Introducing a New Baby Elephant – Day 85 | Safari Live

Today, X is malaria; thankfully, that is the best in the home B. Of course, I do excuse the shadows on my face, but you will notice that when I turn my face to the Sun, I'm unable to open my eyes. That is because it is so very bright. So let's not look at me; let's look at the dogs while I tell you that, of course, we would love to hear from you throughout the course of the show, as I'm sure Ralph and Brent have told you already. You can talk to us using the hashtag #SafariLive.

Now, for those of you who have not been with us over the last few days, we've been doing a few experiments with Ronald the rover to see how animals respond to him. Now we've done it with Hasan, the male leopard; we've done it with the Sticks pride. Both of those cats reacted in very similar ways. Well, the adult lions couldn't have been less interested. The cubs and the young horse owner walked up to him. I'm not sure why they stood up there; it's not because I moved Ronald. They kind of looked at him, smelled him, and then they disappeared and laid down and relaxed again.

Now, the dogs, when we put him down here, they did get up straight away as soon as he moved towards them, and now they've settled again in the shade. So we'll see what happens. I was a little bit surprised by the slightly startled reaction, so I'm not sure that we're going to get the same result that we had with the cats. Alrighty, that's it down to the other end of the Juma end of this drive.

Let's go down to Tristan Dix, who's sitting with... where you are sitting, Mr. Henry. And so these elephants are all around Japan, which is just a little bit south of where James is. As James mentioned, my name is Priscilla; on camera today, I do have a VM. The wildebeest—there we go—there's a little thumb from Veeam. This is live; it is interactive, which of course means that you can actually ask questions and get hold of us. So hashtags for life or YouTube chat if you would like to get hold of us.

Now, we have a beautiful herd of elephants coming down towards Telepan, which is in a way really cool and in another way not so cool because we were hoping that we'd find young Hasana just sleeping and resting in this area, but he seems to have moved on. Although the way these elephants are all kind of fronting up, I think Hasana might be lying somewhere close by, kind of looking towards the shady spots—the way that they're all tightly packed together.

I thought maybe, just maybe, there was a little lipids injection, which could be very possible. We'll have to just look nicely. It also could be because there's a tiny baby among this, so there's a very wobbly baby—maybe a baby that was born at some stage yesterday it could be—or even last night because it's really quite wobbly on its feet. The way that it's standing, you can see those little legs are buckling and moving quite a bit, and the fact that everybody's bunched around it could potentially mean that it's a failing newborn.

The other thing that we have here is some really big bull elephants in the background, and so that's causing a bit of a ruckus in the herd. So from Israel, you think that's why they're anxious: is that they're protecting the baby? Well, I think it's twofold. I think not only protecting the baby; maybe they smell a leopard here, and maybe they know that Husana was around in this section. But I think more than anything is that these big bulls are causing a bit of a ruckus.

So there are a number of big boys around here, and they keep chasing some of the females. You can see, look— as the male leaves now, look at how this herd has disbanded. So the little one is now a lot more exposed than what it was, but they're all sort of sniffing at it. This is a tiny new baby that's around, which is very cool.

So maybe the female is in heat, and the boys are causing a bit of panic, and that's why everybody is sort of trying to protect this little baby in case one of those big males comes close. Now, you can see two of the males just squaring off there. Those are the two smaller ones. The third is a really large male, which I don't quite know the areas; he's just on the right there behind that bush, so maybe he'll come out just now.

Insanity, you're wondering if the matriarch elephant is always the biggest. No, not necessarily. Sometimes you will find that there will be bigger females within the herd structure, but she might just be from a different limit, or she might have joined from a different reason, and so she's maybe not the matriarch of that particular herd. Or you will have a situation where genetically there's a female that is the matriarch and another female that grows up underneath that female gets slightly larger, but yet she's not as experienced and not as sort of in tune with what's going on inside.

Oh no, it fell down! When did you just fall? I think this one must be newer than we think—maybe a matter of hours old given that it's look hard struggling to stand up. Oh no, come on to your feet! Maybe I see mom—look! Look how mom is picking it up! See, mom is using its trunk to try and pick it up. Look at that! Isn't that incredible?

See, all of them—so they wrap their trunk around its body like a little harness, and they lift it so that it can get to its feet, to get the strength to be able to stand. I wonder if this baby is not even newer than we even think—maybe during the day today—maybe in the last few hours. It's incredibly hot today, so it would dry very fast if it was born recently. I mean, the time for it to dry would be, like I say, very quick.

So maybe it was born late or this afternoon or around lunchtime. It's difficult to know, but it would explain why the herd is sticking around because you would expect, like this, to move and not to stand right in the Sun like they are at the moment. But for some reason, they're sticking around. The baby is very wobbly, so maybe that's the reason why.

It's very, very cool to see either way. See, it's trying to move away! I'm sure this herd is going to try and find some semblance of shade. It must be incredibly hot for not them, but the little baby as well. Now, the interesting thing about this whole process is that those females that are standing there are all young females. None of those are particularly big. You can see here comes a much larger female who's actually got much bigger teeth—so mammary glands—and so I wonder if she's not the one that is actually the mother.

And she just went for a quick cooling down, and the siblings have just protected around her. I don't see any other females there that are lactating at the moment, but I could be wrong. Now look, comes the big male! You see how much bigger he is than the females? He's going to come towards them, and look at how the females are wrapping around that little calf! Isn't this just the most phenomenal behavior from these elephants?

And look at the size difference—he towers way over those females. He is massive in comparison to them, and that little baby is hard to think that it's going to go from that small if it's a male all the way to that massive individual like you see there. Now we can definitely confirm that the female that is in front that's posed to us isn't the mom, so that little one is sucking from it.

So amazing to see that the other members of the herd looked after it while the female went to cool down. She's probably been in the Sun; she's probably had a little exerted a lot of energy if she's given birth recently, and so while she went to cool down slightly, the others looked after her and just wrapped around her and made sure that they're looking after this little calf. But how cool is that? You've got from absolutely tiny from you all the way up to you as big as males can be!

