one of my favorite animals
if i was really pressed to name one out
of the whole animal kingdom
it would have to be the african buffalo
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now if you’re not familiar with these
animals you could be forgiven for
thinking they’re glorified wild cows or
some ancient ancestor of the domestic
cow they’re not actually they are only
very distantly related
their unpredictable wild nature has
earned them quite the reputation as one
of the most dangerous animals in the
african savannah when i was growing up
in kenya as a young girl
i was fascinated that of all the animals
out there
lions hyena leopard cheetah elephant
it was the african buffalo that was the
one that seemed to
inspire the most reverence and and
actually fear as well but also it was
often an animal that was at the heart of
some of the best stories that i would
listen to around the campfire
at the foothills of mount kenya called
abedez national park it was a very
bright
full moon that lit the scene
beautiful stars like just filled the sky
it was back in the day where we didn’t
have normal cameras any kind of night
vision capability any night filming
infrared all that stuff we’d been up for
several hours mostly what we saw were
various impala
gazelle some elephant as well that had
gathered around this salt lake
all of a sudden it was heads up
of course you know everyone watching the
scene was hoping that this was the
moment a big predator was going to rock
up to the scene and slowly
the impala the gazelle and eventually
even the elephant sort of cleared
and moved off the salt lake and went to
the edges
in came
this lone
male old african buffalo
limping
he looked tired
he looked like he was in pain
they tend to have these kind of almost
like wrinkled circles around their eyes
and on their face as they get older so
there were a lot of cues there that we
were picking up that this was an old
male but he wasn’t just old but injured
he just slowly walked through
head hanging low
very determined moving in
one clear direction to the center of
that salt lake
and when he got there
he dropped his head down and started
licking
lapping up the salt that he’d come for
in the wild an animal will do everything
in its power to hide an injury if
they’re not predated they’re either
injured or they simply
get too old to keep up with their herd
it doesn’t want to look vulnerable it
doesn’t want to be singled out by a
predator as an easy kill
all the other animals looked incredibly
wary of him
with such an obvious injury he could
barely put any weight down on that foot
he was clearly in a lot of pain
even despite his size
vulnerable so there he made his way
right to the center presumably because
that’s where he felt safe was that was
where there was no scrub where potential
predators could lie in weight the
elephants particularly who
because of their size and numbers you
would have expected to dominate the area
around the salt lake the older females
definitely look like they weren’t
interested in trying to challenge this
buffalo so these two
young male elephants sort of tried a few
mock charges you know trumpeting and
flapping their ears and moving towards
them
and watching this
old bull buffalo he’d sort of raise his
head up and just kind of
stare them down just face them head-on
and just
tip his head up at them like that
and
the body language there was no mistaking
that the message was clear this buffalo
was saying i am here and i’m not moving
for anybody
you know what i saw in that scene was
tenacity resilience
and
holding space taking up space
ever since that day i have the art most
respect for african buffaloes the very
same personality traits that earned them
that reputation of being ill-tempered
bad-natured dangerous animals are the
same traits that mean they are also
unbelievably resilient animals the
number of times i’ve either seen
first-hand or natural history films
where a single animal will be taken down
by three four
lions and you’re thinking to yourself
come on buddy this has got to be it your
your number’s up and just at that moment
it finds another gear and it
fights its way out of that situation to
live another day
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