Today was a day of long game drives. We headed out before sunrise, came back in time for lunch, and headed out again in the late afternoon, returning well after sunset. Ruaha is a savanah, but with more shrubs and scrub that the vast plains in a place like Serengeti. We saw a few “standard East African species” today that we had not seen in Selous, like ostrich, grant’s gazelles and zebra. However many of these “plains species” have adapted to the Ruaha climate and landscape, and are subtly different than their northern counterparts. An example would be the plains zebra, which breeds all year round here (rather than seasonally in Serengeti) and have developed different predator avoidance techniques. It is speculated that should any of these animals be moved to the Serengeti they would not survive.
We spent a fair bit of time today observing a large pride of lions resting and planning their next hunting move. Other trucks informed us that the pride had initially taken down a buffalo, only to be chased away from it by others in the herd. We speculate that the large proportion of young lions in the pride may have contributed to the lack of success through impulsiveness. It was certainly fun to watch the family dynamics as they woke at the end of the day.
During lunch we had the rare opportunity to meet with Aaron Nicholas, the lead field researcher in this part of Tanzania for the Wildlife Conservation Society. WCS has worked with government of Tanzania and other organizations since 2014 to dramatically reduce the level of elephant ivory poaching in this part of Tanzania and working to open game corridors between the national parks. We had a great discussion about various ideas on how to improve and extend their data collection and analysis, including using citizen science techniques.
Pictured: young lion yawning, grant’s gazelle running, variable sunbird, black-backed jackal
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