Don’t be LION around, you’re GIRAFFE-ing me crazy!

So about half of you reading this thoroughly enjoyed my punny title and the other half of you probably think I’m slightly ridiculous. Anyways, this week we had some really interesting lectures on giraffes and lions and I just wanted to share some of the interesting things I learned! We also just had some more interesting lectures on wildebeest and hyenas, but I had already come up with the title before we had them, so the title stays! I realize that there is a lot of writing here, but these animals are so fascinating, it is worth the read I promise!

Giraffe

We had two researchers come to camp to give us a lecture on their work with giraffes. Their names are Derek Lee and Monica Bond. This couple is originally from the states, but now live in Tanzania. In the last five years they have developed the non-profit organization, the Wild Nature Institute, and have already accomplished so many things amazing things for local conservation in this short time. For those family back home reading, this non-profit is actually based in New Hampshire. They have two major projects they are currently running. One is Project GIRAFFE (giraffes facing fragmentation effects), which is currently the world’s largest demographic giraffe study. Giraffe populations are declining all across Tanzania and the rest of Africa, as high as 40%. It is especially sad in Tanzania because it is their national animal. There is an estimated only 90-100,000 giraffes left in the world, meaning that there are about 4 elephants for every 1 giraffe. Seven African nations have also had giraffes go locally extinct. However, Tanzania has one of the highest remaining populations. When you think of the major African species facing threats, giraffes are certainly not the first you hear about.

Every year they do three surveys in the various seasons recording demographic information on all giraffe individuals they can find in the entire Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem. This area includes Lake Manyara and Tarangire National Parks, Manyara Ranch, and the Lolkisale and Mto wa Mbu Game Controlled Areas. The marking pattern on all giraffes is unique to the individual, so all they have to do is photograph each giraffe and use pattern recognition software to keep track of these individuals over time. To date, they are keeping track of about 2,100 individuals across 3,500 km2. Some of the interesting things that they discovered from this study so far are that adult survival is much lower in the game controlled areas due to poaching. Yes, people actually choose to bring down these gentle giants for meat. They also discovered that in the national parks, the calf survival is much lower due to predation by lions. I really didn’t think that lions would ever hunt giraffes. However, it makes sense in Tarangire because during the wet season the wildebeest and zebra virtually disappear from the park, leaving limited food source options for lion prides. Apparently there is a lion pride in Namibia that actually specializes in hunting giraffe. Another interesting aspect of the study is the observation of a new disease that is only affecting giraffes in Tanzania. It is a skin disease that causes lesions to develop on their legs. Nobody actually knows what causes the disease or how it affects giraffes. However, through monitoring mortality they were thankfully able to determine that the disease appears to not lead to death. It is just another reminder of how much there is left out there to study and I find it so exciting.

The second project that this couple runs is related to ungulates, especially wildebeest. I am going to talk more about this in the wildebeest section. The other work this couple does, as if they already don’t do enough, is that they work with local authority on land use planning and conservation education. With their ungulate project they actually partner with the Maasai to encourage that wildebeest migration routes through unprotected lands remain grasslands for livestock grazing. Otherwise, agricultural land blocks the route and it is much harder for the animals to complete their migration. The researchers have also written and published two educational storybooks that tell the tales of Lucky the wildebeest and Juma the giraffe. They have already been able to distribute thousands of these books to classrooms in the area to teach youngsters about the importance of the conservation of these animals. I was truly blown away by the work these two people have managed to accomplish in five years time and I can only hope that one day I can make even a fraction of the difference they have made in the conservation of species.

Lions

We were lucky enough to have another incredibly fascinating lecture by our center director, Dr. Kissui, who besides running the lion project in Tarangire, has only conducted a study on lions in the Ngorongoro crater. His paper is entitled “Persistence and Local Extinction of the African Lion Prides in Ngorongoro Crater” in case anyone is interested in reading the actual article. Apparently in 1975 the crater sustained 15 lion prides and by 2005 only 3 remained. That means that in 30 years there has been about 80% mortality! So it was Kissui who tried to figure out why this is happening.

