Nobody messes with the cape buffalo. They are huge and powerful. They kill lions.
Their horns are deadly poisonous because of bacteria that flourish on them. Lions who hunt buffalo have learned to attack from behind, aiming to break the back legs and disable the buffalo. If they bring it down, they will begin eating it while it is still alive. Lions teach their cubs how to properly hunt a buffalo. This is so fascinating to me. Do they teach them that the horns are poisonous, or do they only teach them (by modeling) that buffalo must be hunted from the back?
Hippos
Hippo pools are much more crowded, active, and smelly than I realized. Fifty hippos might be stuffed into a pool together, from multiple families, and apparently they get in each other's way, because there is a lot of the hippo equivalent of "Hey, watch it, buddy!"
They continually splash water over themselves with their tails to cool themselves and protect their skin from the sun. But it's not really what I would call water: it's a green frothy sludge of water and hippo poop. They churn it. They prefer to submerge in it, but there's not always room. I was eager to see hippos, and was surprised by how gross they are in real life.
1 comment:
I read somewhere that Cape Buffalo are the most dangerous animals for people to hunt -- that is, most likely to kill hunters. Apparently this is partly because of the horns that cover their entire head, making it hard to kill them, and partly because they have an excellent memory and they are vengeful -- if you shoot at them but fail to kill them, they will come after you. Sneakily, and for quite a while, until they get you.
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