I mean, you can see the height of his shoulders in comparison to those females gives you a really good idea. It's amazing. It just shows you that male elephants are really not small animals at all. You always see females; you think they've massive, and then you see these males in comparison, you can realize just how big they are at the shoulder in particular. And look at the size of his head in comparison to those females' heads; his head is almost double the size.

You can imagine how much strength and power is inside there—absolutely incredible! How cool is this? What a way to start our safari! It really is the best way to start, is a big herd of elephants and the prospect of a leopard sitting somewhere here watching all of this going on. It really is a good omen for a successful afternoon that we should have.

So I believe a lot of you are a bit concerned, worried that this bull—will the calf—will elephants are insanely intelligent animals. And while the bull might be, you know, close to the calf and might represent some sort of danger in terms of he could knock that calf over, you can see what these others are doing. So the adult females and the sensibility of that little calf have created a protective barrier. So even if that bull comes, they all almost sacrifice themselves in a way.

So they'll get hit by that bull long before that little calf falls. And so the bull's not going to be interested in hurting it in any way. They are not like lions and leopards, where they'll come around and they'll try and kill the baby to bring their female into estrus. Male elephants are not like that at all, so he's just curious. He'll snuff that little elephant and then, now you see he's just walked off—he's no longer even interested in what's going on here. He knows that there's no female to mate with.

Your teens are looking for the female that isn't in estrus, sniffing the ground, sniffing all that dung, looking around, trying to see which is the female that they are picking up the scent for that is in estrus. So that little calf is perfectly safe at this stage, and they need to worry too much. And mom and siblings almost—they're keeping it as safe as they can over the next little bit.

But this is so cool—we're watching an amazing sort of thing unfold! And elephants, they are such intelligent animals that to sit and spend time with them in a situation like this, where you've got the females and the males and this little tiny calf and see the social interactions between them, is just absolutely fascinating.

Right, well, we're going to stay with our elephant herd because I don't really want to go anywhere; there's so much that potentially could happen here with big bulls and little babies and, like I say, the potential of a leopard making an appearance. So while we sit here, I believe James is out and about with his toys once again, and I think Ronald is now making another predator acquaintance for the week.

He certainly is! He's making friends, and he's making friends with that dog! That's fast asleep there—look how close he's got! The dogs are completely disinterested in his presence, and I don't know, can we go to his picture? Is it possible to go to his picture? Now we have got Ronald's picture. That is the reason for his existence—the dogs are not going business, ignoring him. Tougher packs just kind of wandered behind that. None of them have been flopping down into the water.

Here’s everybody! I'm not sure what happened there, but wow! We're still sitting here with the ever-present hyena and the little cubs, and they've been getting more and more curious, smelling the air, smelling what we're all about. It's lovely to watch the nature of wanting to explore the world around them.

As something new comes into their little world, they obviously really want to see what it's all about. Let the youngsters step—those ones are starting to get the little color of the adults on their faces. And look at that—a little bit of sibling love! Maybe not often too much love shown between hyenas—probably a little bit of dominance.

And it's amazing to see that we've been watching these youngsters, and even at this young age, they're already marking and putting little anal glands on the grass as they move around. And that's also for each other to sniff and smell—it's not for really for other animals. They're already, at such a young age, establishing and maintaining their position in the hierarchy, and it's fascinating that one still got his prize of the warthog tusks.

And it looks like he's keeping it, while the others have been trying to get it away from him, but he’s quite happy with it. Now Aaron, you're wondering how you tell the sexes. Now that is an extremely good question because with hyenas, in times gone by, people really believed that they were merediths, meaning that they are both male and female.

And now, I don't mean to make anybody uncomfortable, but we want to talk about sexes of animals, and we're talking male or female. Generally, how we tell that is whether there is a penis or an ovum, or vagina. But with hyenas, there is no external vagina, so both male and female have penises. With the female, it's obviously a pseudo-penis, which is a large clitoris. So it's very difficult to tell between male and female.

The only thing that you really need to look at is the size, and so the females are much bigger than the males. But it's rather difficult when there are little youngsters like this because both male and female have penises. But it does seem, from my observations, that the females have a larger pseudo-penis than the males' actual penis. So that's how I have been deciding between how to decide if it's a male or female.

I know it's a difficult subject to deal with, and not everybody's too comfortable with those kind of conversations, but well, it's a reality, so that's what makes and sits hyena part. Right, folks now, from one group of small little babies, let's send you on over to Tristan, who’s still with the lovely little elephant calf.

Well, indeed, it's always a toss-up with which is cuter in terms of the baby animal world. They all, I suppose, are very cute. There are not very many ugly babies out there, that's for sure! But the little one, as you can see, is being very well sheltered, not only from the big rampaging males that are around here, but also from a perspective of this harsh sun that we've got this afternoon. It is incredibly warm, and so for a little baby like that, it's going to dehydrate, and its ears are very sensitive still to the sun that they could get sunburned.

So it's important that it stays in the shade of these siblings and adults and makes sure that the sun doesn't get on it too much. And so you can see it's perfectly positioned in this little sun, hitting it every now and then, but for the most part, it's nice and shady and lying underneath all of those tummies, and it can fit in very well as mom has a little dust bath and all of the others are allowing it to regain its strength as it tries to work out how to use these legs.

Now the male seems to be coming back again. This looks like the cheeky one of the three. He's not the biggest, but he's quite cheeky, I think he might get a rough welcome if he comes too close. Look at how these guys will tighten their ranks, and they'll make sure that they keep that bull at bay. There will also be a lot of communication taking place between them—a lot of it we won't be able to hear.

One ninth of it, we're not going to be able to hear—it's a very low-frequency sound that basically will tell that bull not to come here; there’s a little baby. You need to be careful and keep him at bay as much as possible. You can see how he's stopped to feed, and he’s not very perturbed at all.

Now, interestingly enough, sorry now that I look at that big boy elephant, you might notice just above him is actually a bird that's sitting there, and I didn't notice it very well earlier, but it's sitting, and it's just perched. I'm surprised because this time of the day, in the heat that we've got, you would expect most of the birds of prey to be riding the thermals and to be out and about, but this yellow-billed kite is just sitting here.

