He was soon proved wrong, at least in respect of those of us sitting high up in the back row. As I peeled away sticky clumps of web, I noticed that a particularly large Nephila specimen had been dislodged and had landed on the handrail in front of me. It was casually making its way on long striped and pointed legs towards the dangling ponytail of the lady sitting in the row immediately in front of me. In such circumstances we are called upon to do the gallant thing, but instead I sat mesmerised by the ghastly possibilities. I imagined the ranger eventually glancing over his shoulder to discover that he was transporting six large cocoons, instead of a group of tourists.
In the event, the lady was made of sterner stuff than I. She saw the spider, plucked it from its perch and, with a casual remark, showed it to her husband on a dainty outstretched hand before gently dropping it into the roadside bushes.
Like virtually every other spider, orb-webs can inflict a painful bite if provoked but, as far as is known, their venom has little or no effect on humans. However, there’s room for doubt because the world of spiders is full of unpredictable surprises. A vast web of over 40,000 known spider species covers the planet and every year new ones pop up, or glide into view on their silken parachutes. Golden orb-web hatchlings have been known to descend on New Zealand, which is not the usual address of their species; like little secret agents, they blow in from Australia, across the Tasman Sea.
There are only 15 known members of the Nephilidae family and four of them occur in southern Africa. The spider that involuntarily hitched a ride with our party in Ndumo was a Nephila fenestrata. An even bigger species, Nephila komaci, was discovered quite recently in Tembe Elephant Park, next door to Ndumo. Prior to that, the only other specimen of this species had been found weaving a web around Madagascar. It is now confirmed as being the largest of all the orb-web spiders, barely fitting onto a saucer with its legs outstretched.
Nephila are generically known as golden orb-web spiders because their huge webs shine like gold in bright sunlight. The show isn’t for our benefit, of course; the pigments are intended to attract bees and other pollen-hunting insects. The spider can adjust the colours of its web as adroitly as a TV technician – a little of this, a little of that, depending upon local lighting conditions. The whole setup is designed to work for insect vision, which includes reflecting ultraviolet light, so we’ll never get the full picture.
Some webs, like those in Ndumo, are colossal, spanning well over a metre, not including the long support strands radiating out to tree branches on either side. Given the initial effort expended, Nephilas conduct essential running repairs as and when needed rather than always replacing the entire web if it’s damaged, as other smaller species of weavers tend to do.
However, having spent so much time and energy building their mansion, Nephilas are also not that keen on indulging in tiresome ongoing non-essential DIY. Many webs consequently have large holes in them, which the owner still hasn’t gotten around to fixing. The occasional passing giraffe must cause an absolute catastrophe, but bird damage is the main nuisance. The husks of insects are consequently placed in strategic positions on outlying strands in an effort to warn careless aviators, rather like macabre versions of the tacky decals some folk stick on sliding glass doors.
Nephila webs are strong enough to ensnare little birds or bats. Neither of these creatures constitutes normal fare for the web owner, though these spiders will happily suck the protein out of anything they can overwhelm. That includes the males of their species, which are tiny compared with the females, usually about a tenth of the size. When seen in the web – and there are invariably several males hoping for a bit of procreative action – they can easily be mistaken for infants rather than prospective partners.
Although they are no more loving, nor any less voracious, female Nehpilas are less prone than other species to indulge in nuptial cannibalism. It helps that the males seem to be much craftier at choosing the right moment to dash in and mate, usually when the female is eating someone else, and they sensibly approach from the opposite side of the web.
Few creatures prey on adult female Nephilas. In some areas, vervet monkeys are known to pluck them from their webs like bonbons, but other than that they are fairly inaccessible in their aerial apartments. The main casualties are the young, which fall prey to parasites, birds and predatory insects, notably damselflies. To counter this, Nephilas tend to cluster their webs together, forming a kind of web city that even the most nimble predators find intimidating.
Though Nephilas are usually found in bushveld environments, which are warm and fairly wet, a recent study discovered that golden orb-web spiders in general grow bigger and fatter when they manage to find their way into suburban environments. This is especially true where affluence allows for expansive gardens populated by tall trees and shrubs. At a posh address, the usual kind of parasites and predators are probably absent, while the pools of expensive artificial light attract just the right sort of bugs.
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AFRICAN BUFFALO
They have never met, are only distantly related, and have never exchanged so much as an email, but the African buffalo and the American bison have a great deal in common. They’re big and heavy, generally placid, and they like eating plenty of grass and living in large herds. Because they tend to appear more intimidating than a domestic bull, both have lent their likeness to cheesy movies featuring the mythical Minotaur. Most folks in the USA even call their bison ‘buffalo’, and I’m not going to risk getting letters from their lawyers by making an issue of that.
There were once over 50 million bison roaming the Great Plains of the fledgling USA, but in the early 1800s an orgy of hunting, unimaginable in scale, soon plunged their numbers rapidly down to an extremely modest 541. Trains were even laid on so that gun-happy townsfolk could happily blast away and then chug on down the track, leaving the dead and dying animals pointlessly littering the landscape. It all happened in less than a lunatic’s lifetime. Bison have since recovered somewhat, and now number around 150,000, very thin on the ground by past standards, but enough to satisfy the curiosity of tourists, and salve the soul of anyone who cares.
