Caracals can lay claim to the dubious distinction of being the original cat among the pigeons. In days gone by, potentates in Persia and India used tame caracals to hunt game, typically small mammals and birds. As an entertaining sideline, they enjoyed releasing one of the springy cats into a large room full of pigeons, placing bets on how many it could pluck from the air in a set time. The record, according to anecdotal evidence, was 12.
Propelled by powerful hindquarters, caracals are capable of truly extraordinary leaps, 3 metres straight up from a squatting start. Despite applying max flaps and full thrust, a guinea fowl flushed from the grass has little chance of escaping. But adept as they are at jumping, an aerial intercept is not the caracal’s standard hunting method. Like others of their kind, they’re ambush predators, making use of cover until they’re close enough to charge or pounce.
Caracals aren’t too fussed about what’s on the menu, provided it’s made of meat. Unlike jackals, they’re strictly carnivorous, and definitely not available to share a bowl of berries. Insects and lizards are fine as canapés, but their main day-to-day fare consists of rodents, small mammals, typically dassies and duiker-sized antelopes, and birds as big as bustards. There are recorded instances of hefty caracals successfully bringing down ostrich and even adult antelope.
Jackals, which often share the same turf, are a pain in the furry butt as far as caracals are concerned. The two species indulge in tit-for-tat baby snatching (and crunching and munching) so it’s little wonder that they loath each other. As with lions, which seem to deliberately seek out and destroy cheetah cubs in the Serengeti, this behaviour may have as much to do with eliminating competition as seeking sustenance.
Whatever caracals choose to hunt, they hunt alone. With the exception of mothers raising kittens, they lead a solitary life, and mainly inhabit the night. There is some evidence that this nocturnal lifestyle is driven by self-preservation rather than choice; in areas of scant or non-existent human populations, notably remote parts of Turkey and Arabia, they are just as likely to be out and about during the day. But hunting at night does have its advantages: there’s a better than even chance that a prospective meal has nodded off. A caracal can shoot up a tree in the blink of a bleary eye to grab a small monkey or a roosting bird.
Not that such lethal efficiency impresses everyone. As the occasional perpetrators of excessive and bloody mass slaughters, caracals are regarded by some folk, notably chicken and sheep farmers, as the devil incarnate. While African penguins might be persuaded to testify, albeit reluctantly, that such abhorrent behaviour is rare, when it does occur, caracals, like leopards, are judged in human terms. All too often, this leads to a highly poisonous and grossly indiscriminate human response.
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CUCKOO
In his handbook on elementary clock making, written in 1669, Domenico Martinelli proposed that the call of a cuckoo be used to indicate the passing hours.
Being a medieval European, it’s unlikely that Mr Martinelli was familiar with the call of the Piet-my-vrou, more formally known as the red-chested cuckoo, a species native to Africa. If he had been, and had lain awake long enough on a moonlit night, sleepless on account of its monotonous and ceaseless call, he would certainly have reconsidered his proposal; he would probably have gone outside in his pyjamas at two o’clock in the morning, and thrown his handbook in the direction of the maddening sound.
Ornithologists have yet to work out exactly what point the Piet-my-vrou is trying to make with its repetitive babble, and to whom. However, there is general consensus, at least in southern Africa, that the cuckoo’s name is applied to fools and the insane for good reason. The bird arrives each summer from central Africa, perches high in the canopy of tall trees, all but invisible, and sets about calling – for mind-numbing hours on end, day or night – for new recruits for the dippidy-doo club.
The Piet-my-vrou is nevertheless more infamous, like all cuckoos, for laying its eggs in the nests of other birds, invariably ones much smaller than itself. Its favoured foster parents are Cape robins but an assortment of dupes, including wagtails and thrushes, may be selected for the dubious honour. Some species of cuckoo are specialists, tailoring their eggs in terms of colour and size to match those of a specific host bird, but the Piet-my-vrou isn’t too bothered about producing exact replicas. Cape robins don’t seem to be good at maths, and would probably struggle to agree on a new shade of beige for the lounge curtains.
