2019 trip": Overall impressions: of South Luangwa National Park, Zambia

The park is lovely, full of a variety of animals. The forest areas are thicker than in Botswana, so following an active animal pursuit requires strategy to guess where it might emerge from the woods. The mixture of animals is somewhat different. The bush camps are mostly very good. I would not come here to stay at Mfuwe Lodge – too big, too many people and vehicles. Driving around the last evening I was there, we were hardly ever out of sight of at least one other vehicle; often in view of 3 or 4. Each camp has its own personality; I liked the first, Chindeni quite a bit, and the second, Bilimungwe, even better. Chindeni overlooks a lagoon with some crocodiles, a lot of hippos, who moan, laugh, and chatter most of the night; Bilimungwe is situated next to a waterhole, that often has its resident hippo; all sorts of animals approach the opposite side to drink – antelope, elephants, the occasional predator. About half of the walking safaris brought me very close to animals including zebras, elephants, giraffes, and baboons – a very nice compliment to the game drive experience. I found the British 5 meal schedule annoying – if they hadn’t insisted on ending the morning game drive at 10:30, in time for a very early 11:00 “brunch” I wouldn’t have minded. I liked the typical Okavanga Delta schedule – ending the game drive around 12:30 – much better (it also started earlier, about 5:30 instead of 7). The short game viewing day and loooong midday break is really the only thing about the bush camp company I didn’t like. On the last day I got a strong refresher course on why the extra money I paid for a private guide was worth it. The area was jammed with vehicles, many with 9 guests (3 abreast – pity the person in the center!). One guide with three African-Americans and one white guest parleyed with Shad for a while, and it was clear Shad had been giving him instructions – he later laughed and told me the guy was a new guide and knew nothing about the park. A hundred meters down the road we saw the snoozing leopard, in plain sight, the guide had failed to see and point out to his guests. I don’t know the back story but I felt very sorry for them. I’m sure they saw animals – hard not to in this park – but I’m also sure they saw nowhere near as many as I. Vegetation Many of the trees and shrubs are edible and nutritious to several species, who engage in what Shad called “layered browsing,” each eating what it can comfortably reach – giraffes and elephants at the top, kudu, smaller antelopes, etc. Shad pointed out several bushes and trees whose leaves retain nutrient value even after turning brown and drying up. Several species of trees have fruits eaten by many different animals (in Uganda and Rwanda, the great apes climb to get them, just as baboons do in Zambia). Several species particularly in Zambia have bean-like seed pods (including the acacia); most of these are edible, even when totally dried up, and many of these species are nitrogen-fixing; they look like legumes but I’m not sure whether they are. A number of the tree species rely on browsing animals to eat them and pass the seed out somewhere else – conveniently wrapped in fertilizer. Droppings I was disappointed not to find a T-shirt featuring animal pawprints; it would also be interesting if someone would make one featuring the unique shapes of droppings, each of which, as Shad explained, tells a story about the animal’s diet and general habits. Very interesting is the tendency of several species including impalas to poop in one spot. Shad explained that this provides information to the dominant male about the females, both identifying them and identifying when they are fertile. Open meadows may contain several of these concentrations of pellets, often representing several species. Grooming Observing primate grooming was one of the motivations for my visit, and I obtained several videos of grooming and related behavior. Grooming is fundamentally important to social species, especially species that live in large complex social organizations (most primates); British ethologist Robin Dunbar believes one of the motivating factors for the evolution of language was the need to extend grooming. At base, grooming consists of removing parasites such as ticks and fleas, as well as burred weed seeds and other annoyances, from the groomed animal. Being groomed releases opiods that produce an almost euphoric state; in turn, this strengthens social bonds. In most primate species grooming provides a means for developing and strengthening friendships or coalitions – others who “has your back.” A fight over social status often ends with the victor grooming the defeated, thereby patching the frayed social fabric. Baboons and chimpanzees have been observed to spend most of the time that they are not sleeping or eating either grooming or being groomed. Humans. My visit this time reinforced impressions I built during my first trip three years ago. Every species I saw seems to be almost a different species in the wild. I think this has several reasons, but two in particular stand out. Humans have been an integral part of ecology from the outset, but until recently we were mainly just another species, sometimes preying on certain animals (in competition with other predators), sometimes altering their environments through our own activities, and quite rarely domesticating certain species. Inevitably the domesticating process involves inducing changes in the animal’s genetic and social characteristics, changing its characteristic behavior as well as its physiology. Even in the wild, it is likely that human interactions with the animals they don’t domesticate has a strongly social element in it, and this is richly represented in the folklore and mythology of many native cultures. Industrial development and large scale farming have both had a huge impact on many species, but recent developments have a subtler and deeper effect. This is immediately apparent in the contrast between zoo animals and wild animals which I’ve noted before. Zoo animals do not need to, in fact are not allowed to forage or prey on their natural prey. They do not roam and rarely actually run. They cannot help forming complex social relations with their keepers, relationships of both dependency for the necessities of life and of dominance and control. Their relationships with conspecifics is radically distorted by the lack of food or predator pressure, regular medical care, and above all the confinement to a very small range and daily exposure to thousands of humans. This kind of social interaction and socialization is present (at a much lower level) in game preserves and other national parks as well, and minimizing it is one reason why the park wardens in Zambia will not interfere with the weak and probably dying lioness, even to save her pathetic little cub. They do interfere to minimize the risk of contagion, but that is justified by the fact that our presence is what increases that risk in the first place. But the effect of injuries on predators (and on males competing for control over females) is part of the evolutionary process, the cruel but highly effective process that weeds out defective genes and propagates genes related to strength and good health. Eco-tourism, important as it is, also has an inevitable effect. Animals become habituated, either deliberately (as with the great apes) or inadvertently (as a result of dozens of tourist-laden vehicles driving around every day. This habituation almost has to be thought of as social in a profound sense. Even ignoring humans as irrelevant factors in the ecology is a social response of sorts. So… I’ve not seen many of these animals actually “in the wild”; the comparison between animals in their (more or less) natural habitat and animals in the zoo is stark and telling, but the comparison to animals in a truly natural habitat (where humans are no more and no less than one other species going about its business alongside the animals) is equally important. I’ve had the good luck to observe some species in the wildernesses of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon (even these animals are somewhat habituated to us by the hundreds of back-packers that roam their territories), but it would be quite difficult to observe truly wild lions or elephants (or moose or cougars).