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East Africa - Drought Conditions



 
 
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  #11  
Old May 4th, 2006, 08:36 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

On 3 May 2006 02:11:08 -0700, VK wrote:

Hans-Georg, that's what I thought Bill had mentioned in his article
(link in his first post in this thread) - that the pride males had
abandoned the kill and the 2 nomads had taken it over. Given that 2
females and a sub-adult were hanging around, I was quite surprised as
well.

If I misunderstood/misread, mea culpa.


Vandit,

no big deal. We're all learning.

I only wanted to say that lions of one pride never tolerate
lions of another or nomads in their vicinity. Either they know
each other or they avoid or fight each other.

There are always some unusual exceptions, but they are rare.

Hans-Georg

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  #12  
Old May 4th, 2006, 09:47 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

I replied to your earlier post but I think the server ate it, or at
least I don't see it ... if this is a rehas of the same ideas I
apologize ...

Hans-Georg Michna writes ...

I only wanted to say that lions of one pride never tolerate
lions of another or nomads in their vicinity.


Sorry Hans-Georg, you are wrong about this, at least for the Serengeti
lions. It may be true for smaller areas where prides are more
separated and strangers are rare (like Nairobi National Park) but it's
not true for the Serengeti prides.

These lions have been studied continuously since George Schaller's work
in 1969 and one of the "myths" they discounted was the one you just
repeated ... basically in the woodlands these lions have fairly large
territories (the Sereonera pride had 210 sq-km for example at the time
of Schaller's study) and the territories actually overlap with other
prides at the edges (four different prides overlapped part of the
Seronera pride's turf, for example). Also, typically 20-33% of the
adult lions are nomads at any given time (lower % in wet season when
many nomads temporarily follow the wildebeest to the short grass
plains) ... so you have up to 1/3 the lions unattached to prides yet
living in areas owned by prides ... they are "tolerated" (to use your
word) so long as they don't try to kill the small cubs or mate with the
in-heat females, or fight over kills. This included feeding on kills
and in some cases even sharing kills. The exception is when a group of
nomads attempts a take-over, which often means a fight to the death.
Schaller spends most of a chapter in his book discussing the
nomad-pride interactions, based on many hours of observation.

This and much more is covered in detail in Schaller's book "The
Serengeti Lion" and also 20 years later in Craig Packer's book "Into
Africa" ... Packer is still the director of the Lion Research Project
ongoing at the Serengeti Wildlife Research Center, about 4 miles from
where the fight I photographed occurred. These are probably the most
well-researched wild lions in the world.

All that being said, it wasn't clear what the social status of the
lions I photographed was ... even Schaller said he sometimes needed to
watch lions for several weeks to be sure whether they were nomads or in
a pride ... our driver hadn't seen these males before but he thought
they might be new pride males that recently took over a pride. I was
skeptical (realizing the driver usually knows more than the client
because one of them was in very bad physical shape, they looked too
young with patchy incomplete manes in an area where all the boss lions
had rock-star hairdos, and in that area you usually needed at least
three males in an alliance to defeat the residents and take over a
pride.

The guy I met on the plane had photographed 8 lions the day before on
this buffalo kill and said one looked like a pride male, with seven
females ... he said they ate and then abandoned the carcass and these
two younger more-desperate males claimed it. He thought for sure they
were nomads (he works for the Tz gov't and takes four safaris a year to
Serengeti and seemed very credible to me). But we could be wrong.

Also, the status of the other three lions wasn't clear ... it almost
looked like a mature female with two nearly-adult cubs ... when there's
a take-over (per Packer's research) the new males kill all the cubs to
force the females into estrous so when the cubs are almost grown the
female will often split off from the pride for a while to finish
raising them. Given the stubble of a mane on the young male I think
this might have occurred here.

Another possibility is that this female simply dispersed from the pride
during the rainy season ... when the zebra and wildebeest and most
gazelles have left the woodlands for the plains the females often have
trouble getting enough to eat unless they are in a group killing
buffalo. If females are in a good-sized group and are mostly killing
small stuff like impala the cubs never get a bite to eat and there
isn't enough for the adults either, so according to Packer's research
the females will often disperse and kill smaller animals for just
themselves and their cubs. I got the impression this was what was
happening here but the only way to know is to follow them for a week, I
guess.

