Have you heard an African wild dog HOO?

I have - and if you watch this video to the end you will be one of a small number of people who have heard one too.

A hoo is a sharp, distinctive owl-like call made by African wild dogs that have been separated from the pack. Members of the pack will return the hoo, enabling their mates to locate and re-unite with them. The call can be heard from up to four kilometres away.

During a visit to the Kruger Park in September 2021, my wife Shelley and I we were tracking a group of 3 African wild dogs (together with a small convoy of other cars) moving up the H4-2 towards Skukuza.

The trio had just been chased off an impala kill they had made by two large hyena (notice their bloodied faces and snouts). As we followed them, we heard what we thought was a car alarm going off. It was only when one of the dogs stopped in the road and lowered its head to make this very distinctive sound did we realise what in fact we had been hearing. Listen for the reply calls from the pack rest of the pack.

On hearing these the three dogs were able to locate the pack and quickly moved off the road to re-unite with them. What a surprising and special experience!

A few cars were parked on the verge of the H1-5 main road between the Olifants and Satara Rest Camps. This wasn’t out of the ordinary in South Africa’s premier game reserve – the Kruger National Park – on a typical sunny December morning in 2015.

We pulled up next to the parked cars ambivalently, expecting an animal of the herbivorous kind to appear. After a quick scan of the bush, we noticed some vervet monkeys chattering and jumping around on some fallen tree branches. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the sighting we had hoped for, we often had vervets in our garden back home in Kwa-Zulu Natal. But why did this particular troop have an audience?

We interrupted a woman through her open passenger window who was staring intently at the troop with binoculars. “Python”, she said, pointing towards the bottom of the tree, “it has caught a monkey”. We scrambled for our cameras to see if we could locate the great snake. With the help of the camera zoom, glinting scales on one of the thicker fallen branches emerged – it was an African rock python. In its coil, tufts of grey-brown fur appeared as the snake unwound. It was true, the python had caught a vervet and it was about to swallow it.

Watching the python’s jaws expand as it engulfed the lifeless mat of grey-brown fur was hard to watch, as amazing as this sighting was. It was even harder to watch the other monkey’s reactions. Many clearly seemed to be in distress, chattering relentlessly and running around the colossal constrictor as if in a blind panic. There is nothing like witnessing the reality of death, the fragility of life and the unpredictability of nature in the African bush. This is a sighting that we will never forget.

My family and I have been avid Kruger-goers for the last 10 years now. We have travelled the park extensively, particularly the southern section, which is known for its abundance of wildlife. Well, most of it anyway. My mom, arguably the biggest Kruger fanatic amongst all of us, insists that Duke Road has one of the higher game densities in the park. Over the years, this insistence has been met with laughter and mockery.

Needless to say, we haven’t had much luck on Duke. It seems even the most common antelope in the park – impala – avoid Duke. But every year, without fail, my mom insists that there IS game there, and not just antelope, but animals of the feline variety – lions, leopards and cheetahs. She argues that she sees these animals on the incredibly popular animal tracker app, Latest Sightings. I might add that she is on the app every night.

So last year, we decided to up the ante. A bet was quickly concocted. If we didn’t see anything ‘rare’ on Duke in the week to follow, everyone betting against my mom owed her a King Cone from the Park Shop, and of course, a back massage. If history were to repeat itself and nothing was seen, the Duke-deniers would be getting an ice-cream of their own. Everyone – my dad, my brother, my sisters and my girlfriend – took this action without thinking twice. In their minds, they would be licking the melting chocolate off the cone in a matter of days.

I wasn’t convinced. Here’s the thing, my mom is almost always right, with everything. She had to be right about Duke eventually. There you have it, I was on Team Duke, despite my girlfriend telling me to get my wallet ready to folk out some serious ice-cream cash.

Days later I watched with absolute glee as we stumbled upon a traffic jam at the junction of Duke. A leopard was stored away in a tree right next to the road. Beautiful. However, as was ruthlessly pointed out, we were technically not on Duke. No ice-cream for us, although I would’ve made my peace with that as we had just seen a leopard.

The next day, we revisited the juncture of Duke in search for the leopard. It had been a pretty dry day, so it was a last resort. To our surprise, the leopard was there! Still not on Duke the Duke-deniers pointed out. Then something amazing happened…

The best sightings are those that are unexpected and caught in the act. While most of us, ourselves included, tend to look behind every moving tree, bush and sand mound in search of big cats, we often miss what’s hidden in plain sight. On this particular morning, we came across a small herd of elephants just north of Lower Sabie at the entrance of the Mlondozi loop – not an unusual sighting in the Kruger National Park.

