Can You Spot the Animal? Part 2
Following up from last week’s post Can you Spot the Animal? Today’s post gives the answers to three of the images showing African cats who use camouflage to hide from prey; the lion, the leopard and the serval. Next week I’ll provide answers to the images about 3 other animals in the story.
Looking for any anomaly in the landscape is a good way to learn to spot wildlife. When my guide Rufus asked if I could see the lions in the sea of dried grass, I confessed I could not. I took a photo anyway hoping my telephoto lens might help. Yes! Can you see the dot with 2 ears on the left and the horizontal line of a back on the right?
Two “sub adults” lions, a male and a female, waited patiently for their next meal. Although they looked fully grown, at two years of age they still depended on their mother to hunt for them.
On our way back to the lodge we met the lioness returning at dusk with a warthog piglet in her mouth. We followed her all the way back to the youngsters still hiding in the grass. Mom dropped the kill and instantly and the male grabbed it and took off. The females didn’t even get a bite!
Leopards are the Masters of Invisibility. I know more leopards have seen me than I’ve seen leopards.
In this image Toto, the son of my favourite leopard Fig, hunkers down in the bushes. Once you spot him in the center of the photo it’s impossible to unsee him.
Toto eventually stepped into the sunshine, but the grass was so high his spotted rosette coat quickly became a cloak of invisibility. This is why grazers like antelopes and zebras prefer areas where the grass is short. They know danger can lurk in tall grass!
My final camouflage image is of a serval, one of Africa’s small cats. Can you see the white spot in the grass? That’s the back of the serval’s ear. Without that white spot I would never have seen this little cat tucked down in the grass.
Many cats have white spots on the backs of their ears that make them appear as if they have eyes in the back of their heads.
The serval’s dark spots act as camouflage. Like the leopard, their spotted coat disrupts their color and helps them blend into landscape.
Serval cats are small with long bodies, short tails, and a dot of a black nose. They stalk and pounce on small mammals like mice and rats and are even capable of snatching low flying birds out of the air.
Come back for the final camouflage post next week and learn how even the largest mammals in Africa use camouflage to their advantage.
Check out my new phone cases featuring one of Africa’s endangered species for only $29. A percentage of all online sales goes to support Kenyan wildlife and the people who co-exist with them.
