The fight for survival is brutal and captivating
Wildlife ecologist Hans Kruuk has devoted his life to studying carnivores around the world, from hyenas in the Serengeti to otters in Shetland. His new book takes us up close and personal with nature’s hunters
Wildlife can be abundant anywhere, and it fascinates many of us. Yet we know it to be threatened, we know much of it is disappearing even before our eyes. I want more people to know about it, more scientists to tear themselves away from their computers, even if only temporarily in order
to watch wild nature. They should experience the intense pleasures the big wild world offers, the excitements of seeing how animals behave. I was taught the rewards of just watching by someone who received the Nobel Prize for observing behaviour, the scientist Niko Tinbergen. Once we can see and understand what is happening, and once we let nature impact on our emotions, we can act for conservation. For myself, much of such understanding started in Africa. It continued in Scotland, Shetland, Galapagos, Thailand, Australia and Alaska. Everywhere carnivores have been a central theme for me, hyenas, lions, otters, badgers and many others, but also gulls and vultures. They are animals in conflict, with us, with other people, with each other.
I still see that endless, dusty, gravelled track from the African, Tanzania town of Arusha into the Serengeti, as it winds its way down from the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, down from the clouds over forested heights, down from the trees with their curtains of lichens hanging almost across the track. Once out of the cloud forests, dust takes over, and the spectacular views over the plains of the high plateau make it difficult to keep my eyes on the treacherous dirt road, while driving my Land Rover.
My first sights of wild African animals, many years ago, stay deeply engrained on my mind. I am staggered seeing those giraffes and elegant impala, just outside the outskirts of Arusha, the elephants and buffalo on the road along the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. Then comes the Serengeti itself, across the famous Olduvai Gorge, with wildebeest and zebra, endless herds of them.
A spotted hyena, my first, lies in a small muddy puddle next to the track, on our way to the Serengeti headquarters in Seronera. A good-looking female, she wallows in the cool mud, and Jane and I cheer it. I think it is then and there that I decide to really concentrate my study on that animal, on that species, in favour of all the other carnivores there. Serengeti has more than 25 species of them, but I realise that studying every single one would have meant drowning in diversity. I meet the famed Serengeti lions and other large cats, but I am taken by the underdog, the much-maligned spotted hyena, which is also the most numerous large carnivorous animal here.
Now, years later, I know that a hyena, reviled as it is, can make a wonderful warm companion. Our Solomon lived with us in our Serengeti house, tame but also wild, away for days on end but bursting into the house again to share my bath, hilarious and full of mischief, stories of which I share in my book. His wild mates, as I found for the first time, live in clans, fascinating communities of sometimes 80 hyenas or more. Their females are the dominants, they are the warriors, the Amazons, they lead in the hunts. I still find nothing more exciting than driving alongside a pack
I know that a hyena, reviled as it is, can make a wonderful warm companion. Our Solomon lived with us in our Serengeti house, tame but also wild