Cat among the pigeons

by David Muirhead

  The southern African hedgehog, Atelerix frontalis, is typical of its kind, one of 17 extant species, five of which live on the African continent. They are all similar in size, appearance and habits. Despite the coincidental defensive strategy, they are not remotely related to porcupines, and they’re not rodents; instead they share their lineage with shrews.

  Ever mindful of the powerful claws and sharp teeth that lurk in the African bush, most small nocturnal animals try not to attract attention as they go about their business. Seeming to ignore this sensible precaution, hedgehogs throw caution to the wind and can be quite noisy, often emitting little pig-like snuffles, grunts and snorts as they bustle about in the night. If danger threatens, they can of course immediately curl up into a tight prickly ball and hiss like a snake, which deters most predators, even the big cats; but there are exceptions. Giant eagle owls frequently prey on them because their large talons and scaly feet can easily cope with the spines. In any event, an owl usually glides in and strikes before the luckless hog even realises it has a problem.

  Hedgehogs used to be classified as insectivores, but in fact they’re omnivorous and will eat just about anything. Earthworms and bugs form a major part of their diet, generously supplemented whenever possible with lizards and frogs, the eggs of ground-nesting birds, the infant birds themselves, assorted fungi, fallen fruits and berries, odd bits of carrion, and even, as a last resort, the discarded fast-food detritus of outdoor human feasts. Captive hedgehogs, and even some wild ones, can easily develop obesity problems; such is their predilection for tucking in to all that the edible world has to offer. They are not that big on exercise either. In the normal course of events a hedgehog ambles along at a sedate pace, but it is capable of putting on a remarkable burst of speed when the need arises, including, perhaps, on hearing a distant shout of ‘free burgers’. They straighten their legs, rise up and beetle along like a plump Victorian matron lifting her skirts, having suddenly remembered she left some cakes in the oven.

  Flippancy aside, hedgehogs have sound reasons for bulking up when food is plentiful because they’re not at their best when the average temperature dips down to about 15 degrees centigrade, soon becoming dozy and uncoordinated. Although there’s no evidence that they hibernate in the technical sense, they do become inactive in southern Africa and are seldom seen in the deep winter months. A hedgehog that hasn’t been able to fatten itself up during the good times is unlikely to survive to see another season.

  Hedgehogs are solitary animals, if not actively antisocial. When they bump into each other they let rip with indignant and cantankerous chatter and repeatedly charge, butting heads. The first one to get a headache loses. Things are different when they encounter a prospective mate, of course; on such auspicious occasions, far from becoming smooth and refined and whipping out a bunch of roses, they get even noisier. The amorous couple circle around each other, interminably sniffing and blabbering about inconsequential things that matter only to hedgehogs. With this routine complete, the female flattens the spines on her rump and the male hoists himself into position, clamping his teeth to the spines on her shoulders. The male has a remarkably long member though not one that can be regarded as disproportionate, given the circumstances.

  Rather like a fakir’s bed of densely packed nails, a hedgehog’s spines won’t penetrate skin unless significant pressure is applied, so these little creatures can easily be picked up. They are banned as pets in many jurisdictions, including South Africa, but in recent years have become popular, particularly in some States in the USA where they’re locally bred, having been originally sourced mainly from East Africa. The fascination is fuelled in large part by their portrayal as cuddly toys and affable or dynamic cartoon characters. Times change, but even when coddled and cuddled and dressed in dolls clothes, the hedgehog, like any wild creature, remains neatly wrapped in its own enigma.

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  WASP

  According to a legend of the Baila people of Zambia, all the earth’s creatures were fed up with being perpetually cold and wet, so they decided to put together an expedition to visit the creator god in the heavens and ask for fire. The motley group of volunteers included a wasp, a fish eagle, a vulture and a crow. They duly set off together, but one by one their bones fell from the sky until only the wasp remained to soldier on. It didn’t get there either. The creator god descended to meet the wasp half way, impressed with its courage and determination – and, let’s be honest, worried that it would be hot, bothered and highly irritable, if and when it did finally arrive. The request for fire was quickly granted.

  We may also have wasps to thank for our crockery. Many folk are convinced that potter wasps, of the family Eumenidae, gave our forebears the idea for making pots from clay. These enterprising insects use mud or sand, mixed with water and saliva, to construct their nests. Some of their vase-shaped structures, complete with a slender neck and a rounded lip, closely resemble miniature versions of the amphora the ancients used to store wine and olive oil. Quite how the ancients managed in the days before an observant Neolithic wine merchant finally woke up to what the wasps were up to is never fully explained by proponents of the theory.

  There are tens of thousands of individual species of wasp, but by and large they fall into one of three major groups: the loners, the socialisers and the parasites. Altogether they’re a tough bunch, so much so that wasps, and their antics, shook Charles Darwin’s faith in a beneficent and omnipotent God. He couldn’t get his head around the notion that an insect had been deliberately created ‘with the express intention of feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars’.

