Cat among the pigeons

by David Muirhead

  Pythons are cold blooded themselves, a state commonly equated to being heartless, and yet they’re famous for their tight embraces. Not everyone who comes along can expect a big hug of course, and by and large the snakes remain aloof, invariably slipping away unobtrusively if disturbed while out in the open. Even their nuptials are civilised by animal standards. Any number of eager males will follow the scent trail laid down by a receptive female, but fights never happen.

  Relatively recent research has revealed that, despite seeming implacable, cold and uncaring, some female African pythons actually look after their young, at least after a fashion. When the eggs hatch they don’t simply breathe a serpentine sigh of relief and immediately slip away, as previously thought. Instead, the mother stays in attendance for three or four weeks, perhaps a lot longer, providing body warmth for the brood at night and deterring predators simply by being there. What is more surprising is that the young, like all newborn snakes well able to fend for themselves, choose to stay with her. It can’t be for the free meals because there aren’t any.

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  VLEI RAT

  Tourism promoters don’t usually go out of their way to brag about the rat-viewing opportunities available in their country or region. They would rather devote space in their glossy brochures to airbrushed images of snarling leopards, yawning lions and bellicose elephants. Even guidebooks tend to assume that anyone weird enough to want to look at rats in their natural habitat can find their own way to the dustbins in the alley behind their hotel.

  A prevalent, albeit uncritical, view is that rats virtually invented dirt and disease. The periodic plagues that nearly wipe out humanity are routinely blamed on them. They are more toxic than nuclear waste and spend their time in sewers and dark cellars, plotting to take over the world.

  Sharing a name with a creature like that would make anyone afraid to show their face in public. Fortunately, the vlei rat has always lived out in the country and is happily unaware of the opprobrium generously and indiscriminately heaped upon its extended family. It’s not fond of showing its face anyway, because there’s always a chance that a marsh owl or a patrolling serval cat will spot it, and that can end in disaster. Owl pellets, in some areas, tend to be liberally peppered with the fractured remains of inattentive rats.

  Vlei rats prefer to live in dense grasslands associated with the wetlands and marshes of temperate and subtropical areas, mainly in southern and eastern South Africa. By their nature, such environments tend to be fragmented and the rat cannot easily pack its bags and move on in search of another life. There is thus little need to interrupt its simple world with the cautionary tales of degradation and debauchery that befell its distant cousins in the city.

  A healthy outdoor lifestyle has contributed to these strict vegetarians being moderately large by rat standards, though still only about 16 centimetres in length, with another 10 centimetres added on for the tail. Home is a modest grass saucer hidden in dense vegetation, and located a metre or so above any foreseeable flood level. They can swim well, if they must, but generally prefer travelling on the well-worn footpaths radiating out from their cosy nest. The only things missing from this idyllic neighbourhood are elves with buttercup lanterns to light the way at night. The moon helps, when it’s in the mood but, by and large, vlei rats conduct the bulk of their business during the day.

  They are not known for their dazzling social skills, often preferring to lead a solitary life. In consequence they are usually a little cranky with strangers of their own kind and bloody fights are not unknown. To stave off an attack, the accepted procedure is to stand erect on one’s rear feet, exposing the tummy, and make little twittering noises. Nuptial arrangements tend to be fairly flighty affairs, and although long-term relationships have been noted in some communities, these appear to be the exception rather than the rule.

  Baby vlei rats are born with their coats on and their incisors erupted. The three or four infants clamp their little teeth to their mother’s teats and cling on tenaciously whenever she leaves the nest to go about her daily chores. They’re able to eat solid food within two or three days, but the eye-watering nipple routine continues for about two weeks, by which time they’re fully weaned – no doubt to an audible sigh of relief. Young vlei rats grow rapidly and in less than three months they’re sexually mature. It may all seem unnecessarily hectic and rushed, but if you’re a vlei rat, it’s important to get on with life, because it will all be over in a couple of years.

