Seen tiger? Confused, this is where lions live (9)

This is from day five of my safari. You might want to start from the beginning.

The drive from Lake Mayara to the Serengeti takes you through the Ngorongoro Crater, so we stopped at a scenic overlook and looked down into the crater. But we were going to visit the crater later, so I won't say much about it now. One weird thing is that you need different permits to be in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Serengeti National Park, but there's nothing to demarcate the boundary so you can easily be in the wrong one.

We drove first to our tents. We were spending three nights in a "mobile tented camp", which is basically a bunch of really fancy tents that are somewhat portable. They try to anticipate the wildebeest migration, and the migration was expected to be at the extreme southeast of the Serengeti, so there we were. Unfortunately, our guide explained, the rains that should have hit the region over the last few weeks never came, so the wildebeest had not followed their usual path into the region. He thought we might be able to find them anyway.

Anyway, the tents themselves were perfectly nice, with electricity, running water, flush toilets, etc. We had lunch in the dining tent, and it was excellent considering we were in a tent in the Serengeti.

Serengeti is a Maasai word that means "endless plain", and you can see why. There are a lot of places where you can see to the horizon in several directions at once. In many area, hills or rocks rise up in the distance. It's extra-endless if you drive in circles.

We started our game drive. Right away we saw a few animals -- some buffalo, lots of zebra, gazelles, a vulture pecking an old piece of an eland, some jackals, a hare, and a tortoise. (The tortoise was moving, the hare was not. There's a lesson in there somewhere.) Zebras make a funny sort of barking noise to communicate. They don't make it too often, but it's very distinctive, and you wouldn't guess it came from a zebra. Mostly it's to warn about predators.

Next we saw a dead zebra. It did not make any noises. It had been dead a few days, I guess -- predators and scavengers had eaten its entire insides and eyes, leaving only the skeleton and skin. I suppose pretty soon some hyenas would arrive and chew on its bones, and something would show up and chew its skin off, and all that would be left would be the skull (can't chew a skull). Hollow animals are a little creepy.

There are a lot of zebra on the Serengeti. Wikipedia says that they are black with white stripes, not the other way around, but Wikipedia is really stupid sometimes. Lions are colorblind, so zebra stripes help them blend in with the vertical lines of grass. Zebra like to stand in groups -- even just two zebra in an area will tend to stand right next to each other. I think they're taking advantage of the stripes to try to look bigger and confuse predators. It didn't work on me. Apparently it doesn't work on lions either. An alternative theory is that the stripes confuse tsetses.

There are also a lot of skulls on the Serengeti. Not a lot like enough that you can't drive around them, but enough that you stop noticing. Or you say "oh, another skull, I think that one's a gazelle." Or "can I take a zebra skull home?" (No.)

I got out and photographed the dead zebra a bit. It didn't smell bad, probably because all the parts that might smell were eaten. It was just strangely hollow, like a life-size zebra puppet.

We continued our drive. The Serengeti is crammed with animals. We saw a ton more zebra, many tons of wildebeest, and large herds of gazelles. Zebra and wildebeest like to hang out together -- wildebeest have an excellent sense of smell but poor vision, and zebra have great sight but poor smell, so they help each other spot predators. Also one of them is good at finding water and the other at finding grass, but I forget which is which. ("My zebra has no nose." "How does he smell?" "Terrible.")

Unlike the other places I'd been, most of the animals in the Serengeti are acclimated to people, so you can basically drive right up and pet them. There were lots of deer and antelope, and I took the opportunity to learn to tell them apart. In the interest of having lots to say so that I can show off more photos, here are a few of the tasty horned things you might see in the Serengeti ("on the Serengeti"? "about the Serengeti"?):

First, elands, which are the least acclimated to people. These are easy to recognize because they're the largest of the antelope -- males can reach two thousand pounds. That's a lot of antelope. The name comes from the Dutch word for "moose", which makes sense when you see them. Unlike the other prey on the Serengeti, they're skittish, so you can't drive anywhere near them -- they run away at the slightest noise. They have blunt corkscrew horns, in case you have to recognize an eland skull. I bet they're delicious. (There are also "giant elands", a different species, but strangely they're smaller than regular elands. If you’ve got it, you don't need to brag about it.) I don't have any good eland photos, so here's an elephant.