And I wonder if it maybe didn't see an opportunity to feed off some of the afterbirth of this elephant. Because what they will do is, even though yellow-billed kites are able to catch their own food and they'll hunt termites and they'll hunt various other small insects and birds, what they are known for is also coming down onto roadkill and also any bits of carrion if behind.

And so the afterbirth of an elephant might be the perfect snack for a yellow-billed kite, and that's why it could be sitting here is because of that reason. The afterbirth might have been close by, and now it’s just hanging out in the tree. Waiting for the elephants to move off, it can then come down and feed off it, or it’s going to feed off the way the elephants have defecated, and there are a number of insects that might be around that as well.

So interesting though that this bird is in—it’s sort of even though it's not related to the elephants in any way, it's using the elephants for a food source by the looks of things. That might be wrong, but then it might just be a coincidence. But I doubt that that bird would be sitting for that long in the bright hot sun exposed like that if it wasn't for a reason, that it was waiting for these elephants to move off or trying to follow them along as they defecate and use their dung basically as a distraction.

But look at the power of these animals! It is absolutely amazing to watch when they move those trees. I hope that you are having a wonderful weekend. You want to know do elephants like to play? Elephants love to play, Billy! They are one of the most playful animals that we get.

You’ll find if it's a nice cool morning, and it's overcast, and there’s not too much wind, then the little baby elephants are a joy to watch. They’ll go up and down and round and round, and they will chase off to birds and wardens and parlors and all these other animals about as they try and work out how to use the trunk and how to run nicely.

And so they're very playful, the adults—not so much. You don't see big bull elephants playing too much; when they get really large like the male that we have here, then you're going to see that they're going to be a little bit more serious. But when they're young bull elephants and young females, then they play a lot. They push each other as well, and they'll try and test each other's strengths.

So lots of playing that goes on when you’re a baby elephant or when you're an elephant in general, actually, and then when they go down to water, Billy, they absolutely love water! So in a day like today, you’ll find that they’ll go into the mud, and they’ll throw their mad on all over themselves, and they’ll roll around in it, and they’ll hide, and they’ll get up, and then they'll dive back down in it.

And so it becomes a big game when there’s a lot of mud around as well. So they are animals that love to play a lot. You can actually see that a lot of them are actually covered in mud at the moment, and that's because it's a warm day. Beliefs are they even the adults I think I've gone for a little mud wallow to try and keep nice and cool on a hot day.

It’s like if you are very hot, maybe you go and jump into the swimming pool and try and cool down. I don't know where you're from, Billy, but if you're in the United States, I'm sure that you are not very hot at all at the moment, particularly on the eastern side of the United States. I believe it is very, very cold that side of the world at the moment. But look at that little face! Isn't that the sweetest thing? Is your tongue hanging out? It does look like it's tongue is hanging out, doesn’t it?

No, you hot little one! Alright, it will be okay. The fact is that the adults are protecting it nicely and making sure that it is well sheltered, and if it needs water, they will guide it through to the breast into the mammary gland to allow it to suckle and to drink. Mother elephants are incredibly good with that.

So I've seen elephants give birth before and watch the whole process, and when they would need that first bit of milk, they’ll actually guide them using the trunk straight towards their teats and allow them to then suckle from there. So pretty incredible! Right, well, we're not going to go anywhere; there's no reason to. It’s amazing to have the elephants back one and two to have a little baby amongst them.

So while we sit here and enjoy these big pachyderms, let's go across to James and his beautiful painted dogs. The painted dogs have managed to get up slightly now, and they’re having a little bit of a greeting ceremony because they keep getting up to go off and have a drink, and then they come back to the shade here. Ronald, unfortunately, has got no signal in this area, and so he is unfortunately probably not going to be able to show you his pictures of the wild dogs. Still, he got a couple of good ones, and we'll try and broadcast those at some time.

In the meantime, I think I'll bring it to back now. Melissa, you’ve been watching hyenas with Ralph, of course, and you say who's got bigger ears? I think that was the question. Well, the answer is that the wild dogs have got much bigger ears!

Let's move slightly so we can get a bit of a view. They have got enormous ears, wild dogs, and that's because, well, we think because their communication during a hunt is so crucial. What happens when they hunt is that they can really sort of bombshell, or shotgun, if you like, out into the wilderness, and they can lose each other very quickly, and then they need to find each other very quickly. So they have these sort of satellite dish ears that help them to find each other.

They listen to the sounds; they can swivel and pick up probably the smallest wild dog sound there is. And that helps them to maintain contact during a hunt. For a hyena, yes, their ears are certainly far, far better than ours, but they don't have the same need to communicate during a hunt. They'll hunt visually with each other if they hunt together at all.

I don't know if Ron got a picture at the moment. I'll just quickly find out from Louise if we've got Ronald's picture, but I don't think we do. No, we don't. Anyway, beautiful shots here of them just trying desperately to stay cool in the sun. Like I say, a very, very hot day indeed.

I don't think these chaps are going to get up until well, at least half past six or so, on account of the fact that it is—well, it's pretty cold and not pretty cold! What did I say? No account of the fact that it is so very hot, and I think that they ate very well today. Earlier on, they looked pretty full—this blood covering the heads of them, and so I think that although they may try and kill something this evening, it would be unusual.

Alright, we're gonna go and have a quick look at Ronald's picture now. He's got to got a picture of one dog who's got his back to him. It's not the best picture Ronald's managed to get of him, but I'm not going to move in for him. Heard you asked a very good question. You’re asking do wild dogs live? Now, I've taken the last time I checked. Something do you like 80% of dogs in the Kruger national or less?

Yes, well, everybody, it seems like when there are problems elsewhere, what do we do? We come back to the hyena den, and it is still buzzing with the youngsters. So that's not such a problem, is it? I wouldn't say so, because I'm really enjoying sitting here. These youngsters are up to all sorts, and they've been greeting each other and mocking and trying to get the adults to play with them and then getting in trouble and then going back to lying down.

But this never stops! That one stole with his little warthog tusks—he's got his little trophy, and he's working it nicely and working it on his teeth. It's probably quite good for him. The little cubs and puppies do—they need to chew on lots of things to help strengthen their teeth and also sometimes they do teethe, so they drop the name "oak teeth," and then they get their adult teeth. That's quite interesting.