  Although not immediately endangered, their chosen habitat is increasingly under threat, both from climate change and the remorseless growth in human numbers. The edges of wetlands are continuously nibbled away or simply gobbled whole to facilitate new agricultural and mining developments or housing projects. Vlei rats rarely, if ever, encounter their brown rat distant cousins. If and when they did, the meeting would probably take place on a landfill, against the background roar of bulldozers and dump trucks. We can only wonder what the city rats would tell their country cousins about us. It is unlikely to be anything good.

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  COCKROACH

  Nobody knows exactly when the supercontinent of Gondwana broke in half, creating Africa and South America, but the best guess is about 100 million years ago. If cockroaches could talk – and had bothered to keep a diary – they would be able to tell us precisely when it happened, because they witnessed the whole thing, from both sides of the big divide.

  By then they were already an old species – so ancient, in fact, that they had ringside seats when the even bigger monocontinent of Pangaea broke asunder. That was about 200 million years ago, but here again, we don’t have any diary notes, so it’s difficult to be absolutely precise.

  At least the rocks made some sort of effort, and the fossil record is fairly up to date. From this we can ascertain that cockroaches have been around for a mind-numbingly long time, well over 300 million years. Charles Darwin referred to them as ‘living fossils’, meaning it as a compliment, a rare thing in itself from a member of the human race. Cockroaches are generally reviled as disgusting vermin, but Darwin recognised their impressive lineage, and the perfection of their simple and practical shape.

  Although there’s been ample time to tinker, the cockroach’s basic design has always remained the same. In essence it consists of a head, thorax and abdomen, is bilaterally symmetrical, and flat and ovoid in shape. A hard helmet, known as a pronotum, protects the head. On either side of the body there are three legs and, up front, a pair of impressive antennae. The three body segments are encased in a hard exoskeleton, which in turn is covered with a slippery outer skin. This last layer prevents the cockroach from becoming dehydrated, and helps it to slide in and out of impossibly tight spaces.

  The exoskeleton is punctured by spiracles, or small holes, to facilitate breathing, and housed within it is a sophisticated and complex chemical plant. This produces all kinds of chemical cocktails, used to regulate virtually every aspect of the creature’s interactions with the outside world, including with others of its own kind.

  If all this sounds like the description of some sort of space suit, that’s probably no coincidence. The cockroach is kitted out to function in extremely hostile environments, and it has certainly seen them come and go. Being around when the continents broke apart, like bits of crumbly fudge, must have been disconcerting. But over the aeons the insects have had to contend with a range of climactic and geological catastrophes, many of them causing the mass extinction of other species. The meteor strike, which so befouled the planet that the dinosaurs decided to call it a day, was but one.

  An atmosphere thick with soot and atomised saurian body parts may have been problematic, but cockroaches had already survived earlier conditions, when the air was so rich in oxygen that their predators were able to grow to ridiculous proportions. In the Devonian, dragonflies were the size of eagles, and carnivorous centipedes were big enough to trip up an elephant. For the cockroach, then as now, a typical day at the office h
as never been uneventful.

  As all astronauts and professional deep-sea divers know, if you want to survive in a hostile environment, you need to keep checking your equipment. Above all, it’s important to make sure everything is clean, so it will work perfectly. For just this reason, and contrary to popular opinion, cockroaches are scrupulous about their personal hygiene. Each long antenna has 365 segments, each responsible for monitoring some aspect of the bug’s environment, including its own cleanliness and aroma. If you turn on the kitchen light at night and see a cockroach, there’s a fair chance that it’s cleaner than the floor.

  A few species seem to prefer being in and around human habitations; they are also adept at hitching rides on various forms of transport, keen to join us wherever we may be, including in Antarctica. South Africa boasts several immigrant species, including the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana. They are particularly loathed, and yet extremely comfortable in Durban, having shipped in from the USA in times long past. Some African roaches have travelled the other way, to an equally hostile reception in American cities.