As passers-by gradually moved off after a brief look at the majestic beasts, we were treated to a front row sighting of a mother elephant and her baby. Akin to an exploring toddler, the baby wobbled on unsure legs, moving between mom and nearby trees. The baby grasped dry branches, twirling them around with the gooey forceps of its trunk, only to slap them down into the dirt. It seemed that the baby was learning how to use its trunk by copying mom.

We must have watched the scene unravel for a good hour or two before the elephants meandered off into the bush. We are incredibly grateful to that elephant mom for letting us in, ever so briefly, into her world. More often than not, the best sightings are those that appear out of the mundane, and are hidden in plain sight.

It appeared to be a normal day as my family and I meandered in our Toyota Innova along the Gomondwane loop in the Kruger National Park. The route is shady, with relatively thick shrubs lining either side of the dirt road. We approached a stationary car, appearing to be watching a herd of elephants milling about in a clearing ahead, just off the road. Although the elephants appeared to be relaxed, they were still a little too close for comfort, and neither car was willing to risk spooking a charge.

After a long wait, we were joined by another car, who was not willing to wait that long. The car pulled off to our left and casually sauntered passed the herd of elephants, having the audacity to take a photograph on the way. The herd continued grazing, unperturbed. The car in front of us got braver, and decided to do the same thing. We watched in awe as the car moved hurriedly passed the herd and continued up the loop without so much as a blink.

We had now watched two cars move directly passed the elephants without reaction, who by this time had moved further into the bush. We decided that the elephants were relaxed enough and further enough into the bush to warrant a quick escape. The coast was clear. Deciding to film our ‘quick escape’ and get a passing shot of the majestic animals, I wound down my window and pressed record as we went passed the clearing.

A giant grey shape suddenly loomed on the screen of my camcorder as an elephant appeared out of nowhere in a full-frontal charge, bare metres away from my door. My brother put foot on the accelerator as screams of terror reverberated from inside the car. But the elephant halted at the last second – a mock charge. Rangers argue that the tell-tale signs of a mock charge are when an elephant flaps out its ears while charging, compared to a normal charge where the ears stay flat against the elephant’s head. Needless to say we didn’t exactly have time to speculate.

Seconds after the commotion, the screams of terror were replaced with swearwords of relief. Although we had taken precautions to guard against exactly this scenario, the African bush is always full of surprises, which is ironically exactly what keeps us coming back for more each year.

The common perception among people about hyenas is one that usually describes them as smelly, mangy, vicious animals who eat lion cubs and steal hard fought meals from other predators. Their arched backs, motley appearance, cacophonous midnight cackle and lob-sided gallop appear to reinforce this perception about hyenas. In other words, they are grossly misrepresented.

On a recent trip to the Kruger National Park, my appreciation for the estranged scavengers increased even more. It was a hot crisp morning and we had stumbled upon a clan of hyenas resting near the confines of a drain pipe under the road. Their bellies were taunt, some with protruding teats. In amongst them juvenile hyenas rumbled around and chased each other to and fro. Looking at them from this perspective, they seemed remarkably human – the way brothers would play fight with one another.

Time passed as the morning grew hotter, when a few of the clan ventured curiously onto the tarmac, bounding in and out of the shadows of peering cars. We were also approached. In fact, they took a liking to our front tyre, which we discovered would not be the worst of our problems a little later on. A large hyena, most likely a female, casually sauntered past the driver’s seat, and gazed briefly into the middle seat window before sinking its powerful jaws into the door handle of our car, almost in an attempt to hijack us. The door handle made a loud clanking sound as it reverberated against the hyenas jaw back into its metal socket. We were grateful that being South Africans had long since taught us to keep our doors locked.

What happened next was perhaps even more spectacular, a little bizarre and hilariously funny. A few of the little hyenas had obviously tired from the rumble and tumble and had located their sleeping mom to obtain a refreshing beverage of milk. As they suckled, a meandering adult hyena approached, with an air of extreme boredom and mischief. The adult hyena, who we would later term the bored uncle, nonchalantly grasped one of the suckling hyena’s tails and began to pull.

A tug-o-war soon ensured between the baby and uncle, only the baby was the rope. The baby clung onto its mom’s teat with phenomenal tenacity, whining incessantly as the uncle pulled harder and harder. But the little guy wouldn’t be displaced; soon he was being pulled so hard that his body was lifted into the air, sending us into fits of laughter. Eventually the baby let go, but soon scrambled back to his mom’s milk.