For a couple of lazy bastards, a pair of Piet-my-vrous set about their duplicitous scheme with surprising thoroughness. They first scout out the neighbourhood for suitable nests. When they find one, the female cuckoo lurks nearby, taking note, like a sleazy private eye, of the comings and goings of the happy resident couple. Timing is everything and only once the prospective host bird has laid her eggs does the male cuckoo call to distract her from her nest. The plucky little mother promptly slips out to see off the intruder and the female cuckoo darts in. She needs only 5 to 10 seconds on the nest and the deed is done.
From the sidelines, it seems strange that they’ve gotten away with it for so long, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes they’re found out and the egg is disposed of or the nest abandoned. A recent study by Spain’s University of Granada has revealed that the great spotted cuckoo, which has traditionally palmed off its eggs on magpies, doesn’t always even wait for the host bird to leave the nest. Magpies have apparently become wise to their game and tend to stay put on their eggs, so a brazen approach has become necessary. The magpie understandably makes a huge fuss as the cuckoo barges in and positions its ample posterior over her nest; but amid all the pecking, flapping and general excitement, she seems to lose track of what’s really happening, so the cuckoo often still gets away with it.
Cuckoos are not the only birds that dodge parental responsibilities. The cowbird of Central America lays an egg in the ornate hanging nest carefully constructed by the chestnut-headed oropendola. Unashamedly, she boots the reluctant hostess off the cot so that she can get comfortable. But at least there’s a payoff for both parties: cowbird chicks are precocious and, from the moment they hatch, gobble up visiting botflies, which would otherwise lay their eggs in the flesh of the helpless oropendola chicks, usually with fatal results. In locales where botflies are absent, the oropendolas are far less accommodating, and the cowbird has to resort to more traditional cuckoo-type methods.
A cuckoo embryo sometimes develops more quickly and so has a head start inside its egg, and usually hatches before the host’s chicks are ready to peck their way out of their shells. Within moments of emerging, the young cuckoo sets about heaving the host’s eggs – or even the other chicks, if they have inconveniently put in an appearance – up and out of the nest. Despite the fact that it’s a downright nasty thing to do, one has to admire the newborn’s strength and determination. It’s the physical equivalent of a week-old human infant clambering out of its crib to do the laundry or clear out the garage.
It’s clear that Nature, far from being indignant, aides and abets the cuckoo’s reprehensible lifestyle. The newborn of most species imprint themselves on whoever they perceive to be their parents, which can lead to ludicrous and comical situations, but young cuckoos never suffer any such identity crisis. When they’ve finished sponging off their diminutive foster parents, they know exactly who they really are and where they belong.
When it’s good and ready, a Piet-my-vrou heads north to winter in central Africa without so much as a begrudging thanks to its exhausted hosts. It will duly return the following spring, often to the locale where it was born, and team up with a mate for another spin on their warped and wobbly version of the cycle of life.
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VERVET MONKEY
When you’re far from home, highly-strung and growing up in a strange land, the temptation to hit the bottle is an ever-present danger. This probably explains why immigrant vervet monkeys scattered in small populations across the balmy islands of the Caribbean have a teenage
drinking problem. Their sober forbears arrived from Africa on slave ships, carried along for the amusement of the crew, and on arrival escaped into a tropical countryside rapidly being transformed into one humungous sugar cane plantation.
Fermenting sugar produces ethanol, a substance familiar to brewers and manufacturers of fine wines, whiskeys and cheap plonk the world over. It is mainly young vervet monkeys that can’t resist a tipple; as they get older a sense of social responsibility seems to take over and adults largely go on the wagon.