Next are gazelle. These are small and they don't have the three black butt stripes that impala have. There are two types common here, Thomson's Gazelle and Crane's Gazelle. Thomson's have a thick black stripe on their sides and black tails, while Crane's have less distinct black stripes and white tails, and are usually slightly larger. They hang out together during the rainy season in massive herds -- thousands of gazelle -- but separate when it's dry for some reason. I don't understand why there isn't an Arie's Gazelle. I'm going to get one.

Lions won't usually bother with gazelles, and we saw gazelles grazing fairly close to dozing lions. Cheetahs are the gazelle's major predator. To escape, gazelle have learned to run fast -- about fifty miles per hour. Cheetahs are faster (seventy miles per hour), but can only run at that speed for a few seconds and can't turn as fast.

Thomson's gazelle do something kind of funny -- when attacked, first they jump straight up, then they start to run away. By doing so they signal all the other gazelles in the area that there's a predator in the area, thus helping the herd, but the time it takes to jump like that makes it more likely that they'll get caught. Me, I'd just make a noise, but these guys jump.

Then there's Coke's Hartebeest, which has horns that come out sideways and then make a ninety degree turn. They're also antelope. I don't know much about these guys. I assume they're tasty. Wikipedia doesn't know much about them either. I guess if you don't have stripes, you don't run really fast, and you're not gigantic, you don't get much attention.

Maybe there are other types of antelope out there, but we didn't see them. Well, we saw a small number of bushbuck, impala, and dik-diks, but I've already talked about those (and I don't believe in bushbuck). Here's a photo of a lion. Throughout the Serengeti entries I have a lot of random photos of lions. This is because lions are (a) great and (b) photogenic (when awake).

We drove around a while longer and then saw cheetahs. Three large cheetahs, all sitting under a tree. They were extremely spotted and seemed to be alert, looking around a lot, though they weren't in a hurry to do much. It's funny how much they look and act like housecats, curling up, stretching, rolling on the ground. We watched them for a bit but they didn't chase any gazelles so we moved on.

Next we came to lions, a semi-large pride stretched out on some grass. Some of the lions were lying in the shade under a tree, but others were sleeping in the sun. We watched for a while and then one of them walked over to us. I thought it was finally time for the Lion v. Land Cruiser throwdown and had already started taking bets (pari-mutuel, it was 3:2 on the lion), but instead the lion just wanted our shade -- she laid down right next to the car and went to sleep.

All the lions were sleepy. In fact, almost all the lions I saw in the Serengeti were sleepy or asleep almost all the time. I could do a substantial photo collage of yawning lions. Maybe I'll try a coffee-table book. "Tired Cats of the World".

As the day cooled, the lions became a bit more active, but we were running out of time (you have to be out by 6pm or so unless you are furry and my beard hadn't grown in enough yet). No time to see if they decided to hunt.

On the way back we stopped by the cheetahs again to see if they had decided to do anything, but no, they were still content to lie around. Can't blame them, really. Also they were licking each other's faces a lot. One of them did get up and walk around a bit, but it's not clear why. There wasn't any prey around. We saw some wildebeest a ways off, but wildebeest are too big to be hunted by cheetahs. Unless these cheetahs had obtained firearms or something, in which case we'd all better watch out -- hungry, armed, and can run at 70mph. Just like Chuck Norris.

Also on the drive back we passed some African foxes, which have hilarious ears. I guess they do a lot of listening. I'm not sure what they eat -- my guess is small mammals and lizards and stuff. Maybe they need to hear them. I think it's a defensive thing -- like one hyena says to another, "let's go eat those foxes over there," and the other one's like "you moron, look at their ears -- they heard you and they're running away." That first hyena's an idiot.

We were also lucky enough to see this guy. I've spent the past few months in Uganda, where the food is basically bland grain-based stuff. Tanzanian food is similar, but with more flavor, largely due to this creature here, the cheetahworm, which produces large quantities of cumin and cardamom and deposits them underground. The Maasai manhood ritual involves riding one.

So that's what we saw on day one in the Serengeti. We came back by sunset and had some dinner and early to bed so we could get up before sunrise.

Oh, and sunset was beautiful. All the sunsets at the Serengeti were beautiful. I guess because you can see the sun all the way to the horizon, and there was just the right amount of cloud cover. Maybe all the dust in the air helped too. We couldn't see sunrise, there were mountains in the way.

You could read about more Serengeti adventures.