A última parte da Napi Road
Autor: Charbel El-Hani e Carol Sá | Publicado: 2012-11-08T18:00:00-08:00





Na última parte da Napi Road, antes de chegar a Skukuza, não vimos muita coisa: um grupo de Impalas machos, probavelmente jovens, mais 6 girafas, o que é em si muito bom, e 1 Águia-cobreira-castanha juvenil (Circaetus cinereus). Nosso plano inicial era parar em Matekenyane Koppies, mas decidimos fazer isso no dia seguinte, indo direto para Skukuza, para fazer check-in e ter tempo de percorrer o Sabie loop.



Entre as fotos de Impalas, gostamos dessas, que mostram um deles comendo.













In the last section of Napi Road, before arriving at
Skukuza, we did not see much: one group of male Impalas, probably young dudes, more
6 giraffes, what is in itself great, and 1 juvenile Brown-Snake Eagle (Circaetus cinereus).&nbsp; Our initial plan was to stop at Matekenyane
Koppies, but we decided to do this the next day, going directly to Skukuza, to
check-in and take our time to make the Sabie loop.



Among the impala pictures, we like
the pictures showing one of them eating.



Our second encounter with giraffes
in KNP was still magical. We couldn’t cease getting astonished about these
animals, 5-6 meters in height, an average weight of 1,200&nbsp;kg in the case
of the larger males, while the females weight around 830&nbsp;kg. It was great
to see a couple with a cute young giraffe. 



Evidently the necks are most
amazing, over 2 m in length, nearly half of the animals’ height.



It is interesting that the length of
the neck is due to the size of the cervical vertebrae, not to the addition of
more vertebrae. The giraffe pays physiological costs for its long neck, which
is associated with several adaptations that evolved in these animals, for
instance, in their circulatory system. The role of these adaptations becomes
clear when we consider that their hearts are 2 m above their hooves and 3 m
below their brains. The size of the brain is relatively small – it has only
just 680 g of weight –, probably due to the length of the neck, since too much
energy would be needed to furnish oxygen for a larger brain at the end of that
long neck.



When feeding on twigs, leaves,
fruits and, rarely, grasses, the giraffes use their tongues, lips and palates,
which are tough enough to deal with the thorns of trees like the acacias. Their
highly mobile muscular lips help in efficiently stripping the leaves from the
spiny branches. Their blue gray tongues are about 45 cm long and are prehensile
and powerful, facilitating that they aptly grasp the leaves and pull them into
the mouth. In the picture below, we can see a giraffe using the tongue for
other purposes, probably to clean its fur. It is a funny thing to see as the
picture may translate.



Although they are commonly found
together, they do not stay together for more than a few hours, with the group
composition being more fluid than in other social ungulates. In Napi Road that
day we saw 6 giraffes together, one of them the juvenile mentioned above. In one of the pictures we see three of them.



The animals tend to move freely from
one group to another, and the only more stable associations are between females
and their calves. Adult males tend to be solitary and nomadic, moving between
female groups in order to verify the reproductive receptivity of females in the
different groups. This happens all the time, since there is no fixed breeding
season. Subadult males can be found along with the females, or can form groups
of males, which can be seen engaged in non-combative necking behavior, as a way
of learning for future combats for the females.



Finally, we show the contribution of
a giraffe to the but calendar, with the extra charm of the tail swinging to
shoo flies or mosquitoes away



In one picture, not so good, the Brown Snake Eagle we saw in the last portion of Napi Road before
arriving at Skukuza. It was the first time we photographed this animal we would
see other times in KNP. This was a juvenile and this is the reason why we put
the picture here, despite its quality. How can we know it is a juvenile?
Although the bird is similar to an adult, it is slightly paler, showing a faint
scaled effect.



This is a widely distributed eagle,
being found across much of the sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of the
lowland forest of West Africa. As the name indicates, it mainly eats snakes. It
stay perched, as this one we saw, and dropping onto prey from above, smashing
its spine with its feet. If the prey is a snake, the eagle tries to crush the
head to discharge any venom. Its legs are thickly scaled as an adaptation to
protect it from snake bites. The eagle is not immune, however, to the snake venom,
and is in fact sometimes blinded by spitting cobras.



The Brown Snake Eagle is not
threatened, being classified in the IUCN Red List as Least Concern, with a
stable population trend.