Before we talked about the details of the study we learned some key aspects of lion ecology and behavior. First, we learned that the social dynamics of prides are not as black and white as many of us thought. When cubs are born into a pride, the daughters stay with that pride for life. If for some reason a female finds herself alone either due to deaths in the pride or she is ousted due to pride size getting too large, she will become nomadic for the rest of her life because the closely related family ties between lions are so strong that they will not welcome another lioness. If multiple females are ousted together they will most likely form a new pride. The male cubs will remain with their natal pride for about three years until the resident males drive them out. Then, the males become nomadic until they are able to take over a pride. Usually these closely related males that enter the nomadic stage together form a coalition, where they survive together in harmony. One thing that I didn’t realize is that there is really no clear dominant male in lion prides. The coalition of males, however many there happen to be, will all leave a pride together if they are ousted by another coalition, and all males in the coalition will become members of the pride if they manage a pride take over. However, they don’t actively choose one dominant leader. During the reproductive season there is slightly more competition between males. However, there still is no clear dominant male. Thank you lion king for teaching me wonderfully inaccurate facts about nature!

One of the most fascinating yet horrific aspects of lion behavior is infanticide. When a pride take over occurs, the new resident males will kill all existing cubs in the pride. Why would they do this? What is the real evolutionary advantage here? Well, male lions are only able to maintain control of a pride for 2-4 years on average, before they are ousted and the cycle begins all over again. Essentially, a male’s opportunity to mate and pass on his genes, which is a fundamental instinct in nature, is limited to times when he is a part of a pride. Nomadic males are rarely able to mate. Also, a female’s gestation period lasts just over 100 days and she will care for her cubs until they are about two years old before she will go into estrus again (meaning she is able to mate). Thus, there is really only one generation’s worth of opportunity for a male lion to reproduce and he won’t be able to do that if the lionesses are caring for cubs from the previous male coalition. Thus, they kill the current cubs in the pride, which causes the lionesses to go back into estrus relatively quickly, allowing the new males to mate. Isn’t that a sick and twisted way of nature? I should also probably mention that female lions have synchronized reproductive cycles so that they can all give birth around the same time and communally raise cubs together. It is not uncommon for females to give milk to cubs belonging to other females. They will also adopt the cubs of a fallen lioness. However, things get even more weird. If a pride take over occurs and the females have just completed their ovulation period and already started the gestation period with the previous group of males, they can develop false estrus. Essentially, the new resident males are tricked into thinking that the new set of cubs is theirs and the physical investment made by the females during pregnancy will not be lost. Very little is currently known about fake estrus but it is insanely fascinating.

So after learning about all of this, Dr. Kissui asked us: “So why do lions live in prides?” After learning all of this it became fairly obvious. For a female lion to raise cubs alone the chances of her being able to hunt while also keeping her cubs safe from predation is highly difficult. A female lioness is actually completely capable of taking down her own large prey, so hunting in groups is not necessary. However, group hunting allows for some lionesses to keep guard of cubs during hunting periods. The strongest evidence for pride living is currently for protection from infanticide, where infanticide is now only limited to pride takeovers.

As many of you already know, lion prides have territories. The females are the ones who essentially own and claim the territory boundaries, where the males will typically defend it. There is lot of competition between prides over territory boundaries based on which prides have access to the best resources. This is what leads me to the study my professor did in the crater. A few more pieces of demographic information might be helpful for perspective. Female lions typically live around 14 years, with males living only about 10. Prides typically last only an average of 18 years, with the shortest being only about 2 and the oldest being about 39. Basically, there are three major factors that determine pride persistence. The first is their ability to compete against neighboring prides, which pretty much correlates with increased pride size. The other factors include the average rate of reproduction/cub productivity and then adult survival.

First, my professor went and mapped out all the pride territories in the crater and carefully evaluated their habitats, looking at the available resources to each pride. Then, with years of collected data, he tested a boatload of variables to determine what the limiting factors were to pride survival in order to explain the drastic declines. Basically, his study found that adult female density, cub productivity, distance to rivers, amount of vegetation cover, and number of male take overs were highly decisive in determining pride survival. All of the variables were positively correlated with persistence except distance to rivers and number of take-overs, which were negatively correlated. Thus, going back to the habitats of each pride, those that survived had closer proximity to rivers and more vegetation cover. The vegetation cover is thought to provide better hiding of cubs as well as increase hunting success by having more surprise attacks. Disease has also had a huge impact on the lions in the crater, but there is still more research to be done on why more frequent diseases occur in the crater or if the strains of disease are more deadly. After finishing the lecture I asked Dr. Kissui what now? He just finished telling us these factors were responsible for limiting the lion population in the crater and now only 3 prides are living in an area that 15 once occupied. Does that mean that the crater will have those few lions forever? Were they at some sort of carrying capacity before that limits them from ever returning to those numbers? Apparently, only time will tell.