And that one's slightly older; one - it's got its permanent teeth coming through already. The teeth did look quite sturdy, so I think so. A couple of the other really black cubs—look, they've got those really fine sharp teeth. And when we do get to see them, the ones that are becoming a little bit lighter, a little bit older. But it doesn't matter; it doesn't put you in a different position in the hierarchy, depending on your age.

It all depends on the position of your mother, and it's very difficult to go up in the pecking order with hyenas. They can be very slight changes within the matriarchy and in the pyramid. And look at that—that's a lovely view of these little tracks! If you had to see baby hyena tracks in the bush, you would be very confused because you don't often see that, and we always see adults moving around.

But if we had to see a little one like that, I'm sure there would be lots of trackers, and that would be confused having seen only one little baby hyena trek. Right folks, we are going to keep on sitting here. It is so exciting. I’m sure the later it gets, the more that might happen. But in the meantime, we're gonna send you on back to James with those painted dogs.

We're still here with the wild dogs. We think we figured out why you keep having to crash cut away from us—it's Ronald's fault! Apparently so, we'll avoid using him for a little while and try and sort that out. Now, Lady Bird, we were talking about the ages of wild dogs and how long they live. I don't know how far into my answer I got, or you got, but basically something like 80% of the dogs in the Kruger are less than five years old.

They have a potential lifespan probably around ten, and unfortunately, out here, of course, there are lions and hyenas, and there are all sorts of other predators that will try and kill them from time to time. And there are also difficulties with coming into contact with domestic dog diseases like canine distemper and rabies. In the absence of all of that, yes, they probably do live for about ten years, but in these very difficult conditions, despite their very high breathing rate, really, they will probably find that they are seldom live beyond five years out here.

I'm just trying to find the exact reference for that. I can't at the moment. Anyway, we will try and find it at some stage. It is quite interesting though that they should live such short lives despite the fact that they are such successful hunters. Hello! Amazed Man! You are a new viewer today, and I hope you remain as amazed as your name suggests you should! It’s wonderful to have you with us and thank you for giving us of your time and of your intellect, of course.

You've asked how fast they can run. Well, it's difficult to record; I’ve run the figure up to about 60 kilometers an hour, which is about calling 45 miles per hour. They can sustain a speed like that for some time. The big thing with wild dogs is their ability to maintain that for a long period. I don't think like a cheetah, for example, which must catch within the first sort of quarter mile or so, will they run out of steam. They run much faster, of course, so those are the two coursing predators of Africa—the wild dogs and cheetah—and these chaps have a very different sort of burn strategy for catching, and it relies a lot on their stamina.

Alrighty, I think we're going to just move around a bit here, see if we can retrieve Ronald. While we do that, we're gonna go back to Tristan and his rather fascinating small elephant sighting. Well, it is fascinating, James. It is really interesting to watch. I think that this elephant was born during the day today. So we know that Steve was here this morning; there were no elephants here, and I have a funny feeling that it was born right here, and that's why it's still learning how to move around.

I can just see it coming out of this wall of sort of elephants that are around us. These big bulls, a really large male, has just arrived now as well— a massive individual that is slowly starting to come this way, and they are all sniffing around that area. So I want to go and have a little look there just now. I want to wait until that massive male varies. You see, look at the size of him; he's got big tusks.

He's bigger than the other bull that we had just now, so he's old and wrinkly and has massive tusks, and he’s sniffing in the air. He's got his trunk up just smelling around, and he's set for a very long time very close to where those other elephants are. He was sniffing the ground, and I wonder if that wasn't where it gave birth. That maybe just could be that situation.

Judy, I think I'm getting this right; is Megan—correct me if I'm wrong—but you are asking if lots of elephants would be more protective of a young one than a few elephants? Is that the correct way? I think so; I'm not representing you. I'd broke up a little bit as you were coming through, but if that is the case, then the more elephants, you know, at the end of the day, the better it's going to be that altogether.

But you are seeing if a young male elephant would be as protective—there's something wrong with that little calf! Did you see that? Sorry, Judy, I'll get into your question now, but it looks like it has a split. You see that between its trunk and its mouth—almost like it's got a cleft palate. That’s really interesting! I've never seen that in my life before.

It's not its mouth. Its mouth is lowered down by the looks of things, and just now there was a funny sound coming from in amongst them, and I thought maybe its trunk sounded like it was blocked. And it seems as though there might be a little issue there. You see that? That doesn't look like its mouth. Its mouth looks like it's lower than that.

Always it's its mouth! Sorry, it's just the folds of skin; it looks okay at this stage now. Back to what you are asking, Gina, you are asking a young infant if he would be as protective. Yes, a young elephant, if he's part of that family and he's part of... if he was born to the same mother, he's going to be very, very protective of that little one. He's going to come to its defense.

Some of these elephants that are around that little baby as well—look how fluffy its tummy is! Super fluffy! Protect it and try and make sure that it is looked after and it is made to—you kind of feel safe. And that there is a boundary between it and everybody else. You'll find the situation that no matter if it's a young male or a female, if they are part of that family unit and it's the same mother, they will be highly protective of this sibling and make sure that the little one is safe.

And you can see, look, as the little one takes a step, so the rest of them take a step, as no one takes and the wrist goes. So they all trying to kind of keep it as safe as possible—the whole grouping of them! And so even though some of these will probably not be this female's offspring, they are trying to kind of make sure that they protect it as much as possible. But there you go. See, it's trying to suckle every now and then! Shame!

Nipple when you are brand new! I think you are in a few hours old, if that! Maybe even an hour or two! This is so cool to see! We have been so, so spoiled and humor the last few months. We’ve had so many amazing baby animal sightings. We’ve had Tandy’s Footloose, the wildebeest, Scott's little baby wildebeest that was born—we've got this one!

We've got all kinds of the little Lapwing chicks, clever chicks that we had. We’ve had a lot of baby animals that we've been able to see take their first few steps in life. It's amazing to be a part of this, and I'm 99.9% sure now that kite is here for the afterbirth, and that they gave birth right here. The fact that this herd is also sitting for as long as it is in this area would definitely mean that they are probably just waiting for this little one to start kind of being able to move and start trying to actually kind of be on its feet and solid enough so that they can go and get out of the hot sun.

