Hi blog. Today we went on two safaris — one in the morning and one in the evening. I wasn’t expecting to go on any sort of safari during this trip, but it was fun! I imagined this course to be much more hominid oriented.
During the first safari, we spotted a herd of elephants immediately at the start. There were a bunch of juveniles, which was exciting to see. The crossed the road right in front of us. We spotted a whole bunch of zebras, wildebeests, Thomsons and Grants gazelles, birds, hartebeests, and of course giraffes (one of my taxon groups). We saw both reticulated giraffes and Masai giraffes, and I discussed their ossicones with the other people in my car. I didn’t know the purpose of the ossicones, so I looked into it and found out that they serve a similar function as antlers on deer — males use them for advantage in combat. We ended the safari after about 3.5 hours and went to lunch, during which we had some delicious spaghetti.
After lunch we had 2 student presentations. One was on canids and equids and the other was on antelopini. They were both enjoyable, and I learned a bit from both of the presentations about some of the animals we were to see that night. I learned how to tell the difference between Thomson’s and Grant’s gazelles: placement of the black stripes on their bodies makes them easily distinguishable.
During the second safari, we didn’t see many animals, probably because it was evening and the animals were clocking out for the day. We drove up to a cliff that overlooked the savanna, and it was gorgeous. We stayed up there for maybe around an hour, and there were ticks everywhere. We originally found them within five minutes of being there, but we had to stay until the sky turned dark, so I was extremely paranoid the entire time about ticks crawling all over me. I am a major germophobe and was freaking out about getting a disease. It did not help that tsetse flies were also swarming around trying to drink my blood.
^Me and Carina on the cliff at sunset
I am currently sitting at dinner writing this because it is 10 pm and we have a presentation after dessert, so I don’t think I’ll have any more time tonight to write this before my body gives out and I pass out. I am exhausted but excited for tomorrow, and I just heard there is a 4 hour hike planned for tomorrow so I am a little anxious about that.
Staying awake as long as possible,
Kacey
