Animal deathmatch: rhino vs croc, hippo vs shark.... leopard vs small passerine??

Yeah, that "bull shark" was definitely based upon a leopard shark, Triakis semifasciata.

Oh yeah, thanks. I wondered about this but assumed that the dark markings were meant to be dapples caused by light and shadow. For the record, Leopard sharks are definitely not in the habit of biting hippos.

Seems that we French call the bateleur "aigle bateleur" (or "mountebank eagle").

As for the poor spotted kitty being mobbed by nasty birdies... hmmm... might it be the inspiration for a certain 1963 movie featuring angry birds ?

Spelling error: Hippopomatus?

This is way better than the awful dreck that was Animal Face-Off. Although I have to admit, that hippo vs. shark painting is giving me flashbacks of that particular episode... Ugh.

Based on these paintings, the black rhino might as well be the Chuck Norris of the animal world.

As Brian notes they make two classic artistic shark depiction errors:
a) thinking all sharks are equivalent so just drawing one and naming it another; and
b) assuming all are predatory monsters so choosing to depict a cool looking but basically harmless (to anything not tiny) one (in this case Triakis fasciatus) in an act of ferocity.

Schoolboy errors.

I did hear from my colleagues at London Zoo of a greater kudu (male) charging and knocking over a white rhino in the old exhibit at Marwell zoo in the 1990's. No other information was forthcoming from Marwell and we always assumed that the former caught the latter off guard and from the side given the mass differences.

These remind me of cover art on some editions of the Willard Price books I lived in for a while (hmm, 1974-76). The inside illustrations were line drawings, I remember one of a Komodo Dragon (maximum size, of course) battling a giant Taipan (it's a shame their ranges don't actually overlap).

I used to think 'falco giocoliere' (that is, playing kestrel/hawk or sort of) was the italian for Terathopius ecaudatus. Grey Kestrel is Falco ardosiaceus; (common)'kestrel' in italian should be 'gheppio', sing. masc. noun (Falco tinnunculus).
French "Bateleur" ("tight-rope walker"), from which the english term was mutuated, is referred to its ability to flap its wings' tip when flying.
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Leo

Ah, Willard Price! Come on Darren, do a blog on the Adventure books. You know you want to!

> Addendum: well, italian "giocoliere" (from 'gioco'=fr. jeu/eng. game, the act of playing with...etc.) is a correct translation for the french "bateleur", indeed [fr. "saltimbanque", it. "saltimbanco"/acrobata = eng. "juggler"(artist)/acrobat].

Leo

Those made me laugh out loud (especially the leopard VS the "helmet shrikes"). Wasn't there one with a ratel attacking a wildebeest, as you mentioned in the other blog entry?

- "the idea that 'the leopard may well come off second best' seems pretty unlikely to me"

That helmet shrike's dynamite!

> Darren wrote: "The helmet shrikes don't match any real species so far as I can tell and appear to be artistic inventions!"
- As far as I can tell, with the exception of the red belly and the loss of red eye contour (did they loosely infer red belly from a bad photo or a notice of red eyes contour?), the rest of the fancy-angry-bird is based upon Retz's helmet shrike (Prionops retzii).

Leo

Albertonykus (comment 11): yes, a flying ratel is leaping at a wildebeest, sorry I didn't show it.

Leonardo (comment 12): I don't think the birds look more like Retz's helmet shrike than any other passerine, and there are a lot of differences between the 'helmeted shrike' shown above and that species. Like I said, I reckon they made it up.

Both leopards and shrikes (at least the Loggerhead Shrikes we have here) cache prey in trees, so perhaps that was the impetus for "Savage Leopard vs. Imaginary Shrikes ELEVENTY!!!"

Though I admit it's a stretch in any case.

I cannot comment on helmetshrikes, but it is well known that arctic terns can make Polar bear run away and fast.

Consider - black rhinos are almost extinct. And large decades-old Nile crocodiles survived maybe in two or three rivers in Africa.

What chances exist in 2000's of a rhino encountering a big croc? With or without such fantastic details?

For me, old books about game hunting in Africa and Asia are fascinating. Full of fascinating scenes and behaviours. Generally, they tend not to be so obviously exagerrated, or at least you can guess when the author is making it up. A pity that time of such encounters is gone - animals are wiped out, habitats destroyed, countries politicaly inaccessible. Nostalgia kicks!

No more huge crocodiles attacking rhinos, herds of elephants flattening native villages, mass migrations of springbok taking two days to pass...