  Most adult wasps are in fact vegetarians and only sip nectar, if they take time out to ingest anything at all. It is their larvae that need protein in order to grow, and eventually pupate, and the adults have devised various ingenious and – in our eyes – gruesome ways to ensure that they get it.

  Social wasps tend to be the least macabre, though the term ‘social’ refers to their nest-building activities, rather than any fondness for forming book clubs or propping up the bar at the local golf club. Included in this family are paper wasps. They construct nests using tree bark and other vegetable material, chewed into a paste and then laboriously worked into a series of cosy hexagonal cells. These are collectively attached by a fibrous stalk to a branch, a rock overhang, or in some other sheltered spot, like your front porch. Work on the nest is started by a single fertilised female, joined in due course by others. Depending upon the individual species, some of these housing developments can become quite large, though they never remotely approach the size or social complexity of a bee’s nest.

  Eggs are duly laid in each cell and the adult wasps then go on their grisly hunting expeditions. Like human serial killers, each different species of wasp is usually a specialist, with its own favourite target, typically a specific type of spider or caterpillar. When they find what they’re looking for, they sting it to death and then dismember the corpse, chopping it up into portable portions. These are carried back and stuffed into the cells at the nest so that the larvae can get stuck in the moment they hatch. Some species apportion a set amount per cell and then put the lid on, leaving the larva to eat in private and then pupate. In others, the cells are kept open and the greedy larvae are repeatedly fed, even popping their heads out to ask for more, until they seem ready to pop. Only then does mom turn out the lights and seal them in.

  In contrast, solitary wasps don’t bother about the tedious and finicky business of making egg box condominiums; these loners prefer to use the body of their prey as both a cot and a source of baby food. Hemipepsis capensis, a large black wasp, is a flamboyant, but otherwise fairly typical representative of the type. It noisily cruises the byways of southern Africa in search of big, hairy baboon spiders. Contests between the two antagonists are dramatic, but the agile wasp invariably overcomes its large adversary, delivering a powerful sting that totally immobilises – but doesn’t kill – the hefty arachnid. The stiff,
to borrow Mafia terminology, is then dragged to a suitable spot where the wasp digs a shallow grave and rolls in the body. It then lays a single egg on the spider’s comfy abdomen, covers up the evidence, and departs. The spider has to wait in the dark for about 10 days, unable to even twiddle its thumbs, before the egg eventually hatches and the wasp’s larva starts to eat it alive.

  Grim as this is, it seems to have been the parasitic wasps that particularly gave Darwin the heebie-jeebies. They dispense with all formalities, laying their eggs directly into the living body of their victim. This can even include the larvae of other wasps. One species of Ichneumon wasp is parasitic on the wattle bagworm, thrusting her ovipositor down into the worm’s body and depositing a single large egg. When it hatches, the wasp larva is able to happily move around the bagworm’s roomy insides, sucking up its juices prior to eventually settling down to pupate within the dried out husk. It may sound ghastly, but parasitic wasps help to keep a wide variety of troublesome insect species in check, many of which eat our crops or decimate our plantations.

  Wasps make no demands on us, other than insisting that we stay away from their nests and mind our own business when they’re going about theirs. Social wasps usually give fair warning when their nest is approached, raising their wings as a signal and sending out a scout to tell any nosey parker to back off. If that doesn’t work they attack without hesitation, inflicting painful stings. Unlike bees, an individual wasp can sting again and again, without damage to itself. It’s little wonder that the Baila creator god didn’t fancy having one angrily buzzing about his celestial apartment, maybe making him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

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  WILDEBEEST

  In the popular 1950s song, ‘I’m a gnu’, the animal narrator has no doubts about his own unique identity, but others have struggled. Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman, writing in 1797, placed the unusual creature between an ox and a horse, and called it a t’Gnu, claiming in this written word to have replicated what the Hottentots called it. In so doing he unearthed enough material for modern philologists to debate until the end of time.

  Even earlier, no-nonsense Dutch explorers at the Cape had simply called it a wildebeest, because it looked a bit like a cow, or at least some sort of bovine that had not yet enjoyed the dubious benefits of domestication.

  We now know that wildebeest are a type of antelope and that there are two distinct species: the black and the blue. The latter has been renamed the common wildebeest by serious naturalists because it’s impossible to say ‘blue gnu’ and keep a straight face. They’re also more numerous and widespread than their smaller black cousins, and they aren’t really blue. Common wildebeest are further divided into five subspecies, the most famous being the western white-bearded wildebeest, which lives in East Africa and has featured in countless wildlife TV dramas. These invariably involve a bungled river crossing and a supporting cast of gigantic crocodiles.

  The black wildebeest lives in South Africa, and is the one Sparrman wrote about. It is significantly smaller, less imposing and more sedentary. By way of modest compensation, it sports a natty white tail.