Humans have long believed that there is something special and magical about the number three. It is a number that is accorded great significance in religion, mythology and folk lore. The Latin phrase, “omne trium perfectum” (everything that comes in threes is perfect or complete) echoes this belief. And in stories of three it is invariably the third occurrence – whether it be an event, test or travail – that is the crucial one. The more modern adage, “third time lucky”, captures this sentiment perfectly.

The tradition of three and the magic of the third occurrence is possibly nowhere more apparent than in fairy tales. Just think of three of the most beloved classics, The 3 Little Pigs, The 3 Billy Goats Gruff and Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, and consider how the drama unfolds in each.

Well, during our visit to the Kruger Park in December last year my family and I discovered first hand that this centuries old tradition is still alive and well. We were given a uniquely African fairy tale of our own as a farewell gift from the Park – and while it was magical it is also entirely true. Our fairy tale didn’t involve pigs, goats or bears, but three sightings of that beautiful and embattled canine, the African wild dog.

Our first sighting was of a pack of about 12 dogs on the S26 in the southern section of the park. They lay in the grass a short distance from the road resting. After a short while a few of them started got up and started greeting some of the other dogs with nuzzles and yelps as if encouraging them to get up and moving. It looked like a pre-hunt ritual, and after a few false starts all the dogs eventually got up and moved off into the bush.

The very next day we came across a group of five dogs just several kilometres from our first sighting and very likely from the same pack. Several of the dogs were caked with mud from cooling off in some nearby puddles of water that had formed from some welcome overnight rain. They were very accommodating and milled around the cars that had stopped to watch them for several minutes before they too decided to head off into the bush.

Now frequent visitors to the Park, even experienced savvy ones, will tell you that a single sighting of African wild dogs is rare and not to be taken for granted. While Kruger is one of their last strongholds there are less than five hundred African wild dogs scattered across the Park, they have large hunting ranges and move in packs of up to 30.

We only had a few more days left in the park, so with two very satisfying wild dog sightings we weren’t expecting any more, the Kruger had already been so incredibly generous in this regard. But the Park had decidedly to look kindly upon us, and was clearly intent on writing a script of its own – one in which we would become more than happy participants. We were about to be granted a wish we didn’t even wish for.

We were making our way to the Talamati bush camp for our last evening of our visit when we noticed about ten or so wild dogs in the undergrowth about twenty metres off the road. A SANPARKS bakkie was manoeuvring itself carefully towards them. The driver managed to get the vehicle really close, and we noticed the barrel of a rifle sticking out of the passenger side window. A few seconds later there was a crack and a red feathered dart suddenly appeared in the rear of one of the nearby dogs.

The dog tried to make a getaway, but after a short distance stumbled and fell. The two Parks staff members left the bakkie and made there way over to the dog. I called out to them if it was OK if we came and watched them to which they graciously agreed.

Another dog must have been darted before we arrived, and the two dogs lay quite close to one another. Two hoods were placed over the heads of the dogs and the two staff members (Markus Hofmeyr – Kruger’s chief vet – and colleague Louis van Schalkwyk). The rest of the pack had withdrawn to about 30 metres away from which they observed proceedings, curiously not agitated or distressed at what had befallen their pack mates.

We watched intently as they started working on the dogs. Incisions were made into the ears of the dogs, microchips inserted and the incisions sutured closed. Several samples of blood were drawn from syringes into vials and marked for testing. Samples of mucous were taken from the dogs’ eyes with ear buds and clippings of fur cut from their tails. The dogs were also photographed. Markus and Louis worked methodically and purposely, patiently fielding questions as they went about their business.

We learnt that they were responding to reports that one of the dogs in the pack was being uncharacteristically aggressive and biting the tyres of cars. Transmittable diseases in such social animals like African wild dog is obviously a big concern.

By this time some more cars had stopped and we now comprised a group of about twenty. While they were finishing up someone had the presence of mind to ask Markus if she could touch one of the animals before they were brought around. Markus kindly agreed, with the proviso that she would need to wash her hands thoroughly afterwards. Her request may have been a personal one, but permission to touch the dogs was automatically taken as collective. Two lines quickly formed behind the dogs as we took turns to gently stroke them as they lay unconscious on their sides.

It is difficult to describe in words what a group of people who are witnessing and participating in something so special and extraordinary looks like; yet it written clearly in their faces, evident in their body language and communicated very clearly in the hushed awe-struck tones of their voices. It felt like we were participating in an impromptu, yet sacred and very special wilderness based communion ritual. It felt like this because, I believe, this is exactly what it was.

