Nocturnal encounters: Aardwolves of the Kalahari

in #biology7 years ago (edited)

A few years back I was lucky enough to live and work in the Southern part of the Kalahari desert. Due to the nature of my research (on bat-eared foxes) I worked mainly at night, wandering the desert with a torch and a back-pack observing my study species. Of course, a happy side effect of this was that I often encountered other nocturnal species, and got to spend time in the company of other highly unusual animals which people rarely see such as aardvarks and the beautifully striped Aardwolf (Proteles cristatus).

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An Aardwolf on the lookout

A bit of background on aardwolves

Aardwolves are members of the hyena family which feed exclusively on termites, using their long, sticky tongues to lick them up from the ground. They are almost exclusively myrmecophagous (termite/ant eating animals), though in the aardwolf's case this diet consists primarily of Trinervitermes, a fact which keep them out of conflict with other myrmecophages, as these termites secrete a compound most animals find repellent.

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Trinervitermes

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Aardwolf range

They are a species I had wanted to see in the wild for a very long time, and eventually I was fortunate enough to do so. These are those encounters:

First impressions last

My first such encounter began with the fox I was observing suddenly pausing mid-stride to stare unnervingly into the dark and start emitting a low, ominous growl. I looked in the direction he was staring, shining my inadequate torch into the night and wondering what was about to emerge over the dune we were facing. This is always a fun experience in the dark, alone and on foot. After a couple of tense minutes I saw movement, something trotting towards us and found myself for the first time face to face with one of the desert night's most unusual inhabitants.

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And you thought hyenas were ugly!

I was absolutely transfixed as he silently approached, flared his mane at us and then, just as quietly, slipped away back into the dark. The whole encounter lasted about five minutes, during which time of course my fox took the opportunity to ditch me and left me wandering home with a big, stupid smile on my face at having encountered a creature, albeit briefly, which I'd wanted to see for years.

Second time's the charm

My second encounter was some months later and happened as I was searching fruitlessly for a fox. I caught something in my torchlight, eye-shine in the distance at just about the right height, then another set of eyes that stayed perfectly still as I approached. Those aren't foxes, I realized belatedly as the stripes flickered in my torchlight. I found myself staring at two young, utterly inexperienced aardwolf pups that looked back at me with the same brazen curiosity.

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Yes, they're even cuter when they're this size

Being the hard-boiled zoologist that I am I absolutely did NOT make the sort of ridiculous gurgly cooing sound most people reserve for little kittens. I didn't. I swear. Ok I did but c'mon! Those things were cute. At any rate, the pups seemed not to mind as they went about their exploratory business allowing me to follow at a respectful distance. I spent about half an hour with them that night, before they retreated to the entrance of a nearby den and simply sat watching me, with no apparent fear or idea of what I even was.

It was the sort of magical moment that led me into my profession in the first place, an absolutely peaceful and mutually curious close encounter with a rarely seen and spectacular creature. As I turned to leave, the pups curled up, quite content to remain outside the den, presumably awaiting their parents return or whatever the next strange thing was the night had to offer.

A final word

Like many species, these guys are persecuted due to a lack of knowledge about their biology. Local farmers often poison or shoot them, believing the aardwolves to be a danger to livestock. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. So if you ever happen to be in those parts of the world where the wild aardwolves roam, be sure to share that fact with the people whose land they roam on :)

Well, Happy Steeming People,
The Wise Fox

General aardwolf facts:
http://www.africat.org/fact/aardwolf
http://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_aardwolf.html

Images:
All images except pups and termite are from wikimedia commons, pups from:
http://boredomtherapy.com/aardwolf-is-cute/
termite: http://tolweb.org/onlinecontributors/app;jsessionid=B42800BC2DAA6FADCBDCC41A62FA5669?page=ViewImageData&service=external&sp=6845

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Back when I was a child, in the days when the only jobs open to women were as nurses, teachers, cashiers or secretaries, I decided I wanted to be a zoologist. I have no idea how I planned to make a living at that. Mostly, I wanted to hang out with animals, befriend them, watch them having babies and enjoying life. Your posts bring back those memories and I always enjoy reading them.

