Safari Njema Sept 2017 Safari_Njema_Sept | Page 42

know YOUR COUNTY I g a t h e re d , f r o m m y interactions with game drivers in the park, that such close encounters with the elephant in other parks may yield very different results. The elephant may, in a fit of fury, charge at you or, out of fear, it may scamper off to safety. Years of poaching can easily influence the behavior of elephants towards human beings. Where elephants are heavily poached, their reaction is that of fear, or downright hostility. Keep in mind that these animals are extremel y intelligent, with intricate patterns of social networking among themselves, which l eads them to sh are information about dangerous human behavior. Each elephant is given a name, which allows for easy identification. Tour guides might therefore refer to elephants by their names, or by the names of their families. Elephants live in families, with aclear-cut pecking order that looks similar to the extended family that is common in some human societies. Children of the elephants – known as calves – grow up in a strictly controlled environment that has a matriarch at the top of the command structure, with younger female elephants below her. The matriarch offers direction and discipline to the elephant family, while engendering a sense of community. The matriarch will be the oldest member in an elephant family, and she shares her knowledge of the feeding grounds with the rest. She is a lso the mos t k n owl e d g e a b l e a b ou t th a t members of her family may face, and so she steers the group to safer grounds. The death of a matriarch, or other senior members of the family, usually deals a crippling blow on baby el ephants and l e ave s th e youn g o n e s to fend for themselves, with little knowledge of the dangers in their environment. Part of the park rests on the site of a prehistoric Pleistocene lake, with five ma jor swamps from which the herbivores spend their days eating. The elephants spend their days feeding on the soft floating grass and other vegetation in the swamps, before retiring to their hideaways in the night. Being on the bed of the Pleistocenelake was partl y the reason why the Masai tribe christened the region “Amboseli”, which loosely translates to “salty place”. Th ere i s l i tt l e co n f l i c t between humans and elephants in the Amboseli, which has partly ensured the survival of the elephants. The park had about 1600 elephants when this writer visited in late July this year, a figure that is considerably good for this small park. Amboseli is only 392 square kilometers, a sma ll er area compared to other ma jor parks.