Page 37 - Silver Lakes June 2021

NATURE

Remember the programme, Mad Mike
and Mark not long ago? They performed
flamboyant and pointless antics, getting
perilously close to dangerous animals,
seemingly to show off just like circus lion
tamers used to when they put their heads
in lions’ mouths. Other TV programmes
depict wild animals in an anthropomorphic
way, often insinuating there can be a sort
of Doctor Dolittle bond between humans
and wildlife.

Influenced by this, a few years ago some
Southeast Asian students driving in a
South African lion park saw a group of
lions and two of the students got out of
their vehicle and casually walked over to
them wanting to pose for photographs. Buffalo – an uncompromising beast. They
They were instantly killed. can be as docile as cattle, but taken by
surprise, anything can happen.
About that time, I was driving a Hungarian
visitor in Kruger Park and stopped because
there were elephants in the road. My guest
leapt out of the car and ran towards the couple decided to camp in bear country to shouted, “Voetsek!” and the rhino veered
elephants gesticulating for me to take his prove the point that bears would not harm away. Talking of which, a friend from
picture. Fortunately, the elephants fled. you if you did not harm them. Soon after Johannesburg was in a Connecticut store
the tragedy, a man was witnessed in the when he saw a group of agitated people
Nature has always been neutral. As John same national park luring bears with food unable to control a frenzied, snarling dog.
Burroughs wrote a century ago, “Nature offerings and then whacking them with My friend pushed his way through and
does not care whether the hunter slays a stick. He explained, “I’m teaching them shouted “Voetsek!”. The dog slunk off.
the beast or the beast the hunter. She will that humans are bad.”
make good compost of them both and her Most animals have predictable ‘flight
ends are prospered whichever succeeds.” When at night lions walked into James distances’, the distance at which they
Stevenson-Hamilton’s vegetable garden decide whether to flee or take aggressive
We can make pets of lions, even romp at Sukuza (he was warden of Kruger Park action. South African hunter, FJ Pootman,
with them. We can tame African elephants from 1902 to 1946), he would go outside writing of his experiences almost 80
enough to ride on their backs. But in the and, in his high, piping voice shout “Shoo!” years ago, calculated these distances and
wilds, no bond exists between us and They would flee. Rural villagers resort to concluded that lions retreat when a person
them. Wild animals live in fear of man and shouting to keep lions, hippos, elephants gets to within 80 metres, elephants at 150
even some normally timid species, such as and wild pigs at bay and have turned metres in open country, and crocodiles at
the sable antelope, tsessebe and giraffe, charging rhinoceroses. South African 150 metres when discovered out of water.
have been known to attack, lethally, in farmer, R de la B Barker, writing in African He said most antelope rush off at about
their defence. Wild Life magazine many years ago, told 20 metres. This last one, if it were accurate
how one of his workmen turned a buffalo for those days, which I doubt, certainly
This naivety about bonding with wild nine times in succession by screaming no longer applies. Nowadays they’d flee
creatures was epitomised in 2003 in at it. Big male baboons will repulse a at, at least, 50 to 60 metres. But outside
Alaska when Timothy Treadwell (46) and hunting leopard by screaming at it. Ian protected areas, many antelope will flee at
his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard (37), were Player, who was for many years a wildlife 200 - 300 metres.
killed and partially eaten by a bear or conservationist in Zululand, was with a
bears near Kaflia Bay in Katmai National group of editors in the Umfolozi Game A course in an Mpumalanga college for
Park, southwest of Anchorage. Treadwell, Reserve (now part of Hluhluwe-Imfolozi prospective game rangers offered advice
a popular ‘eco warrior’ on Discovery Park) when a white rhino charged. There on what distances various wildlife species
Channel, would get up close to brown was one tree and, while the editors will remain and not feel threatened once
bears (powerful cousins of the grizzly) stood one behind the other behind they become aware of one’s presence.
unarmed and call out, ‘I love you.’ The the tree, Player stood his ground and To move to within a certain distance will
cause an animal to display displacement
activity – just as a domestic cat (or even
a lion) when uncertain about a situation,
If you're on foot and the hippo is out of will pretend to groom itself while deciding
the water, stay as far away as possible. what action to take. An elephant will make
as if it is feeding and then, as you draw
closer into its flight-or-fight zone, it will
decide whether to attack or flee. The ‘no
nonsense’ hippopotamus, throughout its
range, has been indicted as Africa’s most
predictably aggressive mammal when
approached – hence its reputation as the
world’s deadliest large land mammal.

INTRA MUROS JUNE 2021 35