But, until then, yes, everybody's going to be trying to stay stationary as possible. You can see this bit of aging RG bhaji that's going on. You see, and look at how the female reacts! You get to involve very quickly! She says they're coming to investigate what's going on! Who needs protection?

They're all gonna come in and try and just huddle around and make sure that everything's okay. The little one is squashed into the middle now. Hopefully, they don't think that I'm the cause of all of this because I have... we've done nothing wrong—we've just been sitting here!

There was just one cheeky little male that tried to go and investigate, and look! A female that just came in, she's coming to investigate as well! So she’s one of the older females within the herd, and she's just coming sniffing this new little calf, making sure everything's okay, working out who this new member is.

It’s amazing to me that vocalizing, you can see, even though their female is not related to that tiny little calf, they've all come running in to try and protect it! Isn’t that just the most amazing? You can see this all along the big bull elephant! I would say the trunk height, where it's kind of touching up towards the tusks, is probably maybe close to about six foot—just under six foot!

And that's completely sort of from ground to the tusks, and that's not actually stretched out. You can see the rest of the trunk is coiled at the bottom. His trunk will probably easily be about eight feet if it was really stretched, which is really long if you think about it! It is absolutely fascinating to see how they're able to manipulate that trunk.

But big bull elephant like that, between 750—about seven and a half feet probably maximum on a trunk like that. Absolutely incredible! Now just the size difference of these animals is phenomenal. There’s a massive female, the one behind him, so it looks like a young animal that's coming up behind that big bull. See, if you saw her by herself, you would think that that is a really large female, a big massive matriarchal female, but she is dwarfed by the massive males!

She looks just like the poor one in comparison! In fact, both these males that we've got here, while huge, they almost look like pillars on either side of her protecting her at the moment! Look at that! You've seen these two tall animals; they’re facing in the same way, and almost looks as though they are keeping everybody safe and useful!

You see how amazing this is? And also just to see the dynamics of having the big bulls! You know, I’m sure the bulls have been attracted because of the birth, so they would have heard vocalizing; they would have heard a commotion, and they’re interested. They know that there's something going on.

And so they come in to check. There might also be a female in heat, but I mean, it's a matter of that these earrings were giving. And so these big males have come, and they’ve smelled hormones and they’ve smelled that there's a female that's discharging, and so they're coming to try and investigate what's going on!

Incredible to witness, though, and amazing how these alliances form this barrier between them! Is he gonna lie down? He looks like he might be lying down! He’s stretching his legs up! Are you going to sit down? Bueno? Anything? He’s just giving his back legs a nice big stretch! He’s an old boy!

You can see on his hips they're sinking in a little bit there—so that’s a sign of age. I would say he’s probably easily in his late 40s, maybe even starting to approach 50, and remember that the elephants in this area, most of them, won’t live past 55 because of the type of terrain we're in and the diet that they have, very abrasive towards their teeth. And so their lifespan is slightly shorter than those elephants that you'll find in the Masai Mara and even in other parts of Africa.

So I would say he's a very old boy that—he's still a master, though! He’s intimidating! I can tell you that when he comes towards you, he’s very intimidating! Right, now we're going to, like I say, just carry on sitting here, and why not? There’s so much happening; there's so much amazing interaction to watch.

And so while we enjoy these elephants, let's go across to Brent, who for the first time ever sounds like he is struggling to find these twenty-colored cat in the Mara. Yes, yes, Tristan! I think you're more intimidating than that big elephant bull! However, we've actually covered quite a lot of ground since you last saw us.

We're now on the edge of the Mara, and I'm hoping for a bit of luck with a paradise pride or the Musketeer male lion coalition. However, none are being kind at the moment, so we're not seeing anything. Not much to eat around here as well—are they gonna land? Hopefully, we can catch up with them!

So it’s quite a lot of nice bird life, though, even in these really windy conditions! So, Adrienne, if you have a look next to us—is it hard? No, throw away darkness! It's Little Red Birds! Okay, they've all landed in that tree, and the same tree as the black bird! There! That one there, before my finger—oh no, the black bird's gone!

But the little red ones are still there! Oh, guinea fowl on the other side! So zoom in! Right on my finger! There we go! Isn’t that really... oh no, they’re gone now! If they go down, the wind is not good for birding!

There are African flyfinches, and it was a yellow-mantled widow as well! We tried, we tried! Let's go try to find something that doesn't move around so much in the wind! I have seen two very good birds in our wanderings today—Eurasian Marsh Harrier and a corncrake!

Now you might remember how excited I got about a corncrake at cheetah plains, but in the Mara, corncrakes are not nearly as rare and actually you do flash them reasonably often when you're driving through wet grassy areas! Oh, we do have one of my favorites, though, again disappearing in the wind! Quite low at the moment! Some of the soundbanks coming out!

Lots of hippos—I think there's gonna be quite a bit of competition between the different hippos as we head into this dry spell, so we could be seeing quite a few more hippo fights and the like! Oh, he looks like a grumpy, grumpy sod, that one!

Now I asked you a little bit earlier about if we deemed survival as success, what was the most successful species in the history of the earth? We've got some really good guesses in cockroaches, sea sponges, bacteria, all sorts of sorts of guesses—tortoises, mosquitoes, frogs, sharks—but it looks like for the first time in a very long time, I gotcha! I gotcha!

All it is is a bit of a trick question. So if we actually have to think about it in terms of survival and the living organism that has been exactly the same for the longest period of time and has survived through the age of the dinosaurs, the dawn of the mammals, the Great Sea Age, the volcanic age, it’s blue-green algae—Spirogyra! Pond scum!

We have 4.2 billion years and change—that's the oldest fossil that has been found of Spirogyra—is 4.2 billion years old! Isn't that incredible? Absolutely fascinating! Well, I think it's fascinating!

Hippos, they don't seem too impressed with Spirogyra; hey, they're starting to get ready to head out and see—they're getting a bit more mobile and heading out to go graze on the green grass there. However, even though they share their Kwatego habitat with Spirogyra, they don't eat it! Any strange thing that eats seaweed is—I mean, while Spirogyra is people—LG tablets—how about that? I think it’s got some form of vitamin and whatnot.

