but keeping his distance until the moon went down. Then he came snuffing along the trail much nearer; the runner then paused to fill his metal cooking pot with stones, and having done so ran towards the lion rattling the stones in the pot – that was the last of the lion. “Then how is it that only last month when you met a lion one night, you spent the whole night in a tree with the lion waiting down below?” “The heart is not the same in every lion you may meet. The heart of one lion is such that you may chase him away; the heart of another is such that it is necessary to get into a tree until daylight!” This man had given up travelling with his spears, as he said any extra thing to carry in addition to the mail bags was very awkward, and he preferred to do without – this in a country where lions were everywhere and as cheeky as you please, and where at least two reliable white men had seen as many as fourteen together.

  The Desert and the Green The Earl of Lytton.

  The intelligence of lions is acknowledged and was demonstrated by a most extraordinary happening which took place when George was asked to kill two man-eaters. For the killing of man-eaters no methods are barred, so he put a small dose of strychnine into pieces of raw meat and placed these in the lions’ latest pugmarks. They were soon taken. Observing this, George followed the lions’ spoor; it led him to a bush covered with small red berries – Cordia quarensis. They are a violent emetic and Africans eat them when they wish to be sick. The lions had apparently laid up behind the bush, eaten the berries and vomited the whole contents of their stomachs, including the strychnine. Then they had walked off across rocks where it was impossible for George to track them. Though hardly credible, it appeared that when the lions felt ill they deliberately ate the berries, presumably knowing that they would make them vomit.

  The Searching Spirit Joy Adamson.

  Love begets love, then never be

  Unsoft to him who’s smooth to thee.

  Tigers and bears, I’ve heard say

  For proffered love will love repay.

  Robert Herrick

  I asked Joy (Adamson) if she could explain not only the taming of Elsa, which in itself was not extraordinary, but the special link of mutual understanding and trust that she described. Lack of fear on both sides, total faith in each other, and the unusual intelligence of Elsa were, she thought, the main basis for this success. Possibly, she admitted, the fact that she actually held in her hands the meat with which she fed Elsa helped to create a link, and to seal the compact of what one can truly call “love”; for animals, unlike human beings, rarely bite the hand that feeds them. The gift was a sort of ritual, part of the bond which established their relationship.

  On the occasion of our visit a goat was also brought, and was killed before arrival. After reaching the usual camping place and rendezvous, George stood in the clearing and fired his rifle in the air. We all waited. There was no sign of Elsa; so we were allowed to walk down towards the river to the enchanting place of great trees spreading over rocks with sandy beach and murmur of water, where Joy used to do her writing and sketching, while Elsa played with her cubs. A second shot, and soon we heard a chatter of baboons. “Elsa is coming,” said Joy, “the baboons always give warning.” We piled back in the Land-Rovers.

  At last, bounding out of the bush in great easy strides, there was Elsa, leaping towards Joy whose outstretched arms moved forward to defend herself from too powerful an embrace; even then she was nearly knocked over. The two of them, Elsa’s paws on Joy’s shoulders, stood there like old friends meeting again. The cubs were close behind, led by Jespath, the favourite son. He was a gallant little lion, with ears cocked and eyes alert, ready to protect his mother. Joy did not touch him, but kept stroking Elsa’s sleek head, calling her name and fondling her gently, while Elsa clearly returned all this affection in her own manner, her tail sweeping in wide curves as she nuzzled up to Joy.

  Wild Lives of Africa Juliette Huxley.

  George Adamson established at Kora on the Tana river a rehabilitation camp where lions, who would otherwise have been condemned to death or to imprisonment in zoos, were acclimatized to life in the wild.

  By the time we get down to the river I am ready for a cool glass of gin from the thermos and, as the sun will be getting warm, the lions are quite happy to flop down on the sand or mess about in the shallows. Lions are among the laziest animals on earth and like to spend most of the day dozing, although if very hungry they will spring up at the chance of a kill whatever the heat.

  It is extremely beautiful down by the Tana. The stretch we make for is more than a hundred yards wide if you take in the stream, the pools, the shallows, the rocks and the sand. There is shade from the palms and acacias, which are much taller here than those in the bush round the camp. Terence (George’s brother) has identified all the plants and the shrubs – the deadly datura or moonflower with its lovely white trumpets, the sweet scented henna and the red-berried salvadora, so attractive to birds.

  The game fades away at the approach of the lions but the baboons chatter and bark on the opposite bank, while the hippos wallow and snort out in the silted red water. Close in it is hard to tell if a dark ridged shape, gliding along with the current, is a log or a crocodile. The birds seem to have no fear of the lions and if I sit quietly a succession of waders will drop down to the river – silent white egrets and honking purple-black hadada ibis, mottled Egyptian geese and the formidable carnivorous sentries, goliath herons, tall yellow-billed storks and the large marabous, with their wicked beaks pressed against the scrotum-pink sacs on their chests.

  Peaceful as it is, warmed by the sun and cooled by the contents of my thermos, I am always a little uneasy when I am here with the lions. After it has rained they make a frightful fuss when they have to walk through a puddle, but if something excites their interest on the other side of the river they plunge straight into the stream and swim directly across, despite the strength of the current. My worry is that crocodiles have drowned at least one of my lions and may easily account for others.

  I usually walk the younger lions back to camp for lunch; in the first few weeks they are inclined to come to a call, like a dog. I leave the older ones by the river, or on Kora Rock, which we pass on the way. They are probably still there when I go down in the evening – or will come to me quickly if I cal
l them with a megaphone.

  I have had some tricky moments up on the rocks. Early one morning, in 1977, I let Suleiman and Sheba out of their enclosure to spend the day in the bush, while I drove to the hill to look for a lioness with cubs. I climbed to the foot of some cliffs where I thought her lair might be, but could see no sign of them.

  As I started down Suleiman and Sheba appeared. They were in a playful mood and while I fended off Sheba, who butted me from the front, Suleiman jumped on my back, grabbing me by the neck and bringing me down on the steep hillside. I tried to beat him off, whacking him over my shoulder with a stick. This made him angry and he started to growl, sinking his teeth in the back of my neck. It was no longer play.

  Luckily I was wearing my revolver because my search for the lioness and cubs might well have brought me face to face with a cobra or leopard while I was poking about in the rocks. I drew the gun now with the notion of firing a shot over Suleiman’s head to scare him off. When I pulled the trigger there was just a dull click. It happened a second time and with a fearful chill I realized I had probably forgotten to load it. My hand was no longer steady as I broke the gun open to work out my chances. At least there was a round in each of the chambers and as Suleiman still had his teeth in my neck – I could feel the blood trickling down my shoulders and the sweat coming out on my forehead – I decided to try again. This time I managed to get two shots off into the air. They had not the slightest effect.

  Suleiman bit harder. In sheer desperation I pointed the revolver backwards over my shoulder, and fired straight at him. Immediately he let go and, looking startled, went and sat twenty feet off with Sheba, who had leapt back at the sound of the first two shots. I could see blood on his muzzle and more on his neck…. Next morning, much to my relief, Suleiman turned up. The pistol bullet had run across the top of his shoulders and lodged under the skin. He looked little the worse for it and was as friendly as ever. My own damage might have been worse too. The Flying Doctor took me to hospital in Nairobi and as the wounds did not go septic I was out in a week….