Older female elephants assess danger best

 African elephants feeding, Kruger National Park. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Male lions are deadly predators. A single male, alone, can bring down an elephant calf. Females can't do it alone - more than one female lion is needed to attack any elephant successfully. So, from an elephant's perspective,it pays to be able to tell who's on the prowl - a male or female lion, and how many.

Male lion fresh off a kill (note blood on lower lip), South Africa. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Karen McComb and her team from the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, played lion calls to 39 elephant families in Kenya's Amboseli National Park. They compared the elephants' reactions to the lion roars. All the matriarchs reacted to the sound of three lions roaring with more agitation and avoidance than the sound of one lion. But the older matriarchs showed an additional awareness - they could tell not only the number of lions, but the gender of the lions, and respond to the different threats accordingly. McComb's research will be published in an upcoming Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Females over 60 are best judges of predatory threat
The researchers concluded that an older, more experienced leader would be likely to make a more accurate assessment of the relative danger from nearby lions(s). A young and aggressive leader can be an able defender, even though lacking the accumulated social and ecological knowledge of an elder. A combination of a young aggressive leader and an older experienced matriarch may be the ideal combo to head up a pride of lions.

Sadly, poachers often target bigger and older elephants. This practice poses a more serious threat to the elephants than would the poaching of younger individuals. The repercussions of poaching older elephants has broad implications, far beyond predatory threats. Elder elephants also model appropriate social behavior to younger adults and adolescents. The loss of elders can lead to out-of-control behavior in young rogue males, which have been documented behaving destructively and overly-aggressively. Their asocial behavior has included the rape of rhinoceros species.

For more information on conservation of African and Asian elelphants, and how you can get involved in protecting elephants from poaching, see the following websites:
TRAFFIC: the wildlife trade monitoring network
IFAW.ORG on African Elephants
International Elephant Foundation
Elephant Conservation
WWF - Elephants

Some of my previous posts about the illegal trade in wildlife
Africa's big mammal populations drop 59% in 40 years! 1/13/11
 308 rhinos killed in South Africa this year for their horns 12/16/10
The tiger in the suitcase: an isolated incident? 9/28/2010
Wildlife trade rivals drug trade in profits 9/20/2010
Laws flaunted: flourishing pet trade threatens orangutans' survival 8/23/2010
My search for a wild orangutan in Borneo and Sumatra 8/16/2020
Orangutans dwindle as Borneo, Sumatra converted to palm plantations 8/03/2010

With a chain-saw, he cut off the rhino's valuable horn 8/15/2009

Some of my previous posts about lions and leopards in Africa
Lions decline 90 to 95% in last 50 years. 3/3/2011
We were lucky to see lions on a kill. But are lions disappearing from Africa? 7/30/2009
Leopard adventure: male and female clash over prey. 8/4/2009

Keywords: lions older female elephants predators poaching Karen McComb

Lions decline 90-95% in last 50 years

South African lion taking a break from his kill, a Cape buffalo. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Lions extinct in 10-15 years? That's the prediction of National Geographic explorers-in-residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert. The couple have studied and filmed Africa's big cats for more than 25 years. They say that wild lions have declined from 400,000 in 1960 to around 20,000 today.

"The Last Lions"

Based in Botswana, the Jouberts have a new documentary and a companion book, both called "The Last Lions" (see link below). This latest film follows a solitary female lion in the Okavango Delta of Botswana as she tries to feed and protect her three cubs after her mate dies. Female lions usually live and hunt in a group, with a single male as protector against intruding males. A solitary female alone is at a serious disadvantage. Females do virtually all the hunting for a group, and they usually hunt cooperatively.

Males are freeloaders

Males that are part of a pride seldom hunt, but share in the females' kills. The conspicuous black mane helps protect a male's neck during fights with rivals, but makes it difficult for him to creep toward pray unnoticed.  Mortality is much higher in males than in females.

Threats to lions

Africa's lions are threatened primarily by habitat loss, as human populations expand. They're also frequently poisoned or trapped by rural dwellers who blame lions for livestock losses.

I was surprised at how few lions I saw

I've been to South Africa a couple of times in the last 5 years looking for wildlife.  Although I spent virtually all my time in Kruger National Park and other wildlife reserves, I saw very few lions.  In eight weeks of searching, I had only three lion sightings: one solitary male, two males on a kill together, and one pride of females with their young. One wildlife guide I talked with told me that, in his youth 40 years earlier, he had shot lions every single day - to protect his family's livestock, he said. This was in the same place where I saw only one lion over a period of 3 weeks.