That's at the end! Let's not talk about Spirogyra any longer! Let's go across to Ralph with some very, very cute hyena cubs! Yes, indeed! Thanks, Brent! Well, folks, I still haven't been able to drag myself away from this hyena den because there's been all sorts going on!

Once more, there was some kind of smell that just came through to the side again because we didn't hear anything. It must have been something in the breeze that really made them all jump up and take notice, and all the youngsters disappeared down the hole, and the adults were looking very concerned. Now it seems to have settled a little bit, but there is still a little bit of an edginess to them, and they do seem to be a little bit worried about something.

I wonder what it could have been! Whether it was the smell of a lion? What? I don't know! But there was something that really worried them a minute ago, and I can promise you it wasn't us, because we didn't do anything different to what we've been doing all the time! It was really strange! But they seem to have settled now, and the one walking off with his trophy—he's still the same one with it! He is not relinquishing that, getting a lovely chew on it!

It's absolutely wonderful! So folks, I think we are going to leave shortly, however, because I do want to just pop in at the river and see what's happening down there! So let's say goodbye to these hyena for now, but we will be back with them in the next few days.

Tomorrow, we’re going to be popping across the river, so we're gonna give these hyena a bit of space! But in the meantime, let's head on over to Tristan, all the way back in South Africa, being with all the little calf with a little calf in it.

And so, there's a bit of chaos that is now starting to happen, and a bit of pushing and shoving, and everybody's getting a little upset with each other at the moment. I think it’s such close proximity that when the bulls arrived, then the females get a little bit antsy, and they try and kind of push them away.

It's really interesting if you watch this bull on the right-hand side—he's starting to come in now, and we just know as he was coming in, that’s when the female started to push him and try to get rid of him. Now the little one, he's actually quite far from that male, so he's probably gonna be alright at the moment—he's not gonna have a situation where the female will push him just yet.

But if he starts coming from behind where that female is, she certainly will turn around and try and push him. But it's amazing just to watch the actions that are taking place and the way that these males kind of engage with the females and how it all kind of works together. And these females are highly tolerant of each other, but as soon as a male comes in, even the sub-adult males, they're getting a rough welcome, and it’s not a very warm reception at all!

Do you look at a female? She can just come straight in—no worries, no issues. But the boys when they start coming—now look what this female is—she might start turning because the other male is coming from the back now. So he’s coming towards now! Let's see what happens.

You see, he’s just coming to—you see, I think he just wants to investigate more than anything. But the adult female, if she feels like he's too close, might turn around and start to push him. But you see how they’re all sniffing each other! You see sniffing at the genitals of the female and just trying to work out what's going on.

Why is everybody so kind of interested in this tiny little being and just trying to work out the exact sort of reasoning for what's happening? Now here comes the big matriarch as well—she’s what I think is the matrix! I mean the largest and the oldest of the elephants that we have here.

And look at how that male backs away immediately as that big female comes in! Now we've got a standoff between the two of them; you see this? And in back he goes! Now the big bull is coming! Now, stall dribbling! He’s an absolute monster!

Now this will give you a really good idea of just how large this male is in comparison to everybody else. And if you see him kind of walking towards those females, older females chase that male away and not for you to be too close! And I wonder what this big male is going to get a reception from this older female as well! You see, the herd is trying to just kind of push the little calf away!

Take it away from these big boys; at the end of the day, they don't want to really be too close because if one of those big boys pushes too hard, you can obviously hurt a number of them! So everybody is just being a bit wary! Fascinating to watch, though! Unbelievable!

I would love to see that tiny baby with that male just to see how much bigger he’s actually. Quite scary how he’s dwarfing the rest of them; he is monstrous! That little baby's the size of his front foot—just the round part of his front foot! You can see the little baby hiding underneath his legs there!

So there it is then: so baby, mother, and then that could be the dad in terms of the baby height! So you can see how the very height is different! Because you could possibly ask for, and he's such a gentleman considering he's in must, and there’s a lot of commotion, you can actually see he almost looks like he's sleeping!

You see his eyes are closing? Are you tired and hot and wondering why everybody's not paying attention to you? It's probably seamless; or before, many times a male of the size would certainly have been through these kind of things before and have probably seen it all. That's why it’s not really that interested compared to the younger males that maybe this day really witnessing a different.

It’s not with a young calf in it! You see his trunk up sniffing now that’s the direction that we think Husana was left in. So somewhere there, so he's just nothing the breeze from where Husana was lying earlier. Lemon, you wondering if a nursing mother’s female—what a nursing mother dies? Would another member of the herd come in and suckle that baby and take over?

So no, unfortunately not. Elephants are very particular about their babies suckling from them. They try to make sure that the nutrients that they’re getting or giving is to their baby and to give their baby the right sort of up starting and to get them the right nutrients that they need. Remember that that female, even though she's now—there's this youngster that is around.

That female needs to breed to be lactating, and if she’s lactating, she needs to make sure that her calf is surviving before she tries to look after. Yeah, this—you might be able to possibly produce enough milk for two, but it would be a very big risk that she would take, and she could theoretically, you know, endanger her own offspring.

And so she'd rather look after her own offspring first and foremost before she does anything else. And so no, they don't adopt others; it's never been recorded as far as I know. And so unfortunately if the mother were to die, then normally the calf also dies as well, gets left behind, and unfortunately gets then pondered by various others.

Now these have moved off a little bit. I want to go and check where that kite is sitting because the kites are still patient. I just want to go back and have a look. See if we can find some semblance of this afterbirth! It might be really cool to go and have a look.

We're right at the back. We've been sitting in the shade ever so nicely, VM and I, and kind of forgot that there is this blazing sunshine! That’s afterbirth right there! There’s something that resembles afterbirth—let’s go over there quickly, and we’ll come back to that just now, because they were all sniffing here as kites.

You're still sitting right there! So, I think maybe this little calf was born somewhere in this general little section! Let's have a look. Maybe even they've all—he writes—it looks very dark from already from here! I just want to see this elephant dung!