  We tend to flatter ourselves that roach armies are squarely focused on us, dependent on our handouts, no matter how reluctantly given. It may be a comfort to bear in mind that there are over 4,500 species of cockroach alive today, and only 30 of them are generally regarded as pests. These ignoble few are very good at exploiting our built environments and taking advantage of the messes we make, but the vast majority don’t want anything to do with the human race. They make their living in virtually every ecological niche, from tropical forests to swamps, deserts and grasslands.

  Out in the wild, perched on rotting tree trunks or lichen-covered rocks, it may be that at this very moment cockroaches are waving their antennae and sensing a change in the wind; noxious gases and atmospheric anomalies, subtle murmurs of another impending global catastrophe. If just one of them has managed to get hold of a diary, this may be a good time to start taking notes.

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  SPRINGHARE

  Exasperated scientists may have booted it into its own genus, but the springhare can at least lay a tenuous claim to being the model for a popular American icon. Anyone familiar with the stories of Brer Rabbit is likely to know that the original folktales featuring this dodgy, but lovable, character were brought to the southern states by African slaves. Some now suggest that the tales originated in Angola, and are based not on the rabbit, but on the springhare, an artful dodger if ever there was one.

  Springhares are neither rabbits nor hares, and, despite appearances, nor are they any kind of miniature kangaroo. They are, in fact, rodents. All the confusion is entirely attributable to Nature’s habit of patting herself on the back and then repeating elements of a clever design.

  The creatures themselves must surely have their own opinion regarding Nature’s brilliance at the drawing board, especially when it’s time for bed. To get comfortable in the confines of a narrow burrow, they need to tuck their head between their outsized rear legs and enormous feet, and rest their forehead on the ground. It must be like trying to doze off in economy class wearing a pair of clown shoes. Getting comfortable is important because springhares, being nocturnal, spend the whole day like that.

  Most bushveld creatures needing subterranean accommodation make do with relatively capacious old aardvark burrows. Springhares have their own ideas and prefer to dig their own home, or rather homes, because they normally have more than one address. They end up being rather modest constructions, simple tunnels without chambers, larders or discernible toilets.

  The springhare’s front paws are equipped with strong claws, but the animal is nevertheless fairly petite, and hence needs to find an area of soft, compacted sand to work with; clay soils, baked red earth and rocky terrain are too much of a challenge. In consequence, although the species is widely distributed, from southern Kenya down to South Africa, individual populations are patchy.

  Favoured habitats are sandy areas in the savanna, preferably dry and certainly not too wet or cold – and without too many boulders, trees and prickly bushes. With a nit-picking, prima donna attitude like that, you could be forgiven for thinking that springhares must be teetering on the edge of extinction, or at least ought to be. In fact, they’re doing rather well, despite briefly featuring on the IUCN’s Vulnerable list not so very long ago. They’ve since bounced back from that.

  Bouncing out of trouble is what life’s mostly about for a springhare. They can cover 3 metres in a single hop, enough to get them instantly out of reach of the claws or the jaws of a predator. They certainly need the practice: the queue of animals itching to eat one would stretch right around the landscape’s fattest baobab, and even down to the rock on the corner. Everyone’s there: snakes, eagles, honey badgers, leopards, lions, jackals, wild dogs, civets – even some of the vegetarians look as though they’re having a lifestyle rethink. It is little wonder these hares spend the daylight hours tucked away in a tube underground, the entrance plugged from within. When they do emerge, after dark, they sometimes shoot out like furry little cannonballs, just in case there’s something ferocious waiting at the entrance.

  Assuming they can avoid the slobbering queue of potential assassins, springhares spend the night quietly shuffling about on all fours looking for their own sustenance. They enjoy seeds, leaves, berries, succulent stems and even the occasional grasshopper. When they find a choice item, they clasp it in their front paws, sit back on their haunches and nibble; in this pose they look – I have to say it – a bit like large squirrels. They obtain virtually all their water requirements from the food they eat.

