After setting up the tents we walked out to a waterfall. There was a buffalo skull on the way.
The waterfall was pretty small.
But there were baboons everywhere.
They blend in with the rocks and scramble up and down.
They drink out of the pool at the bottom of the waterfall.
This is a Puff Adder, Africa’s most dangerous snake. We will stay away from him.
This is a Nile monitor lizard. He is harmless unless you are a small bird or a slug. But he is longer than we are, so we’ll stay away from him too.
These are African Rock Pythons. They are not venomous, they are constrictors. The stripy ones are young, the blacker ones are old. They can grow to over 5X as long as us and kill mammals bigger than us. But we know people that have them as pets at home. We’ll still stay away from the wild ones.
This is a gaboon viper. They are friendly and don’t bite much. But if they do you are in trouble, their venom is super deadly.
This is a green mamba. He also has really nasty venom.
This is a red spitting cobra. He has super toxic venom that he likes to spit in your eyes. We hopefully won’t see any of these that aren’t behind glass.
This is a nile crocodile. We might just stay in the truck for two months.
Here we found more animals to be afraid of.
We also found another huge collection of early hominids. This is the only complete skull of proconsul ever found. It is 18 million years old.
He is one of the first apes. He weighed about 9kg and lived in the trees, but had no tail.
This is a 2.5 million year old skull of a Paranthropus aethiopicus. It is black because it is stained with manganese. Paranthropus was made for chewing, with huge reinforced jaw bones. The mohawk part sticking out of his skull was an attachment for the huge chewing muscles.
This is a 1.75 million year old skull of Paranthropus boisei. His nickname is the nutcracker man.
This is a 1.75 million year old Homo ergaster skull. She was found in the same layer of rock as the skull above, so she must have lived in nearly the same time and the same place.
This is a 1.9 million year old Homo rudolfensis skull. He’s the earliest known fossil with a big brain like us, and probably the first to use stone tools.
This is the Nariokotome boy, a 1.6 million year old Homo erectus fossil and the most complete early hominin ever found, with only his hands and feet missing. He was between 9 and 12 years old when he died, but he was already 5’4” tall.
These are waterbuck.
The males have big corkscrew horns.
The calves stick very close to Mom.
And you do not want to mess with Mom.
This is a baboon.
They eat grass. Actually they eat lots of stuff but we only saw them eating grass.
They need to pull their pants up.
These are warthogs.
They run away when they see us coming. But only for a short distance. Then they seem to forget why they were running and go back to grazing.
This is a zebra.
He is busy eating.
What is standing next to that tree?
It is a good thing we brought binoculars.
One of these things is not like the others.
Can you tell which one doesn’t belong?
It’s a bit hard to see through the haze off of the lake.
But that one is a white rhinoceros.
He was easier to see once he stood up.
African rhinos don’t have teeth in the front so they have to pluck up the grass with their lips.
And then chew it with their back teeth.
This is a black rhino.
He has a swishy tail like an elephant.
He has a hunchback and a wider mouth than the white rhino.
At lunch there were some vervet monkeys.
They are pretty cute.
Until they decide they want to get into your car.
This one is a male.
There were many iridescent birds around the site too.
You can see it a bit better when they are in direct sunlight.
They were watching and waiting for us to finish lunch.
This skink wandered out of the log just in time to be photographed many many times. But we’ll just keep it to one.
This is a male impala.
Impalas run very fast.
They are hard to catch on camera.
Except when they are hiding behind zebras.
The baby zebras are the cutest.
Especially when they are running to catch up to Mom.
