#Samburu National Reserve

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A Grevy’s zebra, the worlds rarest species that only exists in the northern part of Kenya, and Ethiopia, looks on, amid a drought in Samburu National Reserve, Samburu county, Kenya. The intense drought in the region has brought a high number of casualties among the Grevy’s zebras as the local NGO Grevys Zebra Trust reports 58 deaths out of a population of about 2,800 in Kenya since June

Photograph: Fredrik Lerneryd/AFP/Getty Images

[kaelula-sungwis]

Female reticulated giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata), Samburu County, Samburu National Reserve, Kenya by Eric Lafforgue Via Flickr: © Eric Lafforgue www.ericlafforgue.com

[thepastisalreadywritten]

There are more ways than one to get into the Ewaso Nyiro river bed in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya. 🐘

🎥: Ro Vince

[adlertours]

Sopa Lodges, Kenya

STAY LONGER FOR LESS Pay 2 Stay 3 #AMBOSELI #LAKENAKURU #MASAIMARA #SAMBURU *For travel until 20th December 2023. *Children below 6 years (sharing with two adults) stay free. Maximum of two children per room. *Terms and conditions apply. #EastAfrica #Africa #Kenya #NationalPark #SafariPackage #Safari #Wildlife #WildlifeSafari #WildlifePackage #WildlifeSafariPackage #FamilyHolidays #Holidays…

[natureboundafrica]

Samburu National Park

 Samburu National Park The perfect time to visit Samburu National Park is during short dry season from January to February. This is a perfect time to experience the wonders of Samburu National Reserve. The rainless savannahs are fit for guided walks and games. The number of visitors is lower than the peak months, allowing you to savor the beauty of the reserve without dealing with crowds. Many…

[thedepartmentofdiscoveries]

Experience: I saved an elephant from drowning

9th December 2022.

As told to Michael Segalov.

David Daballen was a finalist in the Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa 2022.

[herpsandbirds]

Eastern Northern Yellow-billed Hornbill (Tockus flavirostris), family Bucerotidae, order Bucerotiformes, Samburu National Reserve, Kenya

photograph by Prakash Prabhu

[mutant-distraction]

Mark Churchill

Elephant at Samburu National Reserve, Kenya

[snototter]

A female Von der Decken's hornbill (Tockus deckeni) in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, Africa

by Sue Roehl

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

What’s in a name? It’s more than a sound people make to get your attention — it’s a seemingly universal hallmark of human society and language, the specifics of which set us apart from our fellow animals. Now, scientists say they have found evidence with the help of artificial-intelligence-powered tools that elephants call each other by names too.

“They have this ability to individually call specific members of their family with a unique call,” said Mickey Pardo, an acoustic biologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and an author of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Elephants’ trumpeting calls might be their most recognizable sounds, but these “are basically an emotional outburst,” Dr. Pardo said. Lower-pitched rumbles, he said, are more meaningful, as they make up a majority of elephant vocalizations and are used in a wide variety of social situations. “A lot of interesting stuff is going on in the rumbles,” he said.

To decode these rumbles, Dr. Pardo and George Wittemyer, a professor of conservation biology at Colorado State University and chairman of the scientific board for the nonprofit Save the Elephants, analyzed 469 vocalizations made by family groups of adult elephant females and their offspring recorded at Amboseli National Park and the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in Kenya.

Elephant rumbles can be difficult for the human ear to differentiate, so the researchers used machine learning analysis: Essentially, they relied on A.I. to break down different elephant calls.

Individual elephants seemed to respond to certain rumbles from other elephants, and the researchers fed those sounds into their A.I. tool. “If the calls have something like a name, you should be able to figure out who the call is addressed to just from the acoustic structure of that call alone,” Dr. Pardo said.

So far, the scientists are not sure precisely which part of a vocalization might be the elephant’s “name.” But they found that their A.I. tool’s ability to identify the intended recipient of a rumble far exceeded what random chance would dictate.

They supplemented these analyses with fieldwork conducted by Dr. Pardo and David Lolchuragi, a co-author of the study and a research assistant at Save the Elephants. The researchers played recordings of rumbles to elephants and filmed their responses; they found that the individual elephants reacted more strongly to their “names” than to other calls, perking up their ears and rumbling back.

[macleod]

Elephants call out to each other using individual names that they invent for their fellow pachyderms, according to a new study. While dolphins and parrots have been observed addressing each other by mimicking the sound of others from their species, elephants are the first non-human animals known to use names that do not involve imitation, the researchers suggested. For the new study published on Monday, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savanna elephants in Kenya. African elephant populations stabilise in southern heartlands The research “not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others”, the lead study author, Michael Pardo, said. “This indicates that elephants can determine whether a call was intended for them just by hearing the call, even when out of its original context,” the behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University said in a statement. The researchers sifted through elephant “rumbles” recorded at Kenya’s Samburu national reserve and Amboseli national park between 1986 and 2022. Using a machine-learning algorithm, they identified 469 distinct calls, which included 101 elephants issuing a call and 117 receiving one.

Source: Agence France-Presse via The Guardian (June 10 2024)

[mammalianmammals]

Gerenuk (Litocranius walleri), male, standing to feed on tasty leaves, family Bovidae, Samburu National Reserve, Kenya

Photograph by @mogenstrolle

[kaelula-sungwis]

Male reticulated giraffe eating (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata), Samburu County, Samburu National Reserve, Kenya by Eric Lafforgue Via Flickr: © Eric Lafforgue www.ericlafforgue.com

[animalsandanimals]

Northern red-billed hornbill

Samburu National Reserve, Kenya

[cheetahcamp]

Got you! Play-fighting cheetah cubs get the hang of using their claws. Samburu National Reserve, Kenya.

© Elizabeth Yicheng

[ziskeyt]

breaking up pot posting: my new bracelets arrived from Fahlo!

The turtle is Marigold Puddlefoot and she is an adult female loggerhead and looks to be around Virginia right now. The elephant is Arden, she is in the Samburu National Reserve and the Buffalo Springs National Reserve. They delay the tracking on the elephants by four months to keep their locations from being known by poachers.

I'm pleased with the bracelets, the beads are a nice colour and the little animal ones are very cute. But mostly, it's great to be able to see the movements of the animal! It's a very smart idea for getting people to feel more personally involved with wildlife conservancy. I'll probably get some more of other animals.