Given this penchant for substance abuse, it’s probably little wonder that vervets have long been a favourite subject for study by folk trying to figure out why humans behave as they do. They’re very like us in other ways, susceptible to the same and similar diseases and inclined to suffer from hypertension. If it were not for a long-ago roll of the evolutionary dice, one of them might be writing this and I could instead be sitting on the branch of a marula tree, fretting about life and waiting for Nature to open the bar.
Being relatively easy to handle and breed in captivity, they have played an important role in biomedical research, notably into HIV/AIDS, and have reluctantly though laudably contributed to the production of smallpox and polio vaccines.
Vervets are members of the genus Chlorocebus, and various subspecies, some six in all, live all over Africa with the exception of the heavily forested Congo Basin, which is dark, dangerous and not the kind of place you want to spend the night in. With the exception of coat colour, which varies between subtle shades of brown and grey, they all look pretty much alike.
Their preferred habitat is lightly wooded savanna, riverine woodlands and coastal scrub but they’re highly adaptable, making a modest living in cultivated lands and sometimes, where modern realities dictate it, in suburbia. Their relationship with the local human inhabitants is not always cordial, especially when open windows and well-stocked kitchens are involved. Nevertheless, they’re relatively harmless and the males’ brief macho displays invariably evaporate into flight at the close approach of an irate human. Like any other animal they will fight back if cornered or attacked, and have a respectable pair of canines to bring to the party.
Adult male vervets tip the scales at about 6 kilograms, on average, and females are about a kilo lighter, so they’re not really in a position to throw their weight around. Instead they seek security in numbers, forming troops of between 20 and 50 individuals. They’ve developed about 30 distinct alarm calls to alert each other to the presence of different predators, including, it seems, an appropriate and probably unprintable epithet for Homo sapiens. Main wild threats come from leopards, large raptors, big butch snakes and baboons, the warning call for each eliciting a particular behavioural response.
Each troop has its undemocratically elected leader, invariably the largest, loudest and most politically astute male. He earns and maintains his status by fighting, pulling scary faces and making and discarding alliances as it suits him. A second-in-command assists him. This worthy’s duties include scouting out foraging sites and keeping his eyes and ears open for danger. Only the leader of the troop gets to mate, which helps explain why young males tend to move between troops, probably hoping that a change of scene will improve their career and hence their prospects for romance.
The birth of a vervet monkey is a major event in the social calendar and all troop members are eager to inspect the baby. When it is two to three weeks old, adolescent females help care for the infant, sometimes enthusiastically snatching the bawling baby from its mother’s weary arms. A close and intriguing bond often develops between a young vervet and its grandmother. Granny always has time for junior and studies seem to show that this has a direct impact on the infant survival rate, which at the best of times is statistically no better than 50/50.
While young males are of necessity mobile, female vervets usually remain within the same troop their whole lives. They are born into a relatively rigid hierarchy headed by a matriarch who keeps a snobbish note of everyone’s lineage and isn’t above ticking off a social upstart. Studying the family tree, so to speak, can soon reveal who is taking tea with the duchess and who’s doing the washing up.
Vervets are highly territorial and boundary squabbles between troops are routine. As with us, it’s all about guarding the resources necessary for survival. They’re omnivorous and select from a wide menu, varying from edible leaves and fruit to grasshoppers and other insects, with the occasional bird’s egg and hatchling thrown in. Given such a wide variety of seemingly ubiquitous foods, it’s easy to imagine that finding something to eat poses no problem. Nevertheless, with its seasons and cycles, droughts and deluges, the African landscape can be a bleak place and life is seldom a picnic for monkeys. When the opportunity presents itself, perhaps it’s little wonder that they invite themselves to our picnics and outdoor feasts, and maybe, purely by accident, knock over the wine.
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RHINO
It’s not known for certain when the woolly rhinoceros became extinct, or who was responsible, but the Neolithic police put out a detailed description of one of the principal suspects about 12,000 years ago. He was tall, excruciatingly thin, had a big nose, a jutting jaw, some kind of tattoo on his upper torso, and was last seen loitering in the vicinity of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire. There are additional pornographic details, which have been withheld in the name of common decency. The most incriminating piece of evidence linking him to the crime is the indisputable fact that his likeness was found carved on a woolly rhino’s rib.