Well said Jerzy. One famous book on elephants - it might be one of Douglas-Hamilton's - features a large photograph as a double-page spread. From edge to edge and top to bottom, the two pages are covered in elephants. Ok, it might have been a 'super-herd' (an aggregation of several herds) but, even so, numbers like this can't be seen anymore.

Having said all this, gigantic aggregations are still visible in some places. Wasn't it recently shown that Somalia was home to particularly large antelope herds?

And, for shame, I have never seen any African megafauna in the wild. I better get out there soon. Sigh... finances.

I did hear from my colleagues at London Zoo of a greater kudu (male) charging and knocking over a white rhino in the old exhibit at Marwell zoo in the 1990's.

Rhino-tipping. Those antelope get bored now and again.

Fantasy aside, that is some beautiful artwork, ya' gotta admit.

Wasn't it recently shown that Somalia was home to particularly large antelope herds?

Sudan, you mean.

Massive Animal Herds Flourishing Despite Sudan War, Survey Reveals

Jerzy, we still have giant caribou and reindeer herds up in Alaska. My dad said that one time while he was camping up north, a massive herd of caribou passed his tent and took over a day to do so. I would've loved to have seen that.

I've heard of, and occasionally seen, such dramatic physical encounters between animals. It wasn't well documented in terms of a date or location, but there was the story of a crocodile grasping an elephant's trunk, before being pulled out of the water and trampled to death (one assumes the crocodile in question had no experience with elephants.) There was also a scene on a nature documentary where a hippo charged a buffalo open-mouthed, for no apparent reason other than the fact that it was the dry season, and tempers were running high (the buffalo fled. The narrator said, "the outcome is uncertain", but my money was on the hippo!) Though I suspect some of these encounters are relatively rare, and related in large part to environmental stress, they certainly are memorable when they occur.

I cannot comment on helmetshrikes, but it is well known that arctic terns can make Polar bear run away and fast.

That's because polar bears can't throw rocks.
BS

Really fascinating subject. I think our retelling and consequent re-imagining of these kind of encounters in nature is evidence of our biophilia and our inate compunction to watch these dramatic and ostentatious displays, comparing them to human terms and epic scales.
From cave paintings to the giant bronze battling dinos infront of USC's museum in LA, and zillions of notable examples in between, depicting this kind of behavior has been a significant though overlooked aspect to our art history.
My question is "did people really encounter these fantastic battles, witness what they said they did first hand?" I think some of 'em might have, sometimes in the wild and sometimes in staged events. How long has it been since the really big concentrations of megafauna roamed over big landscapes, there use to be so many and now just some caribou. I'm all for recreating those landscapes.
Who would have believed that Youtube video of the crocs, lions and cape buffaloe from just a few years back?
And those are pretty cool illustrations.

@ Christophe Thill
The Birds is based on a 1952 novella by Daphne du Maurier.

Yes Willard Price books! I read all my dads copies till they fell apart, pretty sure I read them all eventualy.

It wasn't well documented in terms of a date or location, but there was the story of a crocodile grasping an elephant's trunk, before being pulled out of the water and trampled to death (one assumes the crocodile in question had no experience with elephants.)

Did this story also involve a bi-coloured python rock snake? If so, I remember it a bit differently. The crocodile didn't get his dinner, but the elephant's child learned much to his advantage.

@John, does it also take place by the banks of the great, greasy Limpopo River?

I loved Willard Price. It was his books that got me addicted to reading when I was a kid.

That would be the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees. Some evolutionary biologists don't like just-so stories, but I've been a fan from an early age.

Ah yes, I forgot. But it's been some 20+ years since I played the bi-coloured python rock snake in a school play. Needless to say, I'm a fan as well.

I cannot comment on helmetshrikes, but it is well known that arctic terns can make Polar bear run away and fast.

That's because polar bears can't throw rocks.

If they could throw rocks. they would certainly leave no tern unstoned.BS

One encounter that I've seen on the tv are hippos and crocs during the dry season when they are both left in rapidly decreasing muddy puddles. However they seem to get on pretty well, though perhaps this is due to their mutual predicament and need to preserve energy. Is there anything in the literature about hippos and croc relationships during and outside the dry season? I expect that the crocs would tend to avoid hippos but do they predate calves?

Also the sharks vs Hippo picture reminds me of one of Bob Nicholls paintings (from a few days backs blog) at http://www.paleocreations.com/ where the drowned Mastodons are being feasted on by the Megalodons.

Considering how good a swimmers they are I wonder if asian elephants transiting between islands in south-east asia ever meet sharks? I guess they'd be pretty much defenceless with almost their entire bodies submerged?

I don't know about leopards, but I know of house cats terrorized by small birds. I know of a specific housecat that deliberately provoked small birds to try to terrorize it, and snatched them out of the air frequently enough to get most uncommonly fat.

