Earth Touch Blog

From the field

Life on the edge in Moremi Game Reserve May 22 2008

Having lived in the Earth-Touch camp at Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana for a week now, I feel I have already had my fair share of close encounters with game. 

Photography

May screensaver available to download May 2 2008

Every month, Earth-Touch compiles several of our finest and most compelling images to create a new screensaver. These are available for free download, for both Mac and PC users.

Photography

Flickr group: pic of the day – spotted hyena Apr 8 2008

The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) is a carnivorous mammal, indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. They are most well known for their distinctive noise, which sounds similar to human laughter.

Featured on Earth-Touch

Hyenas tag along with leopard Nov 21 2007

In the Earth-Touch clip, Hyenas dog leopard, two hyenas are on high alert, waiting to scavenge something from a nearby predator.

After some searching through the sage of the Okavango Delta, Botswana, the film crew spotted a female leopard swiftly and silently moving through the bush.

Did you know?

Did you know? Hyena Nov 19 2007

As hyenas are scavengers there is often intense competition at kill sites to get enough food as fast as possible. That is why a lot of what is consumed at kills is hair, bones and teeth. The hyena’’s digestive fluids are adapted to enable them to digest bones and teeth, but hair cannot be digested.

Featured on Earth-Touch

The week’s most viewed stories Nov 16 2007

The most popular stories on Earth-Touch in the past week (from Friday 09 November to Thursday 15 November 2007) were:

Number 1

It’s the circle of life: cockroaches feed on bat guano, spiders feed on cockroaches and snakes feed on bats.

From the field

Waiting for the rain Oct 3 2007

The Earth-Touch footage coming through from Meno A Kwena camp in the Boteti region of the Kalahari, Botswana, epitomises life in the desert… harsh. This applies even though the Kalahari is considered semi-desert as opposed to true desert, and the tips of the waterways of the Okavango Delta are in close proximity.

From the field

Girl or boy? How does one tell? Sep 19 2007

By Andy Crawford, field crew

Distinguishing the gender of wild animals is often no easy task. Certainly with some species the presence of obvious markers (such as horns or manes) make it simple.

However, with certain species it is almost impossible. Hyenas are notoriously difficult as the females have external genitalia exactly like those of a male. The size and attitude of the hyena are the only factors that give one an indication of its gender – the females are significantly larger than, the males, and are more dominant.

Size and attitude as a general rule of thumb can be the distinguishing factor, in the absence of the usual clues such as horns or genitals. Other than hyenas and a few other animals, it is the males of a species which are usually larger.

Wildlife news from around the world

Female hyenas discourage incest Aug 29 2007

New research shows that female spotted hyenas, generally the dominant sex, discourage incestuous mating so that their young have a better chance of survival.

A 10-year-study of 400 spotted hyenas in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, published in Nature, reveals that female spotted hyenas, which live in mixed-gender groups, preferred to mate with strangers. Males were forced to accept this as mating an unwilling female is difficult, due in part to their unusual genitalia. The study showed that young born of two hyenas related to one another were weaker than those which were not.

From the field

Hiding out Aug 27 2007

By Andy Crawford, field crew

Filming wild animals is often difficult as they tend to react to a human presence. In order to capture their ‘natural’ behaviour, one often has to find inventive ways of going unnoticed.