The African buffalo had its own close shave with extinction about a century later, but the main problem was a virus, not bullets – although there were plenty of those still flying around as well. A virulent rinderpest outbreak decimated buffalo herds, along with a host of other species, in the closing years of the 19th century. The once large herds in the embryonic Kruger National Park were reduced to a handful by the time the outbreak eventually subsided. Under the watchful eye of James Stevenson-Hamilton, the first warden, numbers slowly climbed back over the next few years, although the virus waited in the wings for a periodic encore. It has only recently been totally eradicated, amid much fanfare and optimism.
It’s not nice to be known for one’s diseases but buffaloes bear the burden with characteristic stoicism. Included in the list of lethal ailments, which they can pass on to domestic cattle, are corridor disease, foot-and-mouth and bovine tuberculosis. When the rains come, the grass grows and times are good for buffalo, so these diseases tend to remain largely dormant; and buffalo are, in any event, all confined to game reserves these days. Nevertheless, such is the comparative rarity of disease-free buffaloes that they pass between game ranchers for huge sums of money.
Happily, buffalo are probably better known for being members of the Big Five, the exclusive group of animals designated by the big-game hunters of yesteryear as the most dangerous to hunt on foot. Given the undoubted credentials of the other four, it’s no mean feat to have been awarded the honour. To merit it, quite a few minor European aristocrats must have lost their pith helmets and met their maker on a buffalo’s horns.
As far as is known, buffalo don’t cut a notch in their horns for every human being they’ve killed, but if they did, the tally would probably be impressive, even today. Nevertheless, a sense of perspective needs to be maintained, and the golly-gosh lists that appe
ar here and there should be met with caution. Domestic cattle kill a surprisingly large number of people around the world every year, usually by accident, but then so do fudge sundaes.
When somebody isn’t trying to shoot them, buffalo are generally peaceful and content. In a large herd they feel secure and, while cautious, if they see something new or unusual, they are often overcome by curiosity. They are second only to giraffe for their propensity to stand and stare, often in the middle of the road when you’re in a hurry to get to the camp toilets. When they do get spooked and stampede, it’s usually because they’ve caught a whiff of lion, the nemesis for which they reserve most of their ire and indignation.
Despite looking a bit of a shambles, a herd of buffalo is actually reasonably well organised and surprisingly democratic, at least in terms of their travel arrangements. When they move off en masse to find fresh pastures, they plod after two or three randomly appointed individuals, usually female, and never the dominant bull. He’s usually somewhere towards the front and in the centre, the safest place. Nevertheless, if they do run into a pride of lions or some other threat, the big enchilada soon comes forward to confront the aggressors, joined by other bulls. Behind them the calves and females keep to the centre.
Lions pride themselves on being crafty and will do their best to isolate an individual, though the outcome is by no means certain even when they succeed. Buffalo are among the few species to demonstrate true altruism, coming to the aid of one of their fellows at considerable risk to themselves. This is especially likely to happen if the victim is a juvenile and bellowing loudly about its unfortunate predicament. Pitched battles between herds of buffalo rescuing one of their own from a pride of lions are well documented. The fact that a young victim sometimes emerges, a bit wobbly on its feet but otherwise intact, shows just how extraordinarily tough a buffalo can be.
Old buffaloes, like old elephants, have dental issues, and when the time comes, they leave the herd to find a place by the river. Two or three cantankerous old codgers, who have all reached retirement age together, often hang out, enjoying the soft aquatic vegetation and rolling around in the mud to ease their creaking joints and rid themselves of parasites. Such individuals often have massive horns, a lifetime in the making, and it was inevitable that big-game hunters on their grand safaris would home in on them. The old buffalo’s one advantage was that he knew all the grassy corridors and nooks and crannies of the bovine equivalent of the Shady Acres retirement home. So even if he was wounded he could still find a way to circle round, come up behind, and toss his inept tormentor into the great hereafter. Of such stuff, legends are made.
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LEOPARD
The Romans imagined a panther with a large circular spot on its back that waxed and waned with the phases of the moon. For the rest, its coat was pitch black, blending seamlessly with the night. This remarkable beast attracted its prey with the sweetness of its breath, each exhalation being so enticing as to be irresistible to other creatures.
That may sound implausible but the panther – though never a distinct species – is real enough. The name is applied to any large cat, typically a leopard or a jaguar, whose coat appears black due to an excess of melanin, the stuff that gives us our own skin colour. The cat’s spots and rosettes are still there, though usually only visible in bright sunlight. It seems fair to assume that a melanistic leopard, and perhaps one or two jugs of wine, contributed to the conjuring up of the Romans’ fabulous lunar creature.
Leopards have no need of magic or even irresistible breath because their spotted coat plays with light and textures in the bush to render the cat practically invisible. Even when stared at from close quarters in thick undergrowth, a leopard often only resolves into startling clarity after several minutes, like the trick image in a visual puzzle. Adding to this talent, their compact size enables them to conceal themselves in places that would be an impossibly tight fit for a lion or a tiger.
