Dazzle

Our tour guide, Jacob, is very knowledgeable, especially on topics of animal torture and killing, animal sex and poop.  He told us a story:  You do NOT want to be a male animal in Africa: 

   1)  Male zebras determine dominance by biting and ripping off the testicles of other zebras.

   2)  Male elephants have to wait until they are 40 before they mate.

   3)  Male rhinos fight to the death.

The African safari awakens all your senses.  All the things you learned in school (and from watching The Lion King) regarding nature, animals, biology, symbiosis and the circle of life come alive in a vivid display right before your eyes.

The morning fog was so thick that you could see the floating water droplets.  Today's new find was the ostrich, giraffe and hyena.

Male ostrich at dawn.

Check out that drumstick!

Gentle giraffe at dawn.

The rare two-headed giraffe.

Hyenas look cute, but they are vicious.  Hyenas will stalk their prey and then take a bite out of the animal.  The animal will run away.  The hyena eventually catches up and takes another bite.  The prey dies trying to run away while being eaten alive.  Mother Nature must have had PMS when she inspired the hyena

Cute like a teddy bear!

...or not.

A large herd of impala drew near.  It was evident that there was one male and approximately 30 females.  Jacob pointed out how exhausted the lone male impala must be.  First he had to fight off all the other male impalas for dominance over the females; then he had to keep all those women in line; then he had to mate with them all!  I was tired just learning about impalas.

The male Impala and his 30 wives.

Impala.

We saw white monkeys with blue balls.  Yup, their "boys" are bright turquoise blue which is an odd color to see in nature.  I guess the male monkeys cannot use the famous "blue balls" excuse with their wives!

Blue ball monkey - his good side.

I found the safari educational, especially when it comes to digestion and defecation.  Everyone's favorite subjects, right!?!  The giraffe has very efficient digestion; it eats ~50 kg of plants in 24 hours and it poops small pellets. 

An elephant, on the other hand, must eat ~300 kg in 24 hours.  It is not as efficient with digestion and as a result it has big, clumpy, wet poop.

A perplexing potential pachyderm poop predicament.

Hyena poop when it dries it turns white due to the high calcium content from eating all those bones.

That is enough about death, sex and crap for one blog entry.  Did you know that a group of zebras is called a dazzle? 

A dazzle of a traffic jam.