Augustas Kligys Katja Lachmann
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o Wild animals - How to react
Wild animals - How to react

I read the book "Between Cape Town and Kalahari". The author is Rainer M. Schröder. He and his wife went together on a trip through South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. They had some friend called Willy in that book, who had 20 years experience with doing safaris and wild animals. Here I translated myself some important information:

LIONS

There is no need to be afraid of lions when meeting them in the wilderness. Lions are not up to search the near of human beings, especially they are not searching for men as victims. The reason is that they hunt for what they have learned during their "childhood". That means, everything they are interested in are animals being on the "menu" the mother provided them as tasteful and worth to hunt. Lions need a special technic to hunt animals and as men are not in their natural life circle they never learned which technic to use for hunting them. There are lion specialists i.e. that hunt buffalos because in their region are very much. If buffalos leave that area and only zebras and other animals are left, they have difficulties in hunting them. They are not sure which technic to use best because in the first 24 months of their life they learned only to hunt buffalos. Lions are always doing that what they have learned from their mother.

Elephants

There is no danger as long as the elephant does not feel threatened, but you never know what the elephant thinks. So if elephants react angry and start to follow you (a very sign for being angry), it is good to have some cloth (i.e. t-shirt) that spoils by perspiration. You should take that and throw behind you when you are sure the elephant goes after you. Elephants do not have good eyes, they rely more on their nose. So when throwing a sweated cloth the elephant will think this is what he did not like to be in it is area. The elephant will thus attack the cloth in its blind rage. That will give you time to escape - thus RUN!!! (an elephant can sprint from 0 to 50 km/h in a (few) seconds)

You should try to find out, too, from where the wind blows. Go against the wind.

It helps to make noise that the elephant does not know to make him leave from you. For example, when hitting a metal (car) with a stick. This kind of noise is not natural and not known to the elephant. Thus he will better leave as he does not know if it is a sign of danger.

One more thing: Elephants hate clapping of hands.

Giraffe

You can follow giraffes in case you search a way out of a dangerous situation. Or just in case to search a safe way to get through some area. The reason why is that giraffes are very tall and can scan the area. If there would be any danger, they would not walk there. It is good to know when wanting to cross a river, as there could be crocodiles.

Leopard

You have to be very quiet because it really hates noise and it can turn wild.

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Anyway, always rely on your own instinct, too.

Katja, augustas, updated: 22/05/2004, created: 08/05/2004 [angola, benin, botswana, burkina faso, cameroon, central african republic, chad, congo, congo (zaire), cote d'ivoire, equitorial guinea, eritrea, ethiopia, gabon, ghana, guinea, kenya, liberia, malawi, mali, mauritania, mozambique, namibia, niger, nigeria, rwanda, senegal, sierra leone, south africa, sudan, swaziland, tanzania, togo, uganda, zambia, zimbabwe]