adminstunted mopane bush shrubbery, whose graze line resembles a schoolboy’s fresh hair cut.
Day after day of cloudless skies, the fierce sun has sucked the moisture from the landscape, baking the earth a dusty grey and the withered grass a brittle as straw.
As I take off from the Main Camp at Hwange National Park for Nyamandhlovu water hole, one of the prime artificial drinking places for wildlife, fresh dug gives the best clue and I notice a spectacle.
Thirsty nomads have wandered hundreds of parched kilometres to Nyamandhlovu watering hole knowing that here, there is water always but the water point has shrivelled to a mud wallow.
It is choked with thirsty wildlife, each one driven by the same ancient rhythm to quench thirst and fulfil its instinctive role in the inescapable cycle of life.
Elephants, a few representatives of Hwange’s 40 000 jumbos – the biggest concentration in any national park in the world – dwarf the drinking hole, each seeking its daily share averaging 225 litres. Yes, 225 litres per jumbo!
Within the vicinity, vultures congregate around a carcass but unlike the pitched territorial conquest of the past, for them this is time of plenty, for, there are too many elephant carcasses dotted around.
Near the waterhole alone, four calves elephants lie dead, while scores of other elephants continue with their struggle to drink, each concentrating on his or her own survival.
At the centre of the mud wallow, another calf carcass lies swelling to bursting point, after getting stuck in the mud wallow and dying there. It must have been a painful death, at least in the view of the human being.
Close to the drinking hole, a mother elephant battles to resuscitate its dying calf. It uses its foreleg to try and make the baby stand on its feet again but the baby collapses to the ground, headlong.
Desperate, the mother turns around and uses its hind leg to push the calf up, to no avail. Still desperate and still hoping for luck, she uses the trunk to caress the calf but the calf no longer has energy to stand on its jelly feet.
The calf breathes the last and hey, the dejected mother touches the calf with the trunk for the last time before moving away slowly and tentatively towards the bush. Another calf is lost!
For a human being it is an emotional moment, because death robs but for the jungle, nature has taken its course. The life cycle goes on.
Vultures momentarily ignore the fleshy meal while seemingly cognisant of the falling of another manna from heaven in such times of plenty.
Three or four hippos, the permanent residents of the pool, lie motionless. Their muddy backs looking like cracked grey rock.
Their future is not certain too and you only notice that they are alive when one of them snorts after being annoyed by a wandering elephant. One gets the impression that their days are numbered too.
Impala, waterbuck and other antelopes risk their lives for a sip of the life sustaining water, having been devastated by the ravaging drought.
The risk is considerable, not only from the crocodiles but from the prides of lions that lord over the savanna, the cheetahs that stalk open grassland and the leopards that lurk in the thicket.
The spotted hyena as well as several conspicuous packs of the highly endangered painted dog boost the impressive array of large predators.
A giraffe, all legs and head awkwardly looks for space to drink, its elegance taken off its emaciated body by the drought. It is wary of the predators too.
Either way, survival must be defined by one animal’s ability to outmanoeuvre the predators and the drought.
This is the untold story of life in the 14 600 square kilometre jungle called Hwange National Park where the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest is the order of the day.
But Hwange is famed for its teeming elephant herd.
The number of deaths might be insignificant compared to the 40 000 elephant herd and, of course, the law of natural selection works.
While many people, tourists included, feel emotional about the death of elephants in Hwange, the truth is that there too many elephant than the park can handle.
Natural selection might be taking its course.
It is, however, essential know the elephant, its way of life and how expensive it is to keep such a herd.
Elephants are the largest and heaviest living land animals. Their noses, gestation period, front teeth – and maybe even their memory – are the longest in the animal kingdom.
They and their extinct relatives have lived everywhere except Australia and Antarctica, from sea level to heights of more than 12 000 feet, in habitats ranging from deserts to rainforests to glaciers.
In fact, if it were not for humans, elephants would probably rate among the most successful species on earth.
In elephant society an old grandmother, the matriarch, leads a family herd. She is the dominant female, and the herd she is in charge of will probably consist of her sisters, daughters, female cousins and their young offspring.
A typical herd consists of 20 to 40 females (cows) of all ages. Only nursing and immature males remain with the herd.
Because elephants live to such a great age – possibly as long as 70 years – their social ties last for decades. A large herd can be divided up into a subgroup of three to six elephants.
These are basic units of elephant society, usually made up of a mother and her calves, perhaps staying close to her sister and her sister’s offspring.
Adult bulls usually live alone or in small groups of up to seven members. Male elephants leave the herd by their mid-teens, where they begin the long, slow climb up the male ladder of success, with the biggest, strongest bulls in the area at the top.
Males show little interest in their offspring; instead, they stay out of the family herd and concentrate on keeping their status among the males in their population.
Elephants are active during the day and at night, normally resting in the hottest part of the day. Towards sundown, the herd moves towards water to drink and bathe. Elephants normally drink at least once a day. After drinking, they may stay in or near the water for some time.
Not only do they drink and bathe, they trunk-spray their own and each other’s bodies, they splash and churn up the mud, and they roll over and squirm, giving every indication of having a good time.
Thick, sticky mud is highly favoured, and after a roll, calves emerge looking like chocolate-encrusted elephants.
Elephants are generally peaceful and easygoing, and they show great affection for one another.
They even communicate with each other in many ways and with all their senses. They rely less on their eyes than humans do, but visual signals are important – the position of their ears and trunk shows what mood an elephant is in. Their sense of smell can tell them something about another elephant’s health. Touch can also be used to convey some information. But the main way an elephant communicates deliberately is, as with humans, by sound.
Elephant vocalisations range from high-pitched squeaks to deep rumbles. These deep rumbles, as much as two-thirds of what an elephant is saying, are too low for the human ear to detect.
The saying “an elephant never forgets” is close to the truth. Elephants do have a remarkable memory. In the wild, elephants appear to remember for years their relationships with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other elephants, some of whom they may only see occasionally. The advantages of a good memory may explain why they have evolved such a large brain.
Elephants play such an important role in their ecosystem that the loss of elephants from an area would cause the existing ecosystem to collapse.
And if elephants are to survive, we must make sure that two things happen: first, enough elephant habitat must be left in its natural state, and secondly, the elephants must be protected as a manageable herd size.
Online Reporter