At any rate, the lion society in the Serengeti is pretty complex and
it's worth reading the research of Schaller and Packer to get a better
feel for it, I think.

Bill

  #13  
Old May 5th, 2006, 11:07 AM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

Interesting stuff Bill.

Once again you have taken some sensational photos and I'm envious of your
equipment - but the equipment is only half the battle and you use it with
great skill.

I'm off for a week in Tanzania at the end of June, then 10 days in Sth
Africa on the way home. Your posts have got me more enthusiastic than I
already was. I'll be hoping to at least come close to matching your
sightings of the big cats.

Regards

Michael


  #14  
Old May 6th, 2006, 09:40 AM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

On 4 May 2006 13:47:08 -0700, Bill wrote:

Hans-Georg Michna wrote:


I only wanted to say that lions of one pride never tolerate
lions of another or nomads in their vicinity.


Sorry Hans-Georg, you are wrong about this, at least for the Serengeti
lions. It may be true for smaller areas where prides are more
separated and strangers are rare (like Nairobi National Park) but it's
not true for the Serengeti prides.


Bill,

thanks for the interesting information! I guess I have some
reading to do. One reason for my belief is that I have seen
lions very often over many years, and I have always seen lions
that were very clearly one pride. I have also seen very small
prides, typically one male, one female, and one to three cubs.

These small prides always moved carefully ("with their heads
down") and usually moved out of the way of a big nearby pride
whose location I knew.

I once observed such a small one-family pride in Amboseli when I
heard a nearby call from another pride. They listened, then
immediately moved away, very obviously fearful of the other
pride.

But then this was always in Kenya where the lion density may be
lower and the areas more restricted. Most of my other
observations were in Masai Mara, where the local territorial
prides are usually known and easy to recognize.

It is also possible that small family prides with cubs are more
fearful of other prides and behave differently, because their
cubs are vulnerable and might get killed.

Thanks again, I love to assimilate new information. And I admire
your photos, I almost forgot to say.

Hans-Georg

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  #15  
Old May 7th, 2006, 06:59 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

Hans-Georg Michna writes ...

Bill,
thanks for the interesting information!
One reason for my belief is that I have seen
lions very often over many years, and I have always seen lions
that were very clearly one pride. I have also seen very small
prides, typically one male, one female, and one to three cubs.
... These small prides always moved carefully


Hans-Georg, I realize you have more experience in Africa and with lions
than I do and I respect that (I read your Kenya web pages carefully
before going ... my experience agrees with most of what you wrote
but the one thing that I was disagreeing with was when you said "Pride
males never tolerate any stranger males within their territory" because
it didn't agree with the research of Schaller for the Serengeti.

Schaller takes pains to make it clear the behavior he observed was for
the Serengeti lions and that research in other areas like Lake Manyara
and Nairobi National Parks and Ngorongoro Crater lions showed different
behaviors because of their different environments (typically less space
and fewer 'new' lions wandering by). While he agrees with you that
pride males are 'antagonistic' toward other pride males and nomads he
also writes "Nomads sometimes lived for weeks or months within a pride
area, and prides wandered with impunity around areas usually occupied
by others" (pg 62 in the paperback edition of "The Serengeti Lion").
He seems to feel this is partly because the pride territories are
larger than in other areas and partly because with the wildebeest
migration you have large numbers of nomads drifting thru pride turf
several times a year following the migration, so the pride males will
aggressively defend if a stranger seems to challenge them but will let
them pass if there is no challenge ... otherwise they'd spend too much
time fighting, given that up to 1/3 the adult lions in the area are
nomads in the dry season.

I have also seen very small prides, typically one
male, one female, and one to three cubs


It's interesting to compare this to the Serengeti ... Schaller lists
the pride sizes for the 14 main prides they studied for the first three
years before he wrote his book ... none of these prides had a single
male because there were so many nomads willing to challenge for
leadership ( all prides were controlled by 2-4 males in coalitions) and
none had a single female (one pride had two females and two males, a
few had 3-4 females, the rest up to 11 adult females) ... this is in
Table 2, pg 415 in case you can find this book at the library.

The nomad females were studied in more detail for Craig Packer's book
and of course most of these would be single mothers ... IIRC none of
these nomad females were able to raise a single cub because the cubs
were always killed when she would have to leave to hunt, either by
hyenas or other lions. So a pride with a single female would I assume
also have a tough time since the males don't help with feeding or
babysitting the cubs.