Laelaps, #1

Leopard shark. The thing in the illo looks more like the by-blow of a mako and a great white.

I didn't think African rhinos could swim-- at least the white rhinos can't.

What no illustrations of Tarzan?

One famous book on elephants - it might be one of Douglas-Hamilton's - features a large photograph as a double-page spread. From edge to edge and top to bottom, the two pages are covered in elephants.

There were shots like that in Peter Beard's The End of the Game, but Douglas-Hamilton would no doubt have been able to get them too, back in the day. Most of the elephants in Beard's book are dead, dead, dead, page after page. Beautiful pictures and great text, though.

Glad to see I've brought out a few old Willard Price fans. There was one book I never managed to find in a library... and on checking Wikipedia I can see why, the last TWO in the series were published after I stopped looking for them. Not sure I could bear to go back, after all this time, even if they were available.

Elephants and sharks:

I guess they'd be pretty much defenceless with almost their entire bodies submerged?

Ever wonder why elephants keep their gonads inside the body cavity?

Seriously though, there was a study back in the 80's or early 90's (anyone got the reference? - Google fails me)supporting the hypothesis that putting the testes outside in a dangly pouch was a derived feature of saltatory mammals; animals that don't jump tuck them away again. But you still read in various places that the scrotum is an 'adaptation' for keeping testes at lower than body temperature... as if elephants and whales were all sterile or something. Pfft.

Speaking of crocodiles and animals' strategy of defence, did anybody noticed this one: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/26923726.html [Armadillosuchus arrudai]? Not new at all, but it's a gorgeous photo.
P.S.: Thanks to all the visitors to my blog for sharing their preference on my opinion poll!! (and there's still time to vote). On http://geomythology.blogspot.com/ I'll share the results and the conclusions for this university test with all the interested readers.

If they could throw rocks. they would certainly leave no tern unstoned.

Ow. You owe me a brain.

"But you still read in various places that the scrotum is an 'adaptation' for keeping testes at lower than body temperature... as if elephants and whales were all sterile or something. Pfft."

Yes, but at least the cetaceans have special mechanisms for keeping their testes cool. I remember reading somewhere in a popular science article that male dolphins pipe cool blood directly from the dorsal fin to the testes. I should really try to find the actual paper on this.

Elephants and other afrotherians (all of which exhibit testicondy) are, however, said to have rather warm testicles, and it's even been suggested that this explains their rapid rates of molecular evolution. There was some discussion of this subject here. And see...

Werdelin, L. & Nilsonne, A. 1999. The evolution of the scrotum and testicular descent in mammals: a phylogenetic view. Journal of Theoretical Biology 196, 61-72.

- ., Nilsonne, A. & Fortelius, M. 1999. Testicondy and ecological opportunism predict the rapid evolution of elephants. Evolutionary Theory 12, 39-45.

And for papers on the thermoregulation of dolphin testicles see...

Pabst, D. A., Rommel, S. A., McLellan, W. A., Williams, T. M. & Rowles, T. K. 1995. Thermoregulation of the intra-abdominal testes of the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) during exercise. Journal of Experimental Biology 198, 221-226.

Rommel, S. A., Pabst, D. A., McLellan, W. A., Mead, J. G. & Potter, C. W. 2005. Anatomical evidence for a countercurrent heat exchanger associated with dolphin testes. The Anatomical Record 232 150-156.

Both studies discuss counter-current heat exchange mechanisms whereby subcutaneous veins on the dorsal fin and tail flukes carry cool blood to the venous plexus located adjacent to the spermatic arterial plexus.. this in turn supplies blood to the testes.

@Darren

One interesting story from the old decades is that leopard, after caching prey on the tree, tolerates Baleteur near it. The reason is that Baleteur, while stealing a bit for itself, will keep flocks of vultures from eating the rest.

Who knows if it is true? Suppose it was regional behavior of aone population of leopards, now wiped out?

@John Scanlon FCD

One less known anatomical detail: male Brazilian tapir is able to quickly pull its genitalia into a fold in its body. In case of piranhas and candiru fish.

@Raymond Minton

If I remember well, one crocodile ended up very dead and stuffed into a tree hole by an angry elephant.

The movie about wildebeest, now on DVDs and in Imax theaters, has some shots of a hippo attacking wildebeest passing through his river.

