VALUABLE BUSINESS LESSONS ON HOLIDAY

BUFFALO and BUSINESS

That denizen of the bushveld the buffalo, besides being one of the magnificent seven, can teach us lesser mortals a lot about how to conduct business. When they are confronted with a problem, they use unique patterns of behaviour to resolve their difficulty. For example, if there is a threat to the herd such as a foreign presence, they will not act alone but unlike humans they will use their collective strength. Just think of the famous YouTube video where a buffalo calf is separated from its parents by a pride of lions. What do the buffalo do? Immediately they use the power of collective confrontation and several of them use their strength and power to scare off the lions and return the calf to its mother. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM‎

Imagine you are in your TRAVELSTART hired car, stationary in  the midst of a herd of 200 or so buffalo, it becomes quite scary for they use this same power of collective confrontation and several will move up to your vehicle and stare at you penetratingly. Not an easy threat to ignore. Eventually you move off and they have solved their problem.
This is a tactic you can easily adapt to the boardroom!
LATIN NAME          Syncerus caffer
LOCAL NAME        Buffalo; Buffel; Nyathi
DIET
Buffalo are grazers and they prefer to be close to water. They occasionally resort to browsing and will eat twigs, shoots and small bushes. Normally found in open savannah where they feed on tall, course grass.
FAECES
May be dark in colour and very similar to the texture of a cow’s droppings. As the dung gets older it lightens in colour. One often comes across a road in the Kruger Park where a herd of Buffalo have crossed. The entire road will be splattered with dung that is often loose. The entire under surface of the vehicle becomes splattered with droppings. This makes getting out of a 4x4 rather precarious if one wishes to keep one’s legs clean.
SPOOR
The footprints are rather similar to those of a domestic cow, being large and oblong with a slit down the middle.
NUMBERS IN KRUGER
Approximately 30 000.
DESCRIPTION
Large ox-like animal with a greyish black hide. Buffalo are gregarious animals that live in herds that sometimes take on enormous proportions of 500 or more. Solitary, old bulls are sometimes found. These cantankerous Buffalo can be very dangerous, giving the animal a reputation for being treacherous and one of the most dangerous beasts in Africa. 
Within minutes of being born the young are able to stand but they are only able to keep up with the herd after several weeks. During this time the mother and calves sometimes leave the herd and go into hiding in thick bushes. They are often found in river beds.
They are placid, shy creatures and have an excellent sense of smell. However their hearing is poor. They have a formidable hard boss between their curved horns and they use this to smash down bushes. When approached they will normally run off, snorting loudly. Buffalo are extremely dangerous when charging as they have a mass of 600kg and can attain a fair speed, making them very difficult to stop.  Their horns are suddenly lowered at the last moment, making them truly fearsome.
Sensitive to temperature, they are often found wallowing in mud and they are good swimmers.
Herds of Buffalo are often followed by lion as they form a tasty portion of the latter’s diet. In point of fact about 2% of a lion’s diet is adult Buffalo.
INTERESTING FACTS

The Kruger National Park is in the endemically infected buffalo zone and this zone status was once again re-affirmed during a random sample of 637 adult buffalo (Syncerus caffer) from 31 spatially distinct herds in the northern districts of the Park.

 A massive 99.7% of these buffalo were sero-positive for TB, with most animals showing strong positive trends. Virus was also isolated from 10 buffalo during this survey.