Bongo!

I've started weekly work at the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters at the Nairobi National Park, with the help of KWS vet Dr. Edward Kariuki and staff. I'm measuring basic body measurements of antelopes (juveniles especially) regularly to see how body sizes and body proportions change with age. It's definitely a long-term project, since I have to opportunistically acquire non-laughable sample sizes. But it's really nice to break out of the lab/library/home-office routine, breathe some fresh air, and try to convince a ruminant to do my bidding.

Understandably, at NNP the juveniles are at the Animal Orphange. The nearby Safari Walk has adults of various kinds in larger, more natural habitat enclosures. There's much to blog about, which I will return to regularly over the next six months, but here I want to record the first in-person adult male bongo I have seen. And boy is he beautiful (even if decorated with mud from today's copious rain).

Swim, little pilgrim

On the lighter side of things...

A homemade rap music video starring mindless blood-thirsty crocs eating not-so-brainy East African herbivores, mainly Thomson's gazelles.

Hattip to Dr. Vector.




(If you want to see the total demolition of a full-grown zebra in under 9 minutes by over a dozen crocs, go here. Warning: not for bleeding hearts.)