A pygmy hippo explores the riverbed.
PACHYDERM is a word derived the Greek meaning thick-skinned and usually refers to hoofed or ungulate quadrupeds, which do not chew the cud. This broadly covers elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami and, indeed, horses.
To see such large mammals in a zoo, as a child, was wondrous and I dreamed that one day I would see them freely roaming in their native habitats. Fifty years later, my dream came true, when a former school friend of mine invited me to stay at his house in Kenya to celebrate my official retirement from the educational world.
My education really then began, for I was taken on a tour of Kenya on a photo-shooting safari by Silas, my friend’s driver, in a four-wheel drive vehicle to places that my wife had seen when her father was stationed there in the 1950s. Our first ‘trip’ was to the Ngong Hills, just outside of Nairobi, but first we had to register at the local police station to be accompanied by a delightful young ranger. She brandished an AK47 automatic rifle as protection for us against wild animals or more likely human predators.
The view from these hills across the Great Rift Valley was truly amazing, as were the eagles swooping overhead. To see the Kenyan potential Olympians, middle and long distance runners training up such steep slopes and at altitude, one felt sure of them eventually gaining gold and silver medals.
My focus
On safari in the Masai Mara and the Nakuru National Parks we saw, within 10 metres of us, lion prides, cheetahs, elephants, rhinos, antelopes, wildebeest, and zebra on their seasonal migrations to better grazing. Crocodiles basked on the river’s slip-off slopes awaiting the migratory animals as they crossed the Mara River.
Upon arriving at our tented camp in the Masai Mara, we were told that we would have a torchlight guide to accompany us for a 7pm meal at the camp’s dining area. I dismissed this idea for it was but a 200-metre trek through the bush to the dining area. At 7pm, our guide met us and thank goodness. In the dwindling light as we walked along the track, he suddenly stopped and whispered, “Shush!”
Across our track and only a few metres away there was a bloat of trotting hippos. Little did I know then that these mammals could have trampled us to death. As a former headmaster, I then realised that I had yet more lessons to learn from others and especially from those indigenous people well versed in wildlife. It was a very close encounter.
Hippopotami
Earlier that same day, I saw a lone hippopotamus wallowing in an algae-covered pool as it cooled itself and moisturised its skin. In Greek, the word hippopotamus literally means the horse of the river. It is well documented that these semi-aquatic mammals diverged in evolution from whales, porpoises or dolphins about 55 million years ago. Their aggressiveness and unpredictability are well-known and not surprisingly, as they are the third largest of land mammal.
The East African rhino weighs on average 1,400kg, yet some can reach 2,500 kg. With little hair on their 6cm thick skin, they may live up to 50 years of age as they have but few predators apart from man. Their flesh is considered a delicacy and their huge molar teeth hunted as fake ivory. Herbivores they certainly are, mostly grazing at dusk and at dawn.
Pygmy hippos
These pachyderms, Choeropsis liberiensis, are native to the West African countries of Liberia, Guinea, the Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. A herbivore and mainly a nocturnal mammal, it weighs a quarter of that of its common African relatives. It also feeds at dawn and dusk but in forest habitats gorging on broad-leafed plants, ferns and fallen fruit on the forest floor. Unlike the common hippo, it mates and gives birth either on land or underwater, producing a single calf after a gestation period of 200 days.
Like many other threatened and endangered animals, its greatest dread is its loss of habitat owing to logging, agriculture and urbanisation in riverine areas. Again, illegal poaching for their meat or kills by crocodiles, leopards and pythons pose daily threats. I have only seen these hippos, well protected, at Singapore Zoo.
A pygmy hippo surfaces for air.
Plight of the rhino
The word rhinoceros is again of Greek origin, meaning nose and horn. This animal is more threatened through poaching for its ivory horns. Currently a massive dilemma faces both governments and conservationists, as rhino populations continue to plummet across the vast African continent. Three quarters of the world’s rhinos live there. South Africa faces the greatest threat of rhino horn poaching for, in the last decade, more than 7,000 rhinos have been slaughtered by poachers. Last year marked the fifth year in succession that more than 1,000 rhinos were killed for their horns.
Black rhinos are classed as a critically endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. They are found mainly in bushy scrubland and small forests taking in a fibrous diet, whereas white rhinos prefer to graze on grassland. White rhinos are actually greyish in colour and, with their voracious appetites, a single animal can totally graze 2ha per night.
Today there are only 5,000 black rhinos in Kenya compared to 20,000 white rhinos. Relying on their keen sense of smell and very acute hearing more than compensates for their poor vision. Because of the latter and moving downwind of them, I saw, in the early morning light, a very small herd of black rhinos during my visit to Kenya. The largest concentration of both species of African rhino is found in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, which borders Mozambique.
From the latter country and on a moonlit night, poachers invade to create their devastation. Why anyone should wish to kill a whole animal to hack out its horns leaves me shuddering. The origins of these prehistoric-creatures dates back to the age of the dinosaur for rhinos, too, have armour-plated bodies.
A white rhino moves around its enclosure.
Ivory black market
National borders can never be watertight no matter how governments worldwide try to protect their country, even with the erection of iron and bamboo curtains or walls. Animals have no respect for such man-made creations for their stomachs dictate their next best meal and they carry no passports.
Rhino horns are composed of keratin, which is the same substance as in our fingernails. It is scientifically proven that it has no medicinal properties yet these horns are poached and sold on the overseas smuggling black market to China, Laos and Vietnam, fetching prices of even more than gold. Some horns are ground down for traditional medicine placebos for this or that cure, others are engraved with good luck symbols.
Many countries worldwide have seized such shipments and imposed heavy penalties, including imprisonment, for such wretched dealers. With China’s recent rigid stance on banning all ivory imports and the sale of ivory, hopefully all countries will follow that example.
Protection
Many different anti-poaching methods have been employed. In Kruger National Park, some rhinos have microchips implants in their horns or tracking collars attached. Others have had their horns removed, under anaesthetic, using saws. Tracker dogs are used by armed rangers to detain poachers, while anti-poaching light aircraft and drone patrols are used daily.
White rhinos have been relocated to neighbouring Botswana and to Kenya and Uganda. In the latter, white rhinos were almost extinct in 1999 but, thanks to the import of South Africa’s rhinos in the Murchison Falls National Park, their numbers are now increasing.
It is only through free primary and secondary school education, in both rural and urban areas, that the continuing future of our world’s pachyderms lies. These pupils will then filter up their knowledge to their parents and grandparents.
We still have much to learn from young minds and to appreciate that our learning is a lifelong process. Such a scheme to educate children on the true value of observing, preserving and conserving pachyderms already exists in the Elephant-for-Africa Foundation set up in Botswana by one of my former students, Dr Kate Evans. Do visit that foundation’s website at www.elephantsforafrica.org. Do we want to see these animals, in the future, only in zoos?