I'm back in Botswana and I've jumped straight into fieldwork. I've been following 4 troops of mongooses for the last 4 days. In this particular troop there are two individuals that are sick and we are trying to monitor them closely. More to come soon...

I met a lovely couple from England / South Africa last night at the local watering hole (Thebe River Safaris), who were quite taken by some unusual collective nouns that have been all but lost to obscurity (or perhaps obscurity is a place best visited on Fridays with a beer in hand). Yes ... in case you're wondering, Friday night pub conversation flitted by and through many strange topics, of which I am not ashamed to say, collective nouns were one. If you are as much of a nerd as I am, then the English language can actually be thoroughly entertaining - a sentiment best shared by Bill Bryson in "Mother Tongue" .... a wonderful read (but then which of his books aren't?). But I digress as usual. The folks found enough merriment in the conversation that I now feel obliged to share some of these gems with you.

Their source is another great book, "Beat about the bush - mammals" by Trevor Carnaby (published by Jacana, 2006). I highly recommend this book and when his similar treatment if birds becomes avialable, I'll be jostling with you in a bookstore to get the last copy. Here is just a smattering of the ones that tickled me (aside from the commonly known ones):

A shrewdness of apes / monkeys
A congress of baboons
A cloud of bats
A sloth of bears
An obstinacy of buffalo
A parade of elephant
A tower / journey of giraffe
A prickle of hedgehogs
A raft / pod / bloat / thunder of hippopotamus
A mischief of mice / rats
A labour of moles
A business of mongoose
A romp of otters
An aurora of polar bears
A crash / stubbornness of rhinoceros
An ambush of tigers
A sneak of weasels
An implausibility of wildebeest
A dazzle of zebra

How Mr Carnaby sourced these, I don't know, but kudos to him! If you can add to the list, please do so. I'd be interested in finding some human equivalents.

I've spent a fair amount of time with my study subjects this week - in particular the Kubu Lodge pack. And really, a 'business' is about the best way to describe them. They seem quite fastidious in their foraging, digging a lot for grubs that they can smell below ground. These attempts often don't result in a tasty morsel. Whether the quarry escapes or they turn it down when they find it, I'm not sure.

They are wonderful to watch. In fact this is one of the factors that has lead to their interesting ecology in this area: guests at lodges love to watch and photograph them so they are tolerated there (where there also happens to often be an abundance of food and other waste to scrounge) whereas the surrounding villages are hostile places with dogs and people who chase them. In this case their affinity to people (tourists who presumably are paying for the conservation of this ecosystem) is exposing them to a human disease which may ultimately put their population at risk (through succumbing to the disease or through our McCarthyism-like persecution). It seems that they even have a penchant for the porcelain throne (see image below). Very sad.

The pack I'm watching at the moment have pups which they hide in a den / warren. They move dens every few days ... presumably because their scent builds up in the dens and could then attract predators. It seems that one or maybe a few adults stay at the den while the others go off foraging, twittering constantly amongst the group to keep contact - no need to avert your eyes from potential bugs and grubs when you can locate your pals via hearing. They return to the den at regular intervals presumably to provision the young. The rest of the day is consumed by frenetic digging, scratching in the earth, chirping, twittering and scanning for predators. Just before sunset they seem to congregate at the den for a good old group grooming session. It seems like a tit-for-tat scenario where they groom one another where they are being groomed ... neck - neck; shoulder - shoulder etc. Quite literally "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". This is going to be the subject of one of the behavioural studies I'll be carrying out, so watch this space ...

I've been doing a lot of database work for CARACAL while I've been finding my feet. This week, for a welcome change, I was able to get together with CARACAL's expert tracker, Cisco Chare, for a few days of preliminary fieldwork. Cisco is a wiry Baswara gentleman from the Sowa area. Between my limited Sepedi (fairly close to Setswana) and his broken English, we managed to strike up a good understanding ... he leads, and I follow. I am quite in awe of his ability to see minute details and put together a story about what has taken place in front of him. So it is that I will watch and learn from the maestro over the coming months.

So far we have established where the known troops of banded mongoose occur most frequently. They are all at the various lodges in Kasane and Kazungula. As an aside - mongooses have one of the most apt collective nouns of any wildlife species ... a "business" of mongooses. Watching them scurry and forage really does give that impression. Also, the technical term should probably be "pack", but troop seems to have become entrenched here.

It remains to be seen whether the troops are 'based' there only because that is where more people are around to actually see them and notify us, or whether there is a real ecological reason instead of a sampling bias. It may be that the lodges with their french drains, rubbish dumps, and copious scraps of food present an attractive glut to the scavengers. It may also be that the surrounding villages have humans and dogs which are unsympathetic and usually highly averse to their scavenging cause, while guests and guest-pleasing staff at lodges are only too happy to watch them scurry around for food.

One of the most gut-wrenching scenes is that of the village rubbish dump. Cisco and I went tracking there and watched horrified as about a hundred marabou storks were feeding amongst the plastic and broken bottles and smelly beer cans. They were only interrupted by a troop of baboons doing similar damage to the scraps of food they could scrounge. We walked along elephant paths through the dump - trails that had compacted the rubbish and crushed the cans enough so that walking was easier for us. I have also already seen several elephant dung piles with plastic bags tangled in the bolus and heard of one elephant death in the area as a result.