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.