I might also point out that Schaller had a hard time distinguishing
nomads from pride members. I would think it would be easy (when I
first went I assumed groups of females with cubs were in a pride, for
example) but the more he studied the lions the more subtle the
interactions. As an example of this he mentions that the nomads would
often join together peacefully for a while (few hours, few days,
occasionally a few weeks on the plains during the wet season) and it
can be hard to tell whether they are a pride or not ... from page 65
.... "Some large groups {of nomads} may persist in one locality for
months and give the appearance of a pride before sudddenly splitting.
The compositions of three such large groups we 2 males, 7 females,
and 2 cubs; 5 males and 7 females; 2 males, 3 females, and 8 cubs."
Had I seen one of these groups I would have immediately thought it was
a pride, but this would be incorrect.

He also mentions how hard it was to ID all the members of a pride
because all members were rarely together and he felt it took several
months of observation to be certain lions were members of a given pride
.... "On one occasion I located several lionesses and cubs of the Masai
pride. Eleven kilometers away were several others belonging to the
same pride, and 5 km further on were the rest. The casual observer
would have no intimation that these animals belonged in fact to the
same pride. Not once in over three years of observation did I see all
the members of the Seronera pride together." I found that last
statement surprising given that for most of the study there were only 8
adult lions in this pride and it's the pride located closest to the
Serengeti Research Institute headquarters, so the most easily observed.

In reading this I remember a post from last fall where the guy was
surprised to see two groups of lions not too far apart ... from
Schaller's work you could reasonably infer they were likely members of
the same pride, though at least in the Serengeti you couldn't be sure
without observing both groups for quite a while. Interesting stuff ...

Bill

  #16  
Old May 11th, 2006, 06:07 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

Bill,

thanks for all the interesting information again!

The thought occurred to me that perhaps some lions that are
occasionally together actually know each other or are even
related. We cannot know.

Cats are always good for a surprise. (:-)

While you mention the "Seronera pride", I once walked into a
pride on my way from Seronera Lodge to the airfield, which is
about 4 km away from the lodge. Those were six more or less
adult females, sleeping in the high grass under a tree. Suddenly
their heads popped up in front of me, because I was going
exactly to that tree. I didn't see a male.

They didn't take me for lunch either. They walked away instead.
I found this behavior rather pleasing, I can assure you.

Hans-Georg

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  #17  
Old May 14th, 2006, 06:15 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

On Thu, 11 May 2006 22:13:57 +0100, Pat Anderson wrote:

did you check the link I gave you re Big Cat Diary?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature
It`s filmed in the Mara and will be on air in July, this is unusual as
we usually see the programmes in March.


Pat,

the link switches me to http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/ , which is
something like a cover page.

Hans-Georg

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  #18  
Old May 14th, 2006, 08:45 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

Pat Anderson wrote ...

Hans Georg,
did you check the link I gave you re Big Cat Diary?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature
It`s filmed in the Mara and will be on air in July,


Hans-Georg Michna replied ...

Pat,
the link switches me to http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/ , which is
something like a cover page.


Try this link instead ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/programm...cd/index.shtml

Bill

  #19  
Old May 14th, 2006, 09:58 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

In message , Hans-Georg
Michna writes
On Thu, 11 May 2006 22:13:57 +0100, Pat Anderson wrote:

did you check the link I gave you re Big Cat Diary?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature
It`s filmed in the Mara and will be on air in July, this is unusual as
we usually see the programmes in March.


Pat,

the link switches me to http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/ , which is
something like a cover page.

Hans-Georg

Hans Georg,
BBC have had a change to the page, you just need to go to the bottom
of the page and click on TV and Radio follow up, you will see Big Cat
Diary there, Planet Earth, a recent series, is also worth looking at.
Pat
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  #20  
Old May 18th, 2006, 02:42 PM posted to rec.travel.africa
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Default East Africa - Drought Conditions

On 14 May 2006 12:45:27 -0700, Bill wrote:

Try this link instead ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/programm...cd/index.shtml


Bill, Pat,

thanks, found the page. Lots of stuff there, ran out of time.
Have to pack first. (:-)

Hans-Georg

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