Darren:

Perhaps the coolest one of the lot is that shown above: Black rhino Diceros bicornis vs Nile crocodile Crocodylus niloticus. Note that the rhino is hard enough to take on two crocs at once [...] Why oh why might a rhino feel the need to kick the shit out of two crocodiles? The book says: 'If it is in a bad temper, or wounded, the rhinoceros will attack any animal, tree or termites' nest within reach. Here two crocodiles are getting the worst of it from an angry rhinoceros'. Oh, right. Of course.

Actually, I'd guess that this particular scene is based on a particular real-life event. Namely, on an incident by the Tana River in Kenya (in either the late 19th or the early 20th century) where an adult black rhinoceros was dragged into the river and drowned by a huge crocodile. This incident was witnessed and apparently also photographed by a Mr. Fleischman; the photos were supposedly published in one of Frederick Selous' books (I've never seen those photos or that book myself, alas).

For the record, Leopard sharks are definitely not in the habit of biting hippos.

...partly (though not only) because leopard sharks live in the eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean, where encounters with hippos are somewhat unlikely.

Jerzy:

For me, old books about game hunting in Africa and Asia are fascinating. Full of fascinating scenes and behaviours. Generally, they tend not to be so obviously exagerrated, or at least you can guess when the author is making it up.

While I agree with the general point you're making, that early sources may describe aspects of animal biology that are no longer observable, I'd like to point out that it's good to keep in mind that some of those early accounts are probably just flat out inaccurate. For example, if you pick up a book that was published fifty or more years ago, you're likely to find there stated as a matter of fact that (spotted) hyaenas are cowardly scavengers that almost never hunt large, healthy prey. And I don't think there's any reason to believe that this is because spotted hyaenas miraculously turned into active big-game hunters only in the 1960ies, when Hans Kruuk and other Western scientists just happened to start paying attention to their behaviour. The far more likely explanation is that the earlier authors were just wrong.

RichardS:

Considering how good a swimmers they are I wonder if asian elephants transiting between islands in south-east asia ever meet sharks? I guess they'd be pretty much defenceless with almost their entire bodies submerged?

I once saw a documentary (by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, IIRC) where mahouts of such ocean-swimming elephants were asked about sharks. They said that sharks sometimes slightly bother swimming elephants, but apparently serious shark-caused injuries are extremely rare. I don't think any actual elephant deaths have been recorded.

Dartian: I see your point. That is why you need to filter such stories. For example avoid generalizations and concentrate on what people saw themselves. Or, equaly important, what they didn't see, although one would expect them to see.

For example, lots of old books - and many new observations eg. from West and Central Africa and Gir in India - tell about lions living alone or in twos-threes. Probably lions normally live(d) singly or in small groups in dense bushy areas and semidesert. So large lion prides with multiple males and females, familiar from game reserves like Serengeti and Etosha, are not universal and perhaps not even typical for lions.

Even more interesting are tigers hunting in groups for domestic stock in Asia... But its a different story.

In South Africa a leopard killed a fully grown crocodile the last year. I have photos of that.

Peter Mihalda

Follow the link in the post above to 'leopard vs crocodile'. The crocodile may not have been a healthy individual, as you'll see if you read the comments in the aforementioned post.

I am glad that dr. Holmes has explained us why it happened, no matter that the combat has last several hours.
But this is the very inner lever of Darren Naish - animal combats. To let two dogs against one another and to look at them. The above mentioned combats never happen in nature.
But why Naish does paleontology, or evolution in general? I think it is too dificult topic for him.
Aside that he is unable even to name individual bones, for example skull roof bones of stegosaurs, which have the postfrontal and the supraorbital, and no palpebral (which is not a neomorph but a modified supraorbital, evolved in later ornithischians, eg heterodontosaurs). He will probably attack me that I am a fool, but in that case Gilmore and many others before him are so.

Peter Mihalda

You really are a nasty little shit, Peter. This is your last appearance on my blog.

"And there was much rejoicing."

Regarding exceptional/unlikely animal face-offs: I was reminded of this incident in Australia a few years ago.

I recall an account mentioned in books I used to read as a kid where a thirst-crazed elephant ran into a river (or the sea?) and got attacked and killed by sharks.

It was the sea.

Hello, checking through older posts I found this gem of an entry. I totally loved the Animal Life series as a small child, and actually learned to read with them. They fostered my fascination with animals, specially dinosaurs (the caption of a T-Rex fighting a Triceratops was particularly epic). Sadly I lost the collection piecemeal when our storage room flooded some years ago. Any idea where I could find more about this collection on the web?

This bird you mentioned is called a grey kestrel Falco ardosiaceus.

Hello there Darren and all you other folks. I'd like to direct you all to an interesting YouTube vid showcasing a battle between a southern white rhino and a Cape buffalo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4FChkrZ6kU