The last fun fact about lions that I would like to share is that I learned that there is a peculiar lioness, fondly referred to as Kamunyak that lives in Kenya. She has become famous for her odd habit of adopting baby orynx calves. Orynx are ungulates, so yes, this mighty predator has taken to adopting little miniature prey as her own young. This is just about the wildest thing I have ever heard. There is actually a documentary that has been done on it called “Heart of a Lioness” and I believe it is on youtube if anybody is interested in learning more. Here is a link to a shorter video on this lioness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZw-1BfHFKM. Basically, she has adopted six baby orynx calves that somehow got separated from its mother for short periods of time. It is believed that this lioness suffered some traumatic loss at some point in her life, leading to this odd behavior. From what I understand, she is a nomadic female as well, meaning she has no pride. She actively defends her calves but unfortunately this odd relationship is toxic to the both of them. She is so busy protecting her calf that she herself is unable to devote time to hunting and thus she goes hungry. Meanwhile, the calves are still highly dependent on milk for all nutrition, which the lioness can’t provide. It is a seemingly beautiful and miraculous relationship to see predator and prey form a mutual bond, but it has only lent itself to tragedy for both the little calves and this lioness. Interestingly enough, when she loses her various calves, she resumes hunting, meaning that somehow she has managed to hold onto her instinct of what is food, yet she has actively dissociated these animals from being prey. I think this just goes to show how emotionally complex animals can be.

Wildebeest

First, I want to share some details about the other project that the Wild Nature Institute founders are working on. The project is called project TUNGO (Tarangire ungulate observatory). They talked about how fundamentally important ungulates are to shaping ecosystems here. They spread seeds across the habitat, keeping grazing and browsing habitat maintained, and they also support the predator population, for as long as there are predators there is a large sum of income for tourism. Wildebeest are by far the dominant ungulate of the Tanzanian grasslands. However, I was sad to find out that as recent as the 1980s there used to be about 40,000 wildebeest in the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem, where as today there is only about 7/8,000. Here we have yet another devastating statistic about the tragic loss of wildlife in Africa.

Most people know wildebeest for their famous migration. I didn’t know this but “the great migration” that the world is so familiar with, which takes place in Serengeti, is not the only wildebeest migration. I guess it makes logical sense right? Why would only one population of wildebeest migrate and the others not? All wildebeest tend to migrate twice a year, usually back and forth to places of more nutritious grassland and breeding grounds. A huge source of this devastating loss of wildebeest is because humans have spread across Africa occupying more land for agriculture and settlements, blocking migration routes. Another sad and frustrating influence is the fact that certain countries have adopted methods of fencing in their national parks, meaning resident wildebeest can no longer migrate. Serengeti is actually the only place in Africa that managed to protect the entire wildebeest migration route. The wildebeest end their migration in Kenya, however, cooperation between the two countries managed to establish the Maasai Mara Reserve as an extension of Serengeti in order to maintain the entirety of the migration route. One country, which I was unable to catch the name of, finished putting up a fence in the middle of a migration, meaning the wildebeest got trapped and 80,000 wildebeest died that year. 80,000! This is just so tragic and honestly just breaks my heart that due to human error these animals suffered to death, completely helpless. Today, only 3 wildebeest migrations are left in the world, and two of them happen to be in Tanzania, with the last one being in Zambia. Again, I am reminded of how lucky I am to be living in this small part of the world that is home to so many of nature’s remaining phenomenon that hasn’t been completely destroyed by humans.

Obviously, the first, and most famous migration is Serengeti like I mentioned. However, the second one is in Tarangire national park, where my last expedition took place. We were lucky enough to be there when all the wildebeest were around, however, if I were there in the spring during the wet season, there would be virtually none to be found. They either migrate north to Lake Natron on the border of Kenya or east of the park to the Silimanjaro plains. This migration is a case where the majority of the migration routes are outside protected land boundaries. So what the Wild Nature Institute is currently doing is directly isolating the exact migration route of the wildebeest. The hope is that by isolating the exact route they can encourage better land use planning in the area and the establishment/improvement of corridors so that this migration will not be lost to the world and the wildebeest population maintained.

