They have never met, are only distantly related, and have never exchanged so much as an email, but the African buffalo and the American bison have a great deal in common. They’re big and heavy, generally placid, and they like eating plenty of grass and living in large herds. Because they tend to appear more intimidating than a domestic bull, both have lent their likeness to cheesy movies featuring the mythical Minotaur. Most folks in the USA even call their bison ‘buffalo’, and I’m not going to risk getting letters from their lawyers by making an issue of that.
There were once over 50 million bison roaming the Great Plains of the fledgling USA, but in the early 1800s an orgy of hunting, unimaginable in scale, soon plunged their numbers rapidly down to an extremely modest 541. Trains were even laid on so that gun-happy townsfolk could happily blast away and then chug on down the track, leaving the dead and dying animals pointlessly littering the landscape. It all happened in less than a lunatic’s lifetime. Bison have since recovered somewhat, and now number around 150,000, very thin on the ground by past standards, but enough to satisfy the curiosity of tourists, and salve the soul of anyone who cares.
The African buffalo had its own close shave with extinction about a century later, but the main problem was a virus, not bullets – although there were plenty of those still flying around as well. A virulent rinderpest outbreak decimated buffalo herds, along with a host of other species, in the closing years of the 19th century. The once large herds in the embryonic Kruger National Park were reduced to a handful by the time the outbreak eventually subsided. Under the watchful eye of James Stevenson-Hamilton, the first warden, numbers slowly climbed back over the next few years, although the virus waited in the wings for a periodic encore. It has only recently been totally eradicated, amid much fanfare and optimism.
It’s not nice to be known for one’s diseases but buffaloes bear the burden with characteristic stoicism. Included in the list of lethal ailments, which they can pass on to domestic cattle, are corridor disease, foot-and-mouth and bovine tuberculosis. When the rains come, the grass grows and times are good for buffalo, so these diseases tend to remain largely dormant; and buffalo are, in any event, all confined to game reserves these days. Nevertheless, such is the comparative rarity of disease-free buffaloes that they pass between game ranchers for huge sums of money.
Happily, buffalo are probably better known for being members of the Big Five, the exclusive group of animals designated by the big-game hunters of yesteryear as the most dangerous to hunt on foot. Given the undoubted credentials of the other four, it’s no mean feat to have been awarded the honour. To merit it, quite a few minor European aristocrats must have lost their pith helmets and met their maker on a buffalo’s horns.
As far as is known, buffalo don’t cut a notch in their horns for every human being they’ve killed, but if they did, the tally would probably be impressive, even today. Nevertheless, a sense of perspective needs to be maintained, and the golly-gosh lists that appear here and there should be met with caution. Domestic cattle kill a surprisingly large number of people around the world every year, usually by accident, but then so do fudge sundaes.
When somebody isn’t trying to shoot them, buffalo are generally peaceful and content. In a large herd they feel secure and, while cautious, if they see something new or unusual, they are often overcome by curiosity. They are second only to giraffe for their propensity to stand and stare, often in the middle of the road when you’re in a hurry to get to the camp toilets. When they do get spooked and stampede, it’s usually because they’ve caught a whiff of lion, the nemesis for which they reserve most of their ire and indignation.
Despite looking a bit of a shambles, a herd of buffalo is actually reasonably well organised and surprisingly democratic, at least in terms of their travel arrangements. When they move off en masse to find fresh pastures, they plod after two or three randomly appointed individuals, usually female, and never the dominant bull. He’s usually somewhere towards the front and in the centre, the safest place. Nevertheless, if they do run into a pride of lions or some other threat, the big enchilada soon comes forward to confront the aggressors, joined by other bulls. Behind them the calves and females keep to the centre.
Lions pride themselves on being crafty and will do their best to isolate an individual, though the outcome is by no means certain even when they succeed. Buffalo are among the few species to demonstrate true altruism, coming to the aid of one of their fellows at considerable risk to themselves. This is especially likely to happen if the victim is a juvenile and bellowing loudly about its unfortunate predicament. Pitched battles between herds of buffalo rescuing one of their own from a pride of lions are well documented. The fact that a young victim sometimes emerges, a bit wobbly on its feet but otherwise intact, shows just how extraordinarily tough a buffalo can be.
Old buffaloes, like old elephants, have dental issues, and when the time comes, they leave the herd to find a place by the river. Two or three cantankerous old codgers, who have all reached retirement age together, often hang out, enjoying the soft aquatic vegetation and rolling around in the mud to ease their creaking joints and rid themselves of parasites. Such individuals often have massive horns, a lifetime in the making, and it was inevitable that big-game hunters on their grand safaris would home in on them. The old buffalo’s one advantage was that he knew all the grassy corridors and nooks and crannies of the bovine equivalent of the Shady Acres retirement home. So even if he was wounded he could still find a way to circle round, come up behind, and toss his inept tormentor into the great hereafter. Of such stuff, legends are made.