Paste collection, baby jackals, alien males, and a dead baby elephant.

All the happy zebra hyenas were at Egyptian Goose watering hole this morning. So much fun to see all these hyenas splashing and play romping in the water. No sign of Higgs at that den he and his mother Ojibway were at last time unfortunately. We also finally collected some paste! There were four hyenas repeatedly pasting over a stalk that was very easy to see and pick out so we made a point to come back and cut it. There is a grad student studying the bacterial colonies in paste. I only collected paste for the first time in august so now I feel like a productive RA getting paste! And it was a really good stalk- I could see and smell the paste on it so we were positive that it was the correct stalk. Later on while driving around we saw three baby jackals, so adorable! They were very shy and disappeared into the den hole after we showed up but I did snap one photo!!

Saw another alien male today, gave him the number AL1023, he was very frustrating because all his spots looked insanely familiar, just bits from many hyenas I think ,so Emily and I spent an hour pouring overbooks but he didn’t quite fit anyone in particular. One hyenas butt, another’s shoulder, etc. He was all alone and not interacting with anyone so we’ll see if he sticks around. He has really good bold spots so it’d be nice if he did. Still no sign of what north is up to!

There was a dead baby elephant on the road the other day, I thought it looked close to a month old and Emily and I were worried it had been hit by a car. The speeding seems to really be a problem in the park, both for killing animals and for car accidents. The well maintained roads here are great but in some ways I think the bad roads are better for the animals, though they just found a dead hyena in talek the other day hit by a car so maybe not. I think speed bumps could be really beneficial though for this half of the park. Later on we learned that this elephant had been witnessed being born in the road and was either stillborn or had died shortly after birth.