African driver ant

Most of us know them as siafu and try to avoid them at all costs but here are a few interesting facts about  African driver ant. A typical column  of siafu can contain about a million individuals ants a column the size would consume about fifty thousand prey items a day. Their prey item are insects, arachnids’, and warms, particularly grasshoppers, scorpions and large hairy spiders, but they will often attack larger prey if they have the chance, typically snakes or other reptiles trapped in their holes or nestlings unable to fly. Any injured creature is also at risk if it cannot move out of the ants’ way. A local village tell of cooped chickens or cows in bomas being stripped to the bone in a matter of days.

Unlike the other ten thousand or so ant species, African driver ants do not build complex underground nests. This is because they clear an area of prey quite quickly and need to move from one place to another. Instead they dig a large chamber underground, and then link their bodies together into a massive basket known as a bivouac. Inside this mass of siafu bodies, live the queen and her brood. The brood could be up to a million white maggots with a huge appetite for meat. Almost every siafu is a sterile daughter of the queen and these daughters care for the brood, defend the nest and kill the prey.

These sterile females are all blind. The male are fat and clumsy. The males are produced once a year from special clutch of eggs laid be the queen. These eggs develop into giant winged males that leave the colony on a nuptial flight.Unlike females, the males have very good eyesight, which they need  to find a new colony once he has found the colony he must impress the guards with his size, if he fails, they will cut him to pieces and feed the colonies and feed the colonies young with him; if he succeeds, then he will be allowed to mate with the queen, after which he is discarded.

JBA - Kenya Safari

Kenya Baboon Safari

Scientific Name: Olive baboon (Papiocynocephalus anubis); yellow baboon (Papio ynocephalus cynocephalus) .An omnivorous savannah and woodland primate dweller with ways about  50 kilogram’s , with a gestation of 6 months and a lifespan of about 20-30 years .The baboon, of all the primates in East Africa, most frequently interacts with people. Apart from humans, baboons are the most adaptable of the ground-dwelling primates and live in a wide variety of habitats. 

Kenya safari

Intelligent and crafty, The two most common baboons occur in East Africa, the olive baboon and the yellow baboon. The larger and darker olive baboon is found in Uganda, west and central Kenya and northern Tanzania. Smaller, more slender and lighter in color, the yellow baboon inhabits southern and coastal Kenya and Tanzania. Both types are "dogfaced," but the yellow's nose turns up more than the olive's. Baboons are found in surprisingly varied habitats and are extremely adaptable. The major requirements for any habitat seem to be water sources and safe sleeping places in either tall trees or on cliff faces. Baboons usually leave their sleeping places around 7 or 8 a.m. 

After coming down from the cliffs or trees, adults sit in small groups grooming each other while the juveniles play. They then form a cohesive unit that moves off in a column of two or three, walking until they begin feeding. Fanning out, they feed as they move along, often traveling five or six miles a day. They forage for about three hours in the morning, rest during the heat of the day and then forage again in the afternoon before returning to their sleeping places by about 6 p.m. Baboons sleep, travel, feed and socialize together in groups of about 50 individuals, consisting of seven to eight males and approximately twice as many females plus their young. These family units of females, juveniles and infants form the stable core of a troop, with a ranking system that elevates certain females as leaders. 

A troop's home range is well-defined but does not appear to have territorial borders. When they begin to mature, males leave their natal troops and move in and out of other troops. Frequent fights break out to determine dominance over access to females or meat. The ranking of these males constantly changes during this period. Males are accepted into new troops slowly, usually by developing "friendships" with different females around the edge of a troop. Baboons are opportunistic omnivores and selective feeders. Grass makes up a large part of their diet, along with berries, seeds, pods, blossoms, leaves, roots, bark and sap from a variety of plants. 

Baboons also eat insects and small quantities of meat, such as fish, shellfish, hares, birds, vervet monkeys, and small antelopes. Nearly one-half the size of adult males, females lack the male's ruff (long hairs around the neck), but otherwise they are similar in appearance. Baboons use over 30 vocalizations ranging from grunts to barks to screams. Nonvocal gestures include yawns, lip smacking and shoulder shrugging. 

HSK- Kenya Safari