Wildebeest are currently found only in eastern and southern Africa. There are six subspecies that are genetically isolated from each other because populations will not mix or cross migration routes. As a result, the wildebeest in Serengeti are a different subspecies than the wildebeest in Tarangire. The black wildebeest subspecies is fairly endangered, with only 2,000 left in southern Africa. Wildebeest don’t have a set social organization where males can be found both as solitary animals, in bachelor groups, or in a mixed herd of females and males. However, males do maintain territoriality over females during the migration and are often seen at the periphery guarding their claimed group of females. Males can actually get so aggressive during the migration that they can kill each other. Wildebeest, like lions, have synchronized reproductive cycles where the females all go into estrus at the same time. This way, all calves are born at the same time and never in the middle of the migration. In just three weeks, 80% of all calves in the herd are born, and calves are able to walk within 5 minutes of being born. Another interesting thing about these animals is that they have interdigital glands found in between their hooves that leave scent trails for other wildebeest to follow.

So what triggers their migration? The main reason why they migrate is in search for more nutritious grasses that provide females with necessary minerals for their milk. However, the mechanism that initiates the migration is the rains. Changes in rainfall will be the trigger. However, with climate change drastically altering precipitation patterns, this could become a serious threat in the future. Zebra typically migrate with the wildebeest, and they usually go first. Zebra are bulk feeders and eat the taller grasses, then the wildebeest follow and eat the shorter grasses, selecting those that are most nutritious. What I find really fascinating is that the wildebeest adjust their migration route slightly to avoid lion pride territories.

Hyena

I realize that I have been sharing a ton of information, but I find it all so fascinating and I hope some of you back home think so too. I think I saved the best for last because these are really the most bizarre animals ever. First of all, they are closely related to mongooses, which I find to be pretty random. They are also highly adapted to many different habitats where they have been found at incredibly high elevations on Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya. Hyenas live in clans that can have up to 200 members. Oddly enough, the females are the most territorial and dominant members of the clan. They are actually even slightly larger in size than the males. Female cubs will stay in the clan once born and they will automatically adopt the mother’s ranking status. Males can either stay in the clan or go off and find another clan, where they are accepted as the lowest ranking members and have to fight their up the chain of command. They are incredibly strong animals, and together they are able to take down fairly large prey. However, only small groups of the clan will participate in a hunt at one time. They can also be nocturnal or diurnal depending on their habitats.

Female hyenas and hyena reproduction is one weird as all heck process. I am going to be a little anatomically correct here, so forgive me. First of all, the females all have pseudo-penises, making determining gender in the field fairly difficult. Apparently, if the pseudo-penis is erect, then it is generally a sign of one female submitting to another. This pseudo-penis is actually the female clitoris, where the birth of cubs actually takes place. Because of this, 60% of cubs actually die of suffocation during the birthing process. Also, once cubs are born, they practice neonatal siblicide. Essentially, as soon as the cubs are born, those cubs in the same litter of the same gender will literally try to kill each other until there is only one female and one male. How messed up is that? Sometimes I really question how the heck evolution produced all these weird processes and habits.

In many respects, hyenas are like the wolves of Africa. They are highly feared by people and have meaning in many local cultures. One of these myths is that if a child is born while a hyena is heard crying, then that person will grow up to be a thief. They believe that people can turn into hyenas, and that if a hyena comes up to your property it is really some sort of bewitched person. Also, apparently local legend has it that all hyenas are owned by witches and do all her bidding. Basically, because of all of these negative beliefs people will actually completely avoid or move from an area permanently. Some of these stories are not entirely unprecedented as only two years ago and only a five minute walk from camp, an intoxicated man was eaten alive by a local clan. Also, in Kenya, a person sleeping in the woods from a wilderness first aid program had their skull bitten into by a hyena.

During our lecture our professor played an audio clip of a hyena’s vocal repertoire. Basically, they sound like a crazy person on drugs. I am also fairly positive that I have heard my younger brother make some of these weird sounds. Hyenas do actually laugh/giggle as a sort of distress call that basically asks other clan members if they should approach or leave an area. They also whoop, grunt, and growl. Here’s a link to what these guys actually sounds like….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd8cnaS6fcU&spfreload=10.