To be fair to Pinhole Cave Man, as he is known, woolly rhinos may actually have outnumbered him and his stick-figure chums back in Ice-Age Europe. What’s more, AK-47s and helicopters hadn’t been invented yet. Bringing down an animal that was the same size and configuration as a modern white rhino would have been no mean feat, especially if you were so anorexic that you could pass for a cartoon. Nevertheless, many scientists are more or less convinced that Pinhole did it, or at least tipped the balance. The final curtain fell on the woollies about 8,000 years ago.
We now find ourselves back in the dock as repeat offenders. Despite public outrage and the herculean efforts of conservationists, both species of African rhino continue to seesaw towards extinction in an unfolding tragedy that is utterly mindless. Pinhole and co at least had the excuse that they hunted to survive. Other than monumental stupidity and epic greed, we have none.
We used to know little about rhinos and now, in a sense, we know too much. They’ve been stripped of the authority and mystery that came from standing aloof and apart, like big bouncers outside an exclusive club, unapproachable and unassailable, one of the Big Five. They evolved in a time when bulk and a thick hide made it unnecessary to run away from predators. In the face of a perceived threat, a rhino’s main defensive strategy has always been to charge the bastards, as Dirty Harry might succinctly have put it.
This is exactly what they did when first confronted by big-game hunters and it soon earned them a reputation for being dangerous and aggressive. In reality, white rhinos are quite placid and even amiable, providing you don’t tiptoe up behind them and pop a paper bag.
Females without calves often share their home range, seeming to enjoy each other’s company. Bulls stick to their own territory, happy to have the gals over but routinely seeing off rival males. They make an exception when their territory happens to control access to water in a given locale. Other males are then permitted to pass through if they’re heading for a drink, provided they show proper respect. Rather incongruously, this includes curling up their little tail and conspicuously urinating in a steady stream, as opposed to the spectacular spray a bull let’s fly when he’s marking his boundaries.
Black rhinos are half the size and consequently not as confident; they tend to be solitary and more on edge. Within living memory, they used to be the species most commonly seen in game reserves throughout Africa but their numbers have now dropped perilously low and the few that survive try to stay hidden. The wester
n black rhino was last glimpsed in the wilds of Cameroon in 2001, one of only five individuals of this subspecies then known to still exist. By now they have almost certainly all gone, falling foul of poachers, or are so dispersed that they haven’t been able to find a mate.
Black and white rhinos diverged from a common ancestor about 4 million years ago and went their separate ways, the whites opting to become giant lawn mowers, while the blacks preferred a career in hedge and shrub trimming. Black rhinos have a pointed, hook-shaped upper lip to enable them to get a proper grip on twigs and leaves; white rhinos have wide, square lips to tackle grass. In the African garden of long ago there was ample room for both, one favouring thick bush and the other the grassy plains.
Both species remained true to the fashions presumably current in the Late Miocene and kept the same grey coat. This, of course, begs the question as to why they were described as black versus white in the first place. A favourite theory is that ‘white’ was a corruption of wijde, the Dutch word for wide, and hence a reference to the white rhino’s wide lips, but this has since been contested. Other theories abound and the current consensus is that nobody’s really got a clue. Even if the riddle is somehow solved, the black rhino will still be waiting impatiently for its own explanation.
Or maybe not – if it has any sense it would ignore the debate and head for the nearest mud wallow, emerging to sow further confusion as a yellowish, reddish or even bluish rhino, depending upon the pigments in the soil. Mud baths are an important part of a rhino’s regular routine, the slosh acting as a kind of sun screen and helping to smother and kill parasites on the animal’s skin.
Cat among the pigeons Page 6
