Elephants mourn their dead

And break a trail cam holder

Hyena sightings have dried up here, apart from a few fleeting glimpses. We still don’t know where the den has moved to. But today I thought I’d provide an update on the trail cam footage I obtained recently, which has to do with elephants – these are abundant here (almost too abundant, to the detriment of the health of the vegetation and trees in the area… but that’s another story).

On September 2, I set up 2 trail cams at the location of the elephant carcass (see my post from Sept 1), hoping to get videos of hyena activity. While unlikely to be useful for my mission to improve the species’ reputation, it could be a good chance to learn more about social dynamics and possibly to track them back to their (assumed to be new) den location.

One trail cam was set up on a metal post in the ground, pointed at the carcass, inside a metal cage (constructed by one of the maintenance workers here - apparently they like to chew plastic things to pieces).

The second one was strapped to a tree trunk a bit further away, high enough to be out of reach from hyenas. This one captured some baboons, nyala and a bush pig.

Two days later (Sept. 4) I got word from one of the guides who had been walking nearby that one of the cameras had been “put down by baboons”.  Akani and I drove there as soon as we could, and found the caged camera on the ground but intact (phew!), still tethered to the bush it was next to. The aluminum post it had been connected to had been snapped in 2 at the base and near the top where the ball bearing was.

We anxiously popped the memory card into a card reader connected to my phone to review the footage. While we did capture 1 or 2 hyenas milling about, the most interesting images were of some elephants walking near the carcass, on occasion approaching it slowly and touching it or the ground and vegetation near it with their trunks. I believe this represents mourning by members of the dead elephant’s herd and is very moving. Here are two of the videos - I hope to share more once connected to faster internet.

The last images before the camera was knocked down are of an elephant near the carcass about 5 minutes prior on the afternoon of Sept 3, so I am assuming it was an elephant, not a baboon, that did the damage. Things get real in the bush!