  Springhares prefer their own company, though natural restrictions in available living and foraging space can mean that large numbers end up cheek by jowl in the same neighbourhood; even their tunnels can inadvertently interlink, and goodness knows what then goes on underground, away from prying eyes. They can become so numerous in some areas that the reflection from the eyes of a mob of springhares caught in headlamps as they feed in the veld at night has been likened to city lights.

  Exceptionally for a rodent, springhares don’t believe in having big families, restricting themselves to one bouncing baby at a time. And, probably mindful of the kid’s big feet and the cramped nature of her living quarters, the mother alone looks after the infant. But springhares do breed year round and a female can produce three offspring in a year, so in theory a local population can increase quite rapidly. This reckons, of course, without the horde of hungry diners, including Homo sapiens, Nature’s most prominent queue jumper.

  Springhares traditionally formed an important part of the diet of many African tribes, most notably the San, and they all made good use of the skins for karosses, clothing and water containers. Ending up as a water bottle is an odd fate for an animal that rarely, if ever, took a drink while alive.

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  CARACAL

  A caracal recently caught on camera killing 20 African penguins near Cape Town was probably hoping the blame would be pinned on a lynx. The two look alike, at least at a glance, in dim light, with clouds across the moon. Local law enforcement could be faced with a genuine conundrum if not for the fact that the nearest lynx lives in Spain.

  Despite their similarity in size, and the natty tufts of hair on their ears, the two cats are only distantly related. The caracal has been around a long time, eight million years or more, while the lynx is a much newer evolutionary addition to the feline family. The caracal’s closest cousin isn’t the lynx, but rather the African Golden Cat, which will no doubt also claim that it was nowhere near the penguin colony at the time.

  Nevertheless, as far as nomenclature is concerned, confusion reigns and has for as long as anyone can’t remember. Caracals owe their name to the kind of sloppy pronunciation that happens when cultures collide and coalesce. The Turks called the cat kara kulak, which means ‘black ear’, and the word bumbled into English as ‘caracal’. Prior to that, in the Middle Ages, everyone thought they were lynxes, be
cause that’s what the Romans and the brainy Ancient Greeks had called them; in fact, any cat bigger than the humble domestic pussy, and smaller than a lion or a leopard, was often called a lynx.

  Reluctant to let go of a punchy name, many folk in South Africa still call the caracal a lynx, while a select few elevate the cats to a higher, double-barrelled social stratum, and call it a caracal-lynx. The Afrikaners, refusing to get embroiled in the controversy, call it a rooikat.

  Caracals are endemic to Africa, the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia, but they’re faring a lot better in some places than others, largely depending upon the pressures exerted by burgeoning human populations. In India they’re endangered, while in Africa they’re particularly widespread, ranging from the slopes of Table Mountain to the Nile valley in Egypt.

  They’re usually associated with relatively dry habitats, woodlands and savannas, but happily slot into a variety of ecosystems, from forest to semi-desert. The mountainous region of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province purportedly has one of the highest population densities. Over in the west, in and around the leafy suburbs bordering the nature reserves that make up the Table Mountain National Park, the cats are experimenting with semi-urban living, so much so that they’ve started to feature in road accident statistics. Caracals killed while crossing suburban roads are mostly young males, which are much more peripatetic than females.

  Despite the automotive dangers, peripheral city life has its advantages. Rodents discovered ages ago that there’s an excellent living to be had around human beings, particularly urbanites; they’re such messy and wasteful eaters. It’s therefore unsurprising that abundant rats and mice, a favourite prey species, feature prominently in the diet of Cape metro caracals. Also available, as an occasional delicacy, are domestic cats – at least those brave or daft enough to tiptoe beyond the manicured lawns and well-trimmed hedges of suburbia into the edges of neighbouring wild lands.