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Hey, @enchantedspirit thanks for stopping by :).

I'm glad my animal posts inspire - I enjoy writing them very much! As for making a living out of zoology? I think basically every zoologist who isn't David Attenborough is still trying to figure that one out 😂

Awesome shot! Yea it does seem like they get a bad reputation just cause there Night creatures!

Ur lucky to have encountered these creatures. Nice pics too

HI thanks :) these are not my pics though. Mostly from wikimedia commons. It's very difficult to photograph at night in the field when you're carrying a zillion other research tools :)

I'd never even heard of these guys before, they're amazing! Super jealous!

That was how I felt when after a year in the desert I'd still not seen a pangolin and 5 days after I left for the last time a friend sent me pictures of one shed encountered there 😭

Ahhh, brutal!

What about the people that have waited years to catch a glimpse of a snow or clouded leopard, let alone take a picture of one? I am always amazed by the patience and sharp senses of a zoologist :)

Yeah, those nat geo and bbc photographers are legends - they have unbelievable amounts of patience!

Oh my dog, they are so cute!!! ^_^

Yeah, absolutely charming creatures :)

Such beautiful creature breaks my heart knowing they are killed.

As always, it's a matter of education. People think they are protecting their interests but they really just need to learn about the species they are dealing with. I do understand it from the farmer's perspective as well. I stayed on a farm once where the owners lambs were being decimated by jackals at a rate of one a day, which is financially unsustainable, but even in such cases there are better methods than killing the animals which can be employed.

Thanks for reading :)

I would have thought that these creatures would stay away...you know be a little shy at approaching humans but seems like luck is on your side if you encountered them. Really wonderful pictures you took. Thanks for sharing them :)

I honestly think the pups had just never encountered a human before, so didn't know to be afraid ;)

Great post are they aard as in earth like the aardvark is?

I grew up watching a movie called Animals are beautiful people as such I have always had a fascination with the animals of the Kalahari, Sahara, and the White Namib.

Ah jeez, yes I meant to mention that 😆 Yes, aardwolf is literally "earth wolf"

And I plan on writing a few more Kalahari posts, so stay tuned ;)

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omg those pups must have been the cutest! What an adventure, I wonder why I have never heard of them before?

Actually I'm always surprised how few people have 🙂

I love hearing about your adventures.

his diet consists primarily of Trinervitermes, a fact which keep them out of conflict with other myrmecophages, as these termites secrete a compound most animals find repellent.

Evolution sure is amazing. Animals can develop just about any kind of defense, and sooner or later another species will come along that finds them delicious.

What's also very interesting is when an 'arms race' occurs between two particular species that leads to crazy specialization and adaptation in each. Certain beetles being able to process plant compounds from a particular genus of plants for example that are utterly toxic to everything else. I will probably do a post on that at some point :)

Oh please do - I've loved reading about these arms races since Richard Dawkins started talking about them in The Selfish Gene.

This summer I was moving a stone wall and I uncovered some spiders that were the most horrifying things I'd seen. But I looked them up and discovered that they subsist entirely on those roly-poly pill bugs that eat dead wood.

Imagine if we'd evolved to eat just one food. In a few thousand years our descendants might live exclusively on high-fructose corn syrup.

omg those are the cutest things ever!!! What were you studying down there specifically? Do you just gather data like "it ate a mouse at 10:42pm" or are you using any gear? gory details please!! :)

So with the bat eared foxes it was mainly behavioral observations, but also some experimental work (I.e. Presenting them with novel objects and seeing how they react etc). I will definitely write up a post about them at some point. Just need to find some of the pictures I have of them :).

ahhh I would love to read about that - especially the object reactions. Behaviour and how we study it is fascinating!

Then you should come study Birdie @dersnec - an indigenous rock pigeon raised by my neighbors, that somehow latched onto me, maybe as the first male that didn't shoo her away..who knows!?