Link to Jouberts on NPR

The Jouberts were interviewed on March 2 by Terry Gross, host of NPR's "Fresh Air". Click here to read NPR's summary of the interview, or to listen to the entire interview.

A couple of my previous posts about Africa's big cats:

We were lucky to see lions on a kill

Leopard adventure: male and female clash over prey

Keywords: lion extinction lion conservation Dereck Joubert Beverly Joubert The Last Lions NPR

Female hyenas, all hermaphrodites, bully the male hyenas and take prey from lions

A baby spotted hyena in Shingwedze, Kruger National Park (photo by Sally Kneidel)

We were lucky to see some wildlife on our recent trip to South Africa - although our success was more than luck. We spent a lot of time looking. We were particularly attracted to the big predators, lions and leopards - which I'll write about later.

An adult spotted hyena along the road in Skukusa, Kruger National Park, South Africa (photo by Sally Kneidel)

But the most interesting and underrated carnivores we saw may have been the spotted hyenas. We saw them trotting along the road we traveled every evening, heard them yelping while we slept, and sort of took them for granted. We shouldn't have. I was surprised to read on our return that spotted hyenas are the second-biggest and most formidable carnivore (after lions, presumably) in Africa; a single hyena is capable of running down and killing unaided a bull wildebeest 3 times its own weight!

Wow! Spotted hyenas are powerful and they look powerful. They're easy to recognize, with the shoulders higher than the hindquarters, the massive skulls, dog-like faces, and spotted coats.

But here's what really got my attention about hyenas. We were on a "night game drive" at one of the camps in Kruger National Park, and we came upon a communal den of hyenas out in the bush.

A communal den of spotted hyena cubs we came upon on a night drive in Kruger National Park, South Africa (photo by Sally Kneidel)

Our guide told us a little bit about the social system of hyenas that I didn't know. Their social /mating system is just plain weird! Female embryos are exposed to a lot of testosterone during development, which makes them more aggressive (as adults) than females of other mammal species, and also affects their reproductive system. Here's the weirdness: because of all the testosterone in utero, the female has male reproductive organs, which don't function. Her vagina is blocked by a false scrotum and testes. She has a phallus but it doesn't function as one. Mating occurs through the female's phallus, which is slack, the prepuce a wrinkled ring around her enlarged urethra. During mating, the male enters the female through that ring. Don't ask me how sperm gets from her urethra to her uterus and oviducts: I don't know. But the previous explanation is supported by a written source, Richard Estes' excellent book The Safari Companion.

I also read, and heard, that the male is fearful of the female during mating, because of female dominance. Even juvenile females can and do bully adult males.

One more issue of particular interest, which our guide told us and Richard Estes corroborated: female hyena youngsters kill their female siblings, and male youngsters kill their male siblings - in order to avoid later clashes for dominance. The killing is often or usually accomplished by keeping the weaker litter-mates from nursing, so that they starve to death.

Hyena cubs are raised in communal dens, and adult males play no role in their upbringing. The cubs are fed and guarded only by their own mothers. At the communal den we saw, the cubs were of varying ages. They were not siblings, just den mates or clan mates. Dominant adult females are usually recognized as the biggest, fattest hyenas with swollen udders.

The communal den of spotted hyena cubs we saw at Shingwedze in Kruger National Park (photo by Sally Kneidel)

Females not only dominate males at kills but also lead clan members on pack hunts, boundary patrols, and into battles. Hyenas and lions are very competitive and try to take each other's kills. Hyenas in groups often succeed in chasing off female or juvenile lions, but not mature male lions. With all other predators, hyenas are very likely to win a fight over a carcass.

So. Those hyena cubs were pretty cute, looking very much like puppies. But the adults...whoa. I know now why our host at Skukusa told us not to take walks at night along the roads where we saw the adult hyenas.

How fast can a hyena run? 37 mph, or 60 kmh! A lot faster than I can!

What's the conservation status of spotted hyenas? They are not immediately threatened or endangered, but their survival depends upon the availability of prey. As human expansion continues to demand more space, and climate change alters habitat, there will inevitably be less space left for prey. The long-range consequences of human population growth and climate change will be a reduction in the numbers of almost all wildlife. What can you do? Reduce, reuse, recycle. Pay attention to your ecological footprint. Support organizations that work to protect habitat, such as Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund.

Sources:
Wildlife guides at Kruger National Park.

Richard Estes. A Safari Companion: A Guide to Watching African Mammals. Chelsea Green Publishing Company.

See also: Animal Fact Sheet on Spotted Hyena from http://www.zoo.org/factsheets/hyena/hyena.html

Key words:: hyenas wildlife hermaphrodites lions Kruger National Park