“The buffalo surrounded our car with menacing eyes.” Encountering a huge crowd | Spotting wildlife

We park our Land Cruiser on a golden grassland in Botswana’s Mababe Depression, surrounded by mud-covered Cape buffalo.

“There’s got to be 3,000 of them here,” guide Jonah Seboko says quietly as he surveys the scene through binoculars. “Beautiful, just beautiful.”

The word was not associated with the notoriously grumpy and vulgar buffalo, known as the “Widowmaker” or “Black Death” for their horribly aggressive and vengeful nature.

Cape buffalo are part of Africa’s big five, along with elephants, rhinos, lions, and leopards. Historically, big game hunters considered the Cape buffalo to be the most dangerous to track, so they are a special group of animals so called. Today, the Big 5 are the most popular destinations for safari travelers.

But the Buffaloes aren’t as appealing as the other teams in the popular quintet. They don’t fall into the category of “charismatic megafauna,” adorable mammals that fascinate us and make us care about them and their habitat.

And unlike other members of the Big Five fanzines, they don’t even have their own “World… Day” to celebrate them and raise awareness for their protection.

However, they are important environmental engineers and are revered in African cultures as symbols of strength, resilience, and unity.

Those qualities come to light in a savage interaction between Africa’s largest herd of buffalo and a fearsome pride of lions. The plains of Mababe are the setting for one of the continent’s most intense natural dramas, starring these two archenemies.

Mababe panic

The Mababe Depression, located between the Okavango Delta and Chobe National Park in Botswana, has seen many changes. Since 2007, this previously dry ancient lake has become an entirely new ecosystem after earthquakes and plate movement altered the flow of rivers into the area.

During the dry season from August to November, this vast gray and golden basin provides the only source of water and nutrient-rich grassland, attracting large herds of elephants and buffalo.

Mababe recently attracted its first camp, Wilderness Mokete, after the community that owns the land chose to convert it from hunting to photography safaris and was granted exclusive access to a 500km² concession.

Approximately 400,000 Cape buffalo (Sinceras Cafe Cafe – One of four subspecies of African buffalo) roams southern and eastern Africa.

It is classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List due to population declines due to human encroachment, poaching, disease, and habitat degradation from livestock.

The giant herd of mababe is made up of countless small, stubborn herds, an apt collective noun considering their temperament. Starting around August, they all gather here as precious food becomes scarce elsewhere. If it rains, it will stop again.

Encounter with water buffalo

“Mokete means “animal feast,” and everything in this area is like that,” Jonah explained. As we peered through our binoculars, we could see elephants and zebras roaming just beyond the buffalo herd, and more buffalo in the distance.

The buffalo surrounded our car with menacing eyes, and we got to see their mighty power up close. These sturdy bovids have rough gray or black skin, and their calves have a distinctive reddish-brown color. But what I find fascinating are the horns, which vary greatly in shape, size, and pattern.

“Everyone is different. That’s how calves recognize their mothers. It’s beautiful,” Jonah said, pointing to a female with deep, pendulous horns that curve into a perfect U-shape.

Males are easily identified by their “boss,” a mass of bone and keratin where the two horns meet at the top of the head. Regardless of shape or size, buffalo horns can cause fatal injuries.

Buffaloes are known for taking no prisoners when charging, turning back and attacking even if injured, and chasing and killing predators and hunters.

“Buffaloes are unpredictable. They can charge you at any time. If you’re on foot and too slow to run, your best way to survive is to lie on the ground or hide behind a log to avoid getting hooked and blown into the air.”

If an 850 kg bovine that could run at 60 km/h charged towards me, I doubt I would have the courage to lie down. Thankfully, our herd seems to be calm and there are no lions around to spook them.

Instead, the predators were feeding on the three elephants we saw around the concession, which had languished in the 40°C heat. Vultures crowded around the carcass, and the stench of rotting flesh and expelled intestines hung heavy in the air.

lion threat

In the 18 years I have been visiting Africa, I have never witnessed a murder, nor would I want to. Vasco Tebalo, Moquete’s lead guide, showed me a smartphone video of five lions choking a buffalo amidst the dust and noise of the herd. It’s a tough watch.

“This is its true nature,” Vasco says. “It’s not like an edited TV documentary. It’s so real when you see it with your own eyes and hear the screams. It can take an hour for a lion to kill a buffalo. People.
They want to see them kill, but sometimes they shed tears. ”

The next morning, six lions, covered in glowing blood stains, were found chewing on the ribs of the buffalo they had killed for breakfast. While lazy hyenas hang out in search of bone remains, jackals quietly wait their turn.

We encounter three lions chasing “Dagaboy,” a grumpy old man from the buffalo world whose Zulu word means mud.

