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| Mother elephant and her calf, Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. |
My friend Karen Minkowski has visited Africa many times and has contributed many times to The Intrepid Tourist, sharing her beautiful photographs and insights about the animals. She recently went to northern Tanzania, visiting four national parks: Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara and Tarangire. This is the last or her reports of that trip.
Our final destination was Tarangire National Park, where elephants provided some wonderful moments. But first, here is one of the elephants’ closest living relatives, the rock hyrax, which is about the size of a large rodent. Along with manatees and dugongs, elephants and rock hyrax share several characteristics. Among these: their tusks (not seen here) grow out of their incisors, as do those of elephants, while most mammal tusks grow from their canines. Also, their testes are internal, unlike those of most other mammals.
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| Rock Hyraxes. |
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| Zebra seeking shade. |
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Mixed
herd: Wildebeest (foreground), Coke’s Hartebeest (center), Zebra. |
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| Yellow-collared lovebird. |
One
evening we watched elephants at the river. Here they are enjoying covering
themselves in mud. They sometimes seemed blissful as they wallowed.
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| Mother and young calf. |
A mother and her very young calf came down to the river. After they drank, the female briefly wallowed in the mud. As they began their return uphill, the calf seemed to struggle on the steep slope and often fell but always got itself up again.
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An adult
female rubs her bottom on a rock face after a full-body wallow. |
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| African fish eagle. |
One
afternoon our guide stopped the vehicle near an adult female with several young
ones. Almost immediately the female, followed by the others, started walking straight
towards the vehicle, looking us right in the eye – or so it seemed. She was
unwavering in her approach. It was a little unnerving.
She just
kept coming. My friend started to roll up the window and the guide said calmly,
don’t roll it up. We suggested that we move out of the elephants’ way; he said,
no, we’re fine. We just sat watching, trusting the guide but also on edge. When
the female elephant was two feet from the car, she suddenly made a sharp right
turn, then a left right in front of the vehicle, with the young following
behind. They continued on their way. It turned out we’d parked on their trail,
blocking access to it, but the adult female treated our vehicle as a
non-threatening obstacle to go around.
In my nervous state, I’d failed to take note of her expression and body language, which you can see in the photo above. She shows no sign of aggression: her ears and trunk are relaxed, as are her eyes, even though she’d been staring right at us.
The same thing happened the next day with another small elephant group, also led by an adult female. This time I was relaxed. The female turned when she was very close to the car and stood in front of it. One of her young came so close that I could have touched it (which would have been stupid, perhaps disastrous). The elephants showed no interest in what was inside the Land Cruiser. These vehicles are a part of their environment, and generally visitors to the Parks keep their hands and heads respectfully inside when near wildlife.