Well, this is definitely—she gave birth right there, so you can see there's afterbirth right in the sun! It's still fairly wet, so we must have missed this birth by— I don’t even know! Maybe an hour or two, if that! I think that's about as close as where you must have been to be seeing an elephant give birth!

And that's why the kite is here! So that's why the calf has been patient; it's waiting for the elephants to go, and this is the best view we'll ever get of a yellow-billed kite! Look how poised that is! Isn’t that cool?

So for those of you that—some of you may have never seen a yellow-billed kite, but it is really cool to see! And you can actually see on the beak it looks as though there's some stuff on it, so maybe it’s already been feeding in the areas of chase a little bit. But definitely this is where it gave birth, and it must have been, like I say, at some point early this afternoon or maybe even around lunchtime because it's still very red and still quite moist!

And in this heat, that would dry out incredibly quickly! That's afterbirth, and you'd have a situation where it would be a little bit more kind of brown and drier than what you see there. Obviously, it gave birth right here in this section, which is absolutely phenomenal! It's why that little one is as wobbly as it is—how cool is this!?

So we are minutes away from what would have enjoyed documenting that; that's for sure! Because the elephant breath and I've seen the... because that's weird—as a mission II kind of happened! And then maybe some more over here? Maybe this is where it started, and then she eventually went in there where it was a bit shady.

But you can see what VM was talking about here in front—there’s a big dark patch on the soil, and you can see actually where this sand has been kicked and moved. So maybe that's where it started, and then she moved it along, and it’s ended up over there! But that is so cool to see! Very, very cool!

Monkey wondering where’s the cleanup crew and who is the cleanup crew? So guide monkey, the cleanup crew would probably be in the form of this yellow-billed kite! Tony eagles, Bettany eagles, vultures, hyenas— even those wild dogs that James is with. We're not far from there; maybe the dogs come around the side and come and have a look at it!

At the end of the day, a free meal that he might be able to clean up—not sure if he’d eat it, but you never know—in leopards, sometimes I'm alive—most certainly would eat that if he came across that, given the state he’s in! So a number of different things would clean up, and a number of different things will be here. But that kite is gonna give first sort of go at it!

For now, as soon as other birds spot that kite, they like bats and ears—they're gonna come in, and they're gonna try and keep, you know, that kite away! Then the bigger, then the bigger the animal that is around will just dominate what's going on! And if I mean—if the come, that will be gone in all of about one second! They will just sort of gulp most of that down very, very quickly!

Right, just to see if Husana is here! Those elephants are starting to move off a little bit into the bush. They're going into quite a thicket at the moment, and so the little calf is kind of with them. We can still see them very nicely, but they're starting to move into thickets a little bit, and I really don't want to follow them through thickets just to do a little loop for for Husana, see if we can find him!

If we can't find him, maybe the aliens are out when we get back, and we'll be able to get another amazing visual of that little calf! But what a special sighting now! Well, we kind of looked for Husana; I think that's go back across to Brent near Smith, hopefully, he's going to have some luck at some point this afternoon. Otherwise, he's going to be a very grumpy fella!

Here we go! I'm always happy; I've seen birds! Yeah, a black-headed heron stalking through the grassland after a manner of insects—grasshoppers mostly! There are such elegant birds! Now, we've been driving through the long grasses, and we've done a loop around the river with no luck.

But fortunately, here on the topi plains, we have some shorter grass, and with the shorter grass means less animals, maybe topi living on the topi plains. Strangely enough, we got a nice big herd of Impala! We have little Tommy—arm! There’s a topi! Funny-looking beasties, aren't there?

And we are hoping we get a bit of luck! And, yeah, there's food for predators here, so we can only hope that there are some predators about! If you listen very carefully, I'm going to keep quiet! Just go to the left a little bit there, Edwin! You see there’s that topi lifting his nose to the left from the Impala?

Keep coming, keep coming, keep coming past the Impala! Mmm, bit more! And here we go! Now that’s a nice big male topi in there! They are going to be coming into the rut quite soon, and if you listen carefully, you’ll hear these funny little grunts every now and then! There’s a little Tommy sleeping behind him!

So interruption geese in the foreground—a very funny little bit, bit! So it’s not quite taupey right yet, but it will be coming! And then there can be some particularly fierce battles between the topi! You can hear some scaly spur files a little bit in the distance as well! Sound like people chatting away to me!

I'm for sure having the wind that might be affecting what you can hear! Now we had a question from—oh no! I've gone blank! No maids! Can you help me out quickly? I had a question from handicap, which I can't remember the question either. Mix, I'm so sorry! Got distracted!

Well, the animals around me—ah yes! How far away is the closest city to the Maasai Mara? Well, we've got lots of villages close by, but the cursive city—or is it no rock? And on European and American standards, it's not a city! Adore via a small town! But in Kenyan standard, it is a city! It is also the seat of the county government!

We are in the rock country; the Masai Mara is within the rock country, and it is, as the crow flies—if you can go straight in an airplane—over the mountains probably only about 60 or 70 kilometers away. To drive, probably around 150; however, if I say 150 kilometers, did it go? It's just down the road!

You know, it's a little toddler down the road in the car. However, that will take you—that portion can take you four hours, five hours due to the nature of the roads! The roads down to the Mara leave quite a lot to be desired, especially after it's rained a lot—which it had just before we came down.

And so, yes, it can be very, very sticky! That red, as some of you know, not the leave before when we were coming back from Uganda—Batman, Rebecca, myself, Faith, and Jamie—we got stuck! Our car slid off the road! We were not driving, so there's no marshmallows for me! I was not the driver; I was a passenger! I had no control!

And we left Nairobi at about 12:00, and we only got into camp at 1:00 a.m.! And we were stuck for about five and a half hours in the mud. We had to find every little motorbike Ken passed, and they had a friend who knew a friend who had a friend who had a tractor! So it's quite part of organizing! But eventually, a tractor pulled us all out!

And a body lever! Nish! And then we had a flat tire! So we only gotten to camp at about 1:20 in the morning! So it was quite a long adventure! A long, long drive—getting stuck every now and then! But it's fun to get stuck every now and then, but not too often! I prefer to just not get stuck! I leave the getting stuck to Ralph, who's just to the west of me!