After the growing season, buffalo often leave the herd to form their own herds or wander alone, often diving into muddy ponds to stay cool and protect themselves from insects.

Don’t mess with these kids. They are known to be particularly belligerent, and the Lions decided to pass on this individual.

Then, he encounters two golden boys wandering along the railroad tracks. These indomitable lions, all muscular and rippling, look more gray than gold due to the ubiquitous dust of the black cotton soil, but with swinging manes the color of straw, they strut like rock stars. Someone came up next to me in a Land Cruiser and was resting in the shade.

But there’s more to Mababe than just lions and buffalo. Giraffes, ostriches, zebras and warthogs mingle on the floodplains, as do antelopes such as roans, sables, impalas, dainty snails and herds of maroon tsesebe, all of which are potential prey for wild dogs and hyenas.

On the ground, thousands, perhaps millions, of sparrow-sized red-billed sparrows swirl in a mesmerizing whisper, darkening the morning sky.

After hunting

One morning I joined wildlife filmmaker Russell McLaughlin, who is making a documentary about the interactions between Mababe’s lions and buffalo.

“When I first saw it hunt, I was shocked,” he says. “This is a very special place. I’ve been here for a week, but I’ve been here for three years.”

As we drive, the sunrise illuminates the floodplain like a golden band under a stormy sky. A lioness is gently calling to her six cubs, the tip of her black tail poking out above the grass.

Some people play with broken tsesebe corners like kittens play with balls of yarn. It’s hard to imagine this cute cub attacking a beefy bovid, but it plays by its own rules when it comes to predation.

“We have footage of three-month-old lions stalking buffalo. They are completely fearless,” Russell said.

“Chobe pride hunters hunt during the day when normal lions are sleeping. The area is large and there is no shade, but they are adapted to the heat and will sit and wait for buffalo that come to drink.”

Russell used a drone to identify a wide black line about 6km long and calculated the herd to be about 12,000 buffalo. We drove an hour to reach them and found out that 8 of us from Golden Boys and Chobe Pride arrived first.

“These girls aren’t even three years old yet,” he explains. “They kill so many buffaloes that they are huge and muscular.”

Amid the dust and the roar of hooves, the excited buffalo stare at the predator for what seems like an eternity, maintaining a united defensive wall. Lions with full bellies are in no hurry.

They watch and wait until the buffalo heads towards the water. In the end, we leave it to them and Russell explains what it’s like in the middle of the action.

“When a lion stomps or a lion chases you, you can almost feel the ground moving, but the dust remains forever,” he says.

“Seeing a herd stretching from horizon to horizon is one of the most incredible sights. I’ve worked on every continent but never seen them here. Moquete was the pinnacle of my career.”

Mababe Depression Environmental Engineer

On our final drive, a distant dust cloud led us to a herd of 5,000 buffalo on the move. Interestingly, research suggests that females “vote” on the route of the herd, heading in the direction they want to go.

The majority wins, and the older buffalo takes the lead. They eat their favorite tall, coarse buffalo grass, which grows here in abundance, and relax and chew their cud.

Their role as eco-engineers is to clear the plains for sweet, short grasses preferred by more selective herbivores such as stinbok, roan and sable. At the same time, they enrich the earth with their dung.

Cattle egrets are flying around, and the monotone color of the bovid family shines white in the sunlight. The birds scoop up insects that the beast disturbs, and in return they land on the buffalo’s back or horns, acting as an early warning system of the presence of predators.

Similarly, red-billed oxpeckers pick ticks from buffalo hides, cleaning the host and eating at the same time.

A herd of cows slowly passes us, rearing up and making menacing bull calls.

“They’re very defensive,” Jonah says.

“They go crazy to protect their herd. For safety, they form one unit like a big wall with the young in the middle, making it difficult for predators to get in. But lions are smart. They wait until the perfect moment, then sneak in, splitting into small groups and picking out the weaker ones who can’t keep up.”

As if on cue, a herd of buffalo begins to scurry, roaring noisily, their roaring hooves kicking up dirt. I nervously looked around, trying to find the lion. Half wanted to see the first catch, but half didn’t.

“Don’t worry,” Jonah says once they calm down. “They were scared of warthogs. They see warthogs every day, but today they just decided to make a fuss. And when one buffalo runs, they all run…”

I ask Jonah what he thinks about Mababe buffalo.

“They are amazing,” he replied. “It’s very open here, and you can enjoy every inch of the herd, and no matter how many times you see it, you never get tired of it.It’s strange, but I feel sad when the herd is gone.The herd is simply amazing.That’s the only word I have.”

He’s right. All in all, they’re really great.

And to see a buffalo up close and feel their power, keen personality, and loyalty to protection…well, it’s beautiful, just beautiful.