All for one: in southern Africa, thousands of Cape buffalo offer a lesson in the ups and downs of group living

Natural History, April, 2002 by Robyn Keene-Young

At the height of the dry season in Botswana's Chobe National Park, when the hot, desiccated land resembles a nuclear test site, thousands of African, or Cape, buffalo (Syncerus caffer) find relief along the floodplain of the Chobe River. As dusk falls over this wasteland, I marvel at a single herd of more than 2,000 buffalo trudging past me in a dark ribbon of black coats and hooked horns, en route to a river crossing that will take them into neighboring Namibia. Thousands of legs, like a giant millipede crawling across the floodplain, kick up puffs of blush-colored dust. Here and there, immature bulls fall out of the procession to knock horns in friendly contests that hone their fighting skills. Clouds of oxpeckers chirp above the buffalo, while cattle egrets, a series of white splashes, rise and fall at their feet. On the fringe of the floodplain, a pride of lions waits to pick off old, lame, or sick buffalo struggling to keep pace with the herd. (Lions, the buffalo's major predator, are seldom able to catch an adult that is within the herd.)

Buffalo will go to great lengths to protect one of their own from attack as they run the gauntlet through lion territory during daily treks to and from water and grazing areas. A single buffalo distress bellow is enough to turn a docile, ruminating herd into a battalion of warriors, ready to charge and chase off an entire pride of lions. Battles between them can last several hours, until the demise of a buffalo or the defeat of a lion signals the end.

Even a lone buffalo can be intimidating for would-be attackers, and nineteenth-century European hunters were quick to include the species on their "big five" list of dangerous quarry. Shooting parties that wounded an animal often did not stalk it to finish it off, knowing that to do so could be fatal for the hunters.

In recent years, the buffalo has been canonized by the safari set as an animal of supernatural strength, famous for being undaunted by lions and for its readiness to defend itself at all costs. Despite the buffalo's strength, however, this cousin of the North American bison is plagued by a multitude of parasites and diseases--a characteristic that has earned it the hostility of the region's cattle farmers. Because of their bovine family ties, cattle and buffalo turn out to be vulnerable to many of the same pathogens, such as foot-and-mouth disease and bovine tuberculosis. South Africa's national veterinary service has responded by confining buffalo to pockets where game-proof fences check the threat of transmission to domestic animals.

To reintroduce buffalo into parts of their former range, South African National Parks and several commercial breeding operations have initiated ambitious projects and have successfully produced agriculturally friendly, disease-free buffalo. As a result, the animal that the South African writer Laurens van der Post considered "a living expression of the inarticulate character of the African earth" is again grazing the grasslands where its ancestors once roamed.

Adrian Bailey ("All for One," page 50), a South African native, held a position as an architect before trading in his drawing table for a camera and a career in freelance photography. His wife, Robyn Keene-Young, earned a law degree from South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand and worked as an attorney until deciding she'd prefer a life of freelance nature and travel writing. Since 1995, the pair has traveled throughout southern Africa and beyond, collaborating on books and magazine articles about wildlife, wild destinations, and conservation issues. While working on Wild Kruger (Sunbird Publishing, 2001), a book about Kruger National Park, they came across a herd of buffalo. According to Bailey, "the sheer spectacle of these intimidating animals and their extensive retinue made them an easy choice" for further examination. Buffalo are the subject of their photoessay in this issue.