Anyhow, it is not only territorial matters, where chasing even stray chickens many times her size happens, that is of her concern. She comes in daily for some cooing and wooing, which just isn't complete without a warm and friendly eye-fluttering cozy cuddle under my hand.

Absolutely amazing the correlation between her elementary behavior patterns and that of humans - too much tot talk about here!

Wow that sounds fun! Birds in particular have really fascinating behaviours, especially when it comes to relationships with humans. I'll definitely check it out!

A well composed post - thank you very much!

Reminds me of a time, many years back, I spent visiting a relative researching the ecology of desert scarabs on the Kuiseb river about 70 miles inland from Walvis Bay in what is now known as Namibia (Then officially "South West Africa").

If you guys want to see a beautiful picture of what to my mind is a natural wonder - a pencil sharp division between the mountainous red dunes to the South and the white(-ish) rocky flatland to the North, home of one of probably one of the most unique plant species in the world - Welwitschia mirabilis, just googlemaps Walvis Bay and you will see it.

This sharp an lasting division between ecosystems along the (mostly dry) river must be an ecologist's paradise, wouldn't it be @holothewise?

Absolutely. I'm very keen to visit Namibia. Still haven't been. There's that one protected strip of coast where the brown hyenas take seal pups off the beach. It must be an amazing thing to witness!

Thanks for reading and for the thoughtful comment :)

Congrats on winning the minnowsupport contest! Im so happy for you :) Great article. Aren't desert animals so awesome! I use to watch them all the time when I was in the military on tour in iraq.

Aah cool! You must have seen some awesome things. Did you encounter a 'death stalker' scorpion perchance? I've always wanted to see one in the wild.

You know, im sure i did. unfortunately i dont know the types of scorpions but we use to catch all kinds of them. when we were board and had free time we would try to get them to fight. Lol.. we did that with camel spiders too! Back then i guess i didnt really appreciate nature the way i do now.. i dont even kill bugs anymore.. lol, my fiance makes me catch them and let them go outside now.. lol 😉

I'm glad to hear you've evolved 😉

Me too ;) the world is much more beautiful when you appreciate all life instead of just your own.

i really like the animal kingdom and in general mammals! i have no idea this animals existed and as the farmers i would think their primarily food would be chickens, and small animals ( i won't poison them though :p ). I get those are wild animals but do you know if they can be tamed or are like wolves for example?

I think pretty much any animal that gets used to humans from a very young age can be habituated. Tamed not so much.

i think wolves cant that's why a person i don't recall if he is a zoologist or a different type of scientist tried to live with wolves he took as children because their mother died and wore the same shirts in order the wolves to him by scent. i believe there are videos in youtube about it

Actually lots of people do keep wolves as pets, but they don't make particularly good ones as they never lose certain 'wolffish' behaviors such as marking indoors. Usually when they get larger, their behavior gets mistaken for aggression and suddenly people don't want them any longer.

That said, I have worked around them before and they are very dog-like for the most part and I haven't found them to be aggressive at all.

But for the most part, regardless of whether something can be 'tamed' I think the more important question is always: should we?

if we wanna be like the stark family in game of thrones then hell yes :P

I am joking i am joking in general i think wild life should be protected and we must educate people both for it and the benefits in doing so!

Yup, the best conservation efforts always focus on engaging the local community as well - if people see value in conservation for themselves it has a much greater chance at success

Awesome post holo. As usual well written and wonderfully put together. Up voting and resteeming. For what time you've been on Steemit you're doing amazing. Keep up the good work and Steem on.

Thanks very much :)

Omg, they are so cute and I had no idea they even existed! Steemit is great for learning new things. I love your Steem train banner too. Can we all use this if part of the Steem train? I'm still learning lol.

Yup, you can :) There's a link to it up somewhere in the discord (can't remember where off the top of my head) but I'm sure @CatWeasel or @enchantedspirit can point you to it!

Very interesting. Are you still working on natural research projects?

Yup, I'm between field seasons at the moment, but usually I'm in the field a few months at a time :)

The south of Africa have unique kind of species which are good to watch and study