Thanks, Brent! Yeah, now I'm not that good at getting stuck, but I am good at trying! It's just fun to just pull off the road here because we want to just have a look at this group of birds that you do have building the nests. We have stopped to observe before, but it's always lovely to see a lot of masked weavers!

And in the morning they've been very busy at working on those nests! And they've chosen an excellent site in this acacia. Or now as they call it the chile, and it looks like a sweet thorn. The chile or acacia, as we used to call it, but a very good site!

And now haven here, you've asked the question, is it easy for humans or people to contract sleeping sickness from the tsetse flies? While Haven, it is now quite known, and I know the figures in the southern African region! I need to find out a little bit up here in Kenya!

But in the southern African region, they used to have it very prevalent, but they got it under control with a lot of the dips and spraying that they did! And so the tsetse flies have been really reduced to very much non-problem at all! But up high in Kenya, I have heard people saying that they've been bitten by a tsetse fly!

I haven't heard of anybody getting sleeping sickness, but I do need to find out if there is any prevalence of a tear in Kenya! Now, I don't know if you can hear these birds calling, but for me, that is very much the sound of summer!

Let's just listen a little bit! When I was growing up as a little youngster, we used to spend a lot of time fishing on the river, and we used to really welcome the sound of weavers because that meant that the fish were going to start coming on the bite! It really brings joy to my heart; always wonderful how they do that dance at the bottom of it! Hang upside down!

That’s a little bit of look at me! Look how pretty I am and yellow and bright! And look at how I spoke to my little home, trying to attract the female and if that's the message, he's portraying prey on top! So he exposes all these colors from underneath when he hangs upside down.

And that's mostly what the colors are for with birds; they can very often lose all the colors in the non-breeding months down to the molt! And females animate to show that he’s the strongest, the wisest, and the best house builder of the lot! And you can also do his dance the best!

There’s a whole intricacy going on here—natural selection—and it's obviously hard at work on the inside too! Sure know are we getting it right now? Black cat! You're saying that they sound like tickety’s? I think it was! I'm not just quite sure what that is!

But I'm assuming it's a bird! Chickadees—not chickadees? I wonder—is that small little—is that small little chickens or chickadees? I'm not quite sure what chickadees are! That is that a French word? So your phone say oui! OPA! No, put it on a real show!

Okay, so FC has just informed me that it's a little bird that they find in North America part of the tit family! Well, that's news to me! It seems as soon as one starts calling, then they all try to compete!

Now Linda, you're saying that the noise is putting you to sleep! Well, I'm glad that it is, Linda! Well, not that we want you to fall asleep while you're watching our show, but if it's soothing, well then that's great! But as I say, it can bring out emotions in all sorts of different people and different emotions at that!

And like I said, so for you, it's making you feel sleepy! For me, it makes me feel excited for summer and wanting to go down the river and catch some fish! Now you're wondering if both male and female roost in the nest at night! They can do, but generally the males, they can stay.

You see, that's why this is a lovely tree for them because they can stay outside! It depends on the weather, really! If it’s very cold, they will huddle up on the inside in their little ball inside that nest. And so when they huddle together, they then save energy!

And weavers do this quite regularly because when you shiver to stay warm, this is obviously a response, and it does assist the body in warm, and mammals will then shiver when it’s very cold, and that assists in survival! But what the weavers do, they huddle together, and in so doing, keep their warmth together, and then they don’t need to shiver to stay warm!

Because they need to save their energy for the work that that one is doing right there! And so if they spent the night shivering, they wouldn’t have any energy in the morning to constantly work on their house and do the little dances that they're doing!

And the ones that do this the best are the sociable weavers in Namibia, which are the largest nest builders in the world! But they build a massive communal nest with all different entrances at the bottom! So all the different couples will still have their little nests but as part of the greater nest!

And so when it's very cold, they're all huddled together, and they don't need to shiver to stay warm! And when it's very hot, it’s very cool inside, so it all does interlink with thermoregulation as well! And you really don't want to waste your energy shivering to keep warm all night, especially when you've got hard work to do the next day, such as building these very elaborate nests!

And a tree weaver is defined by a bird that can tie a knot! And so not all weavers or true weavers like the red-billed buffalo weaver is not a true either! His nest is just an array of sticks all over the place, and the white-browed sparrow weaver is a similar thing. It's just an array of grass pieces all over the place!

But the true weavers are the ones that can tie a knot, and they normally make a ball nest with some kind of little tunnel coming into it! And that's how you also tell from looking just at the nest which kind of weaver it is! These masked weavers, they don’t have a real entrance or a tunnel into the nest; they've just got a very elaborate hole!

But the other weavers, they make a very long tube, which is all down to assisting in stopping predators from getting inside and eating their chicks or their eggs! And so it does help to protect them, and even when the wind really blows hard, they still find inside that nest!

So it's all protected, and it's very, very intricate from the weavers SC in New York! You're wondering how many chicks they can have in the nest at one time! It’s generally up to about four, but what I've seen the most is normally between two and three! So the average I would say two or three!

And they don't always all survive. Sometimes the wind can throw that little nest all over the place, and they can fall out! And they very often make the nests over water, which does also assist in protecting against predators! But when the wind really blows, and one of them falls out, they got a plop into the water!

And so we knew this as little kids, and we knew that they would be fish waiting underneath them, ready to catch these little chicks! And so we used to go fishing underneath these nests, and we used to catch massive catfish immediately below there because those fish were waiting just for the little chicks to plop into the water!

And we only fish for sport, so even though we caught those big catfish that were waiting for the weavers to fall out the nest, we had our fun with the fish, and then we let them go to go and eat little chicks falling out the nest! And returned them to the murderous rolls calling once again! Fabulous!

Look at the little dance once more! It really makes you feel part of their little gang! And this mentally call! Have you had the dance goes with the cool as well? Alrighty, folks, I think we've sat here with these weavers for long enough! It was a lovely little encounter that!

And you never pass up even just the small little things that we can see! It just makes for a more complete bush experience, doesn't it? But we've got other things to find and see, so let's start up and hit on out! See what else we can find by weavers! Good luck in attracting the females!

So they're all sitting in the background, mining about your building! Good luck!