In a previous post, I concluded with a friendly visit we had from a family of banded mongooses (Mungos mungo). It got me thinking about how resilient nature is. Even in the massive concrete jungle we made, they still manage to live. They are obviously not flourishing, but they are enough to breed and form a relatively big group.
In this post, I want to share with you a similar experience I had along the coast of my hometown. Walking along one of the paths between the fynbos plants, we stumbled upon a small pack of rock hyrax (Procavia capensis) or dassies/rock rabbits. Whilst photographing them, just across the path I also saw two Cape grey mongoose (Herpestes pulverulentus). This got me thinking again about the amazing resilience of nature. Below, I share some photographs and musings about this ordeal and how we need to become more aware of our destruction of nature via habitat loss.
From the Hermanus area in the Western Cape, South Africa, up to Cape Town, various packs of dassies remain active. The awesome thing is that all these packs remain hidden in the thicket of the fynbos. In the above photograph, you can see the thick and lush growth. Just across the street are houses and concrete jungles. They hide from humans and come out to eat. But in more people-dense areas, they have become so tame that the tourists feed them.
It is easy to miss them. They are very slow-moving when they are not threatened, but when they run they run so quickly. Plus, they are so agile, jumping from one rock to the next, making it look easy. This is how they get away from predators. I think their main predators are people's animals like dogs and cats and the odd bird of prey (and maybe snakes).
But this leads to an interesting phenomenon. With habitat loss and predator loss, these animals can live relatively comfortably. There are some areas, like further south close to the Eastern Cape (in Tsitsikamma) there are so many you cannot count them all.
As I wrote above, whilst looking at the dassies, I saw in the corner of my eye two mongooses in the trashcan looking for food. As you can see above, this is such a cute little animal. They look like bandits built to steal! But how wonderful that they can survive in the concrete jungle, but how sad that they can get into the trash and eat our "trash food".
When I visited my brother in the UK, we went to the local river in which many swans and ducks swam. We so badly wanted to feed them, so we bought some bread and fed them. But soon afterward, someone told us or we read on a noticeboard, that we should not feed them bread. The bread swells up and satiating them too early. So they are undernourished as they do not want to eat anything else.
Now I wonder, is this not going to happen to the dassies and mongooses? I think the dassies feast on plants, so they are fine, but the mongooses were looking for food in the trashcan. What did they find there? And did they eat some plastic?
Alas, they somehow manage to live in our concrete jungles without a care in the world. Even though their numbers are far from what they were before we destroyed most of their habitat, the ones that survived are sitting, like the one above, on their rock throne.
And this is a thing that few people think about: habitat loss equates to animal loss. Most people think about the death of animals as such, but with habitat loss, a slow death ensues. Insects get less, so animals that feed on them get less, birds get less because they feed on the small rodents that eat the insects, and birds of prey get less because of the loss of small birds. It is a sad spiral. The stern look of the dassie is justified.
Even though the habitat loss will probably never be "rewilded" or given back to the animals, we can do our part by leaving them alone and let them make their nests in our garden.
And then there is the sad truth, like the sad look of the mongoose above, that people will be people and they will treat their gardens like capitalism treats us: it is all a numbers game. We want the perfect lawn without any weeds, so we will pesticide and herbicide it. Irrespective of the harm we do.
What is the solution to this problem? I have no idea. This is a huge problem with so many grey areas. We want to prosper, but our prosper cannot be at the cost of every other living creature. Hopefully, we will realise our arrogance soon.
The mongoose walks away into the thicket. Until the next day in which it needs to eat again. Hopefully, there will be enough to eat so it does not have to venture into the dustbins. But the dustbin is such an easy "catch", it does not require a lot of energy expenditure.
Postscriptum
We, humans, are smart enough to get out of this situation.
But do the majority want it though? That is, has capitalism ruined the majority to care about nature?
Tough questions.
I hope you enjoyed this post, a rather philosophical one. All of the photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron zoom lens. The musings are also my own. I hope you have thought about this, if not, hopefully now! Stay safe.