Big animal research at Thanda

African Impact runs a serious research project at Thanda. My work-holiday time there was a chance to learn about and to participate in meaningful investigations of wild animal behaviour. Suddenly faced with an eight member pride of lions I saw at once that I should have studied more closely all the preparation sheets I had been sent. Identifying individual animals from photos and detailed descriptions at first seemed impossible; and so recording their interactions appeared futile. This was no less true when an over 20 member herd of elephants surrounded us. (After an eight day search our 40-40 vision driver managed to get us this experience. I could say lots about our hyper-tuned bird dog drivers) Yet this is what this program teaches us to do. The challenge is to immerse oneself, before, during and after the numerous actual sightings, in the available material showing the animals’ features and group relationships. We volunteers, working together with trained staff, manually recorded and then entered electronically every observation. We were then able to analyze the data and to present trends in draft monthly reports. A few weeks here can be anything from a holiday to the beginning of a career. The food, accommodation, staff, camaraderie, who cares, it’s all great. So also are the times we spent helping people in surrounding villages and helping to keep vegetation under control. Where the opportunities are unique is with tracking and finding the animals, and then with the limitless challenge of studying and recording them.