  The common wildebeest’s odd bodily configuration evolved to meet the demands of a particular lifestyle, namely staying a step ahead of the weather and the animals that want to eat it. Locomotion experts point out that powerful forequarters, sloping down to a less muscular rear, are pretty much ideal for quadrupeds that routinely need to cover long distances at a moderately brisk and steady pace. Significantly, another animal that fits the same general body shape is the spotted hyena, one of its principal predators. Over the past million years and more, the two animals have obviously worked out at the same gym.

  The wildebeest is a living testament to the fact that the grass really is greener on the other side, at least when you take seasonal rainfall patterns into consideration. Short green grass is the stuff of life as far as these antelopes are concerned; if absolutely necessary, they will make do with other items from the vegetarian platter, but their broad muzzles and dentition are specifically designed for eating lots and lots of short green grass.

  The famed Serengeti migration, at which hordes of tourists link up with tens of thousands of wildebeest, is all about grass – or, in the case of most of the bipeds, getting one up on the Joneses back home. The same sort of migrations happened in southern Africa before the advent of rifles, agriculture and millions of miles of barbed-wire fencing. The last attempt at keeping to the ancient ways took place in 1983 when about 80,000 wildebeest perished in the drought-stricken Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana. The old route to greener pastures was blocked by a fence.

  Leading a gypsy life has called for special procreative adaptations and arrangements. These are still evident in populations that long ago had to put away the family atlas and sell their caravans. A wildebeest calf is the most precocious of all the antelopes, up and about less than five minutes after birth. This is essential when everyone else in the herd has packed their bags and is agitating to get going. Another good reason to jump quickly onto the bus is that newborn wildebeest are light tan in colour, more or less the same colour as the infants of most other antelope species. This is great if you intend hiding out in long yellow grass for a while, as most other infant antelopes do, but useless if you’re born on an expansive green lawn on a featureless plain.

  To make life easier, or at least less risky, female wildebeest manage to co-ordinate birthing so that most calves arrive within days of each other, a sudden baby boom that creates a glut for lions and hyenas. These worthies may think that all their Christmases have come at once, but what the satiated and burping predators probably don’t realise is that this prey birthing strategy helps to keep their numbers down over time by ensuring leaner pickings throughout the rest of the year.

  Male wildebeest also have to adjust to a life of love on the run. They still feel the need to carve out a territory, no matter how modest or temporary, but things must truly get disconcerting when every eligible female keeps glancing at her watch and muttering about being late for the next stampede. During the rutting season in the crowded Serengeti, each bull eventually has to make do with a territory the size of a postage stamp. It’s not surprising that they become agitated, bellow their heads off, and resort to all kinds of over-the-top buffoonery, including bashing the shrubbery to bits.

  Beating the stuffing out of struggling young trees doesn’t obviously ease the path to true romance but it does have one positive spin-off: the fewer trees, the more grass. Wildebeest have, in effect, been shaping their own vast landscape for aeons; it all goes to show that behind the mask of a clown, there’s often much more than you think.

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  GECKO

  A tale was told in Ancient Greece about the fate of Ascalabus, an ordinary boy who laughed at the goddess Demeter for the greedy way she gulped down a cup of water. Not impressed, she promptly turned the rude youth into a gecko, shrinking him down in size so that he wouldn’t be able to bother anyone again. The cry of the gecko could be assumed to be the boy’s belated apology, or more likely a colourful epithet aimed at the crotchety old deity.

  Geckos are still apologising (or swearing) to this day; they are the only species of lizard to make vocalisations more complicated than the standard serpentine hiss. The goddess Demeter must have had to deal with a lot of naughty boys in her time because there are about 1,500 species of gecko, 60 of which occur in South Africa.

  One species with a lot to say is the common barking gecko, Ptenopus garrulus, which inhabits the sandy spaces of Namibia, Botswana and the Northern Cape, trickling down into parts of the Karoo. At sunset they poke their head out of their burrow and let rip with a repetitive sound that has been compared to two pebbles being knocked together. Whether the calls are territorial, or constitute entreaties to a potential mate, is not clearly understood. They usually shut up when dark descends but in the Kalahari nights the nattering can go on and on, helping enhance the outdoor ambience for some and ma
king others as cross as Demeter.

  Being turned into a gecko has its upsides, not the least of which is the super cool ability to walk on the ceiling. Not all species can to do this, but the common house gecko, Hemidactylus frenatus, has it down to a fine art. Drawing from personal experience, the only time it is likely to lose its grip is when your wife is in the bath, directly underneath. On such occasions it’s important to note whether the gecko falls onto her left shoulder or the right, always assuming you can remember which of these alternatives confers good luck, at least according to the Indonesians. Dwelling too long on this seemingly irrelevant topic can, of course, generate marital strife.

  Geckos are able to walk up walls and even upside down because they have adhesive pads on the toes of their splayed-out feet. That is one way of putting it, but the reality is much more complicated, partly involving tiny hairs and atomic and molecular forces, with their accompanying equations, all of which would probably have given Einstein a headache. Suffice it to say that the world we think we see and the one we actually live in are substantially different places, and this is never more evident than when you’ve just been turned into a gecko. Even the smooth surface of a mirror looks like Velcro.