Hyenas LOVE water.

Ahh almost the end of October! My NSF is coming along really well though. Had a beautiful leopard sighting last night (two in one week!!) while we were driving back to camp from North territory. Just sitting in the road when we drove up and we waited while it walked directly in front of our car and then disappeared into a thicket. Got an ID shot!

This morning happy zebra was having a PARTY at Egyptian goose watering hole. Cosby (low-ranking adult female) and Jollyroger (cub) were going non-stop play fighting in the deeper water. At first many of the hyenas were play romping in the shallow water but Cosby was wading around in the deeper water and dunking her head under and clearly just enjoying it. Finally J-Rog went and joined her and she would grab her and dunk her under water and I could hear J-rog snorting water out of her nose but she just kept coming back for more! Clearly they don’t mind getting water in the eyes, ears, and noses. However, not ALL the hyenas were enjoying the water. Higgs (HZ’s youngest cub) was too little to feel confident going into the water but he was having fun play time with Silk, an adult female. Eremet (J-Rog’s subadult aunt) also seemed to have some distaste for getting her feet wet. She didn’t go into water more than three inches deep and actually tried to balance on some small rocks and mounds in order to avoid having her feet in the water. There aren’t really enough words to explain how awesome and adorable it was watching the soaking wet hyenas spatter and run around so I took a few videos.

Earlier cosby had also been going totally nuts with the cubs tearing around as fast as she could run chasing and being chased by cubs. Some zebras hanging around seemed like they wanted to come and get a drink but the hyenas were hogging the water hole and at one point the cubs thought it would be really funny to chase them away. Later on when the cubs were romping near the zebras again the zebras did not let themselves be so easily spooked and one of the cubs even got chased by one the zebras- payback! 

See my video and photos at msuhyenas.blogspot.com.