Leopards are the least specialised and the most adaptable of all the big cats. Eight subspecies, differentiated by size and not much else, live in a wide range of habitats, from semi-deserts to tropical forests, on plains and in mountainous regions, extending from Southeast Asia to the tip of southern Africa. In places where the lion and the tiger have long since disappeared, the leopard manages to cling on, including close to towns and cities in Africa. Seeming ghost-like at times, they have the unnerving habit of reappearing in settled areas where they’ve long been deemed extinct, and occasionally pop up where they’re least expected.
Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, opens with the mention of a frozen leopard found near the mountain summit and, although it’s a work of fiction, his reference is based on fact. In 1926 a climber named Richard Reusch reported finding the frozen carcass of a leopard at approximately 5,570 metres, close to the summit of Kibo Peak, and took a photograph to prove it. He surmised that the leopard had been pursuing a goat, whose remains he also found close by. The snow line was a lot lower in those days before global warming, and pursuer and pursued were presumably caught in a sudden blizzard.
Obviously dogged determination doesn’t always pay off, but one sure-fire way for a species to enhance its survival prospects is not to be too picky about what it’s prepared to eat. Where available, a leopard’s preferred prey is medium-sized antelope such as impala and bushbuck. An adult impala provides meals for several days and represents a good return on the considerable effort expended in stalking it, killing it and hoisting it up into a tree. Without the benefit of refrigeration, the leftovers do tend to get a bit iffy by day three or four, but leopards aren’t unduly fussed about that.
In areas where large prey is not as readily available, such as the mountains of South Africa’s Western Cape province, local leopards make more frequent kills and eat smaller meals, typically consisting of dassies, duikers, porcupines, rodents and birds. These leopards themselves tend to be smaller than their bushveld or forest cousins.
Of all the animals killed and eaten by leopards, a disconcerting number are plucked from the branches of our own family tree. A study in the Kruger Park suggested that up to 70 per cent of baboon deaths could be attributed to leopards, while in other areas a systematic examination of leopard scats has shown that over half of all mammal species eaten by local leopards are primates.
There is ample palaeontological evidence that leopards frequently dined on our own direct ancestors, and even today they haven’t entirely struck us off the menu. The current world record for chomping humans is held by the Panar leopard, which killed and ate about 400 people in India in 1910. The runner-up, with a comparatively modest tally of 125, hailed from the same general area. Both were eventually shot by Jim Corbett, the legendary slayer of Indian man-eaters. By comparison, the two man-eating lions of Tsavo in Kenya killed about 120 railway construction workers between them.
From time to time there are still isolated instances of leopards attacking people, but along with virtually every other creature, they are now much more threatened than threatening. Uncertain numbers still live outside game reserves in Africa and Asia, avoiding contact with people rather than targeting them as prey. They are the last of the great land-based predators to be unconfined, now living, alas, by the light of a waning moon.
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LAMMERGEIER
Aeschylus, esteemed poet and the originator of dramatic theatre in ancient Greece, probably deserved a less farcical death, but the Fates, as he knew better than most, can be cruel. Had he used a sunshade on that sunny day in Sicily long ago, the falling tortoise might have been deflected and wouldn’t have hit him on the top of his bald head and killed him.
The bird that hefted the tortoise into the sky in the first place was in all likelihood a bearded vulture, relatively common in the skies of the time, and still known for its habit of picking up tortoises, some quite substantial, and dropping them from a great height in order to smash their shell. They often choose the same rounded rock as a target, evid
enced by the fact that the immediate surrounds of such anvils are littered with fragments of bone and shell. Lost in thought about his next epic, Aeschylus obviously chose the wrong moment to wander through the drop zone.
The bearded vulture, also known as the lammergeier or ‘lamb slayer’, is not a true vulture and it doesn’t routinely slay lambs, let alone poets. Despite its size and ferocious, eagle-like demeanour, it is quite a timid bird and will quickly defer to other vultures around a carcass. By and large, adult bearded vultures don’t join in the bun fight around carcasses at all, and it’s only adolescent birds that try their luck, albeit with a distinct lack of commitment. Rotting meat seems relatively unappealing, especially if one has to muscle through a pack of bald-headed grotesques to get at it. The bulk of the birds’ diet thus consists of bone, and more especially, bone marrow. They can crack open small bones with their powerful beak; bigger ones they bash against a nearby rock or resort to the hoist-and-drop method.
A lammergeier doesn’t look like other vultures. It has feathers on its head and neck and a dapper pair of feather pantaloons. It’s not the kind of outfit you’d want to get all messed up with guts and gore, which perhaps helps to explain why they tend to hang back from the bloody, all-you-can-eat, pass-the-ketchup feasts that other vultures indulge in. For a bird so well dressed and fastidious, it comes as no surprise that they enjoy taking an occasional bath in shallow mountain pools, and routinely apply cosmetics. Their breast feathers are naturally white, not the rich, warm orange colour that is generally evident, but they are invariably stained that way as a consequence of bathing in dust that is rich in iron oxides.
Cat among the pigeons Page 8
