Eles Eles Everywhere!

So in the same way that most people shorten "hippopotamus" to "hippo," and "rhinoceros" to "rhino," many people here shorten "elephant" to "ele."  And I saw a bunch of eles this week. And it's only Wednesday :)

On Monday, I went out with Renata.  As I think I've mentioned before, she's here doing senior thesis research under Rob.  She's looking at the effect of being on or off a termite mound and being on or off a glade on seed predation by rodents, among other things.  So in order to explain what a glade is, I need to first explain what a boma is.  A boma is an area of land that a cattle herder "fences" in with acacia trees to protect his livestock from predators at night.  With so many animals there and so much waste, the land becomes pretty nutrient rich.  When the cattle herder moves on and disassembles the boma (or I guess the trees might just kind of go back to the soil, I'm not sure), what's left is a super fertile area of land.  Which attracts lots of herbivores.  The land has pretty dense grass and few trees, and it stays that way for up to decades after it was last a boma.  When it's like that, the area is called a glade.  So Renata's looking at sites that are either on a glade or not, and within each of those, either on a termite mound or not.  It seems that there is a higher density of rodents on the glades and on the mounds than not, and that's part of what she's interested in.  Monday was mostly about gathering GPS points for the sites where she's going to collect data, and collecting acacia drepanolobium seeds for the experiment.  

Acacia drepanolobium

Black cotton soil (which is the soil type where we were working) gets really nasty to drive in when it rains.  You basically just get stuck--it sucks you in.  So as soon as we felt a few rain drops, we booked it back to the center.  By the time we returned, it was absolutely pouring.  The most substantial rainstorm since I've been here.  Enough so that our roof (which is thatched) leaked, but fortunately it missed all the beds and only got the middle of the floor wet.

So much rain

On Tuesday morning I went out with Sandy, a Kenyan researcher who's here studying elephants.  He's looking at the population dynamics of elephants around Mpala, and to do so, he needs to be able to individually recognize each animal.  He uses markings on their tusks and their ears to do that.  He looks at the behavior of the animals, and is interested in the differences between "resident" elephants (they've been recorded as being around Mpala for at least 6 months) and "migrant" elephants (they haven't).  He's also interested in the differences between families who have had experience with poachers (they tend to run away from a vehicle when you approach) and families who haven't (they tend to be calmer, or just skittish).

So we went out for about 3.5 hours, driving around looking for elephants.  When we found a group, we drove up to it really close to identify the individuals and record which families we saw.  The first thing Sandy taught me was how to correctly approach an elephant (in a car) : you need to approach them from the front, otherwise they will feel like you are chasing them and run away pretty quickly.  And you won't get to see their faces.  I got the closest I've ever been to an elephant yesterday, probably only 10 feet away.  It was so cool. Sandy also taught me how to tell the difference between male and female elephants: the females have a sharp angle from the top of their heads to the foreheads when seen in profile, and the same area on a male is much more rounded.

The elephant's reaction when we drove up really close to the family.
 It's in this position that Sandy is most easily able to identify individuals.

We got really close.

So I've been asked several times while here what my favorite African animal is.  Definitely up there are baby elephants.  I was pretty sure about that before yesterday, but our time out in the field solidified that.  Sandy was able to tell me the rough age of each individual we saw.  The youngest baby we saw was only about two months old. 

Such a little baby!

Second in from the right, the three eles there looked like Matryoshka dolls to me.
Sandy had no idea what I was talking about when I said that. 

One of the bigger families we saw. I counted 16 individuals. 

In the area where I took that last photo, I also watched an elephant completely knock over an acacia tree.  I've seen the damage from that, but I've never actually seen an elephant do it.  Granted, these trees were pretty small, but still.

Then yesterday evening there was a sundowner.  We went to Lookout Rock, which is a spot I hadn't been to yet.  It was a smaller location than some of the places we'd been to before, but just as nice.  We sat up on a rock and were surrounded by savanna.  There were too many clouds to see much of the sunset, but it was lovely just hanging around, eating popcorn and talking.

The bit of the sunset that we did see.

The group (the flash was super bright).

This morning I went out again with Renata.  We placed seeds out for the predation experiment.  We didn't go out again this afternoon because the black cotton roads are still too wet to be completely safe.  So it's just been an afternoon of getting stuff checked off my to-do list, with a nap in the very near future :)

Edit: There was indeed a nap this afternoon, which was glorious.  And then another sundowner, back to Eagle Scout Point (where we went on Saturday evening).  It was really nice.  Now I'm back at the center; we've finished dinner and I'm winding down for the night.  So good night everyone!

The view from Eagle Scout Point.

Also: good luck to all the Roxbury swimmers competing tomorrow in Trials! Swim fast, and I'll be cheering you guys on from here!