Once everyone had finished paying their respects Markus told us that they needed to bring the dogs around and that, “now would be a good time to make your way back to your cars”. I have written several articles based on my family’s visits to Kruger. I usually take a bit of time considering whether to write them, given that the Kruger is already home to so many exceptional stories. But as soon as I ran my hands over the rib cage of one of the sleeping dogs I knew I was going to write about this encounter. The title of the piece, “Touching the wild” announced itself in my head before I even got back to our car. Because that is what we had just done – in so many senses of the word – and we had been touched in return.

The Kruger, always a place of extraordinary experiences, had for us become a creator of fairy tales as well, and like all good fairy tales ours has been told and retold, and will continue to be so for many years to come. To our two wizards of Kruger, Markus Hofmeyr and Louis van Schalkwyk, whose kindness and consideration provided us with a window into their special world of work and brought the magic to our number 3 – Thank You!

This seems to be quite an ambiguous question with ambiguous answers. The kings of the veld appear to very rarely show any form of affection or playfulness towards their offspring. Why?

Although there appears to be no definitive answer, one can accurately speculate that this lack of affection stems from an issue of dominance. Male lions need to exert their dominance in almost every form, one of their major rolls being to defend their pride from outside intruders. This appears to have been extended to their general behaviour; eating first, lazing around under shady acacia tress while the females hunt etc etc. Perhaps this inherent form of dominance also needs to be applied to cubs – to ensure that when they grow up, they know who is boss.

With that being said, male cubs are often kicked out of the pride at a fairly young age. Experts argue that this prevents the male lion’s possible heirs from taking over the very pride they were born into. In other words, although DNA evidence is shared, in the lion’s world this does not necessarily delineate that the cubs won’t pose a threat to the king in the future.

Male lions also have very distasteful manners when taking over a pride. The old king(s) of the pride are banished, and any cubs of the fallen king are immediately killed, thus ensuring that there are no threats to the new alpha male (read more).

But there are times when lions show a playfulness and sincerity with their young ones, similar to that of Mufasa and Simba from The Lion King. There is an apparent connectedness between father and cub, appearing to illustrate that maybe male lions are not domineering and patriarchal tyrants all of the time, but show a capacity to love, protect and play.

“But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those that we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.”

― Lawrence Anthony, The Elephant Whisperer

Ever found yourself at the mercy of an elephant advancing down the road towards your car? Thousands of visitors in South African big five game reserves experience this every year. On occasion, elephants charge and flip cars with extraordinary strength, often incurring severe injuries to the occupants inside. However, there are ways to avoid a similar fate. While the following tips are not exhaustive and may not always work, they may still save your life.

First and foremost, if an elephant is marching down the road towards your car, the best thing to do is reverse as far as possible and try to get out of the elephant’s way. More often than not, the approaching elephant will meander off into the bush. The best way to avoid this scenario at all is to try keep a safe distance from the elephant at the get-go. This should give you time to manoeuvre your car to such a position that you can face the opposite direction to make for a speedy getaway should the elephant charge or advance closer.

However, sometimes reversing is simply not an option. There may be obstructions or other cars blocking the way. This is usually the trickiest situation to deal with. Although an elephant not charging is not always guaranteed, the best thing to do in this situation is to move as far from the elephant as possible (i.e. the side with the most amount of space in relation to the elephant). However, there is no right answer in this situation. What you should try accomplish here is to stay as unobtrusive to the elephant’s path as possible in order to avoid a charge.

It is also important to remain as calm and as quiet as possible. DO NOT hoot or purposely divert the elephant off its path. This is their domain and you are merely a visitor, and elephants do not often scare easily. If there is no way to move away from the elephant and a charge seems imminent, move in your car as far as possible from the side closest to the elephant. An elephants tusks can go through metal like a knife through butter, a human body will be exceptionally more susceptible to major damage.

If worst comes to worst and the elephant is charging towards you, there is unfortunately not much you can do. However, wildlife experts often state that elephants may not carry out the full charge, but will rather carry out a mock charge in order to ward off its target without inflicting harm.

What differentiates a mock charge from a real charge is the elephant’s ears. Usually, an elephant’s ears will flap outwards like taut butterfly wings during a mock charge. The purpose of this is to make the elephant look as big as possible. During a real charge, an elephant’s ears will usually stay flat and flush against the side of its head. This appears to allow for less air resistance during a charge, increasing the elephant’s velocity and force behind the charge.

Most importantly, people should not fear elephants. Elephants are remarkable animals that possess very high levels of intelligence. Accordingly, they demand respect and nothing less. Treat elephants in the right way and they will treat in the same way rewarding you with the most amazing sightings.