The Painted Rump

Out on the fringes of Botswana's Okavango Delta, several hundred cattle once wandered around with enormous eyes painted on their backsides, and not one of them got eaten by a lion. 

That is a literal accounting, not a gag. Across four field seasons between 2015 and 2018, a team near the village of Shorobe in the northern part of the country painted 683 cattle with big two-tone eyespots on the rump, gave 543 more a simple cross, and left 835 alone. 

Lions and leopards killed 15 of the unmarked animals and four of the cross-marked ones. Eyespot cattle killed: none. 

Cameron Radford, Neil Jordan and their colleagues published the tally in Communications Biology – "Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores" (2020), and it remains one of the stranger results in livestock protection. 

Jordan got the idea, watching a hunt collapse. He was in Botswana, a lion was stalking an impala, and the impala looked up at the wrong moment for the lion. 

“Lions are ambush hunters, so they creep up on their prey”, he told UNSW’s newsroom. Once the cat clocked that it had been seen, it quit. Behavioural ecologists call this pursuit deterrence, and it turns up everywhere. 

Brown hares stand up and face approaching foxes. Guppies that swim over and inspect a predator get attacked less often than the ones that stay put. Butterflies carry fake eyes on their wings for the same reason. 

No living mammal has evolved eyespots, which is presumably why nobody had thought to bolt them onto a cow. Fourteen herds took part, from six animals to 110, all belonging to farmers who had recently lost stock. Cattle there are penned overnight where possible, then graze unattended across the bush all day, and that is where most of the trouble happens. 

Painting happened at dawn as the animals filed through the crush, with acrylic paint and foam stencils glued to a plasterer’s float. Marks stayed sharp for roughly 24 days, so the crew returned monthly and redid them, 49 sessions all up. Annual spending on paint and supplies came to about a fifth of the price of one cow. 

A sceptic would object that the painted cattle simply got lucky, or stayed closer to home. So the researchers fitted GPS loggers to animals from all three groups. No meaningful difference in nights spent outside the enclosure, none in how far they roamed. 

Here is where the tidy story wobbles. Cattle wearing a plain painted cross also survived better than their unmarked herdmates, which is not what a pure eye-recognition effect predicts. 

Jordan flagged it as a genuine surprise in UNSW Sydney’s summary of the findings, noting that “novel cross-marks were better than no marks at all, which was unexpected”. 

Two explanations survive. Lions may be reading the eyes as a face turned towards them, or they may simply be wary of any bold, unfamiliar pattern on something they were planning to eat. The paper treats both as live options and rules out two rivals: that the marks divert attacks to other parts of the body, or that they mimic another predator. 

Anyone inclined to feel superior to the lions should know it works on humans too. Researchers at Newcastle University mounted signs featuring a pair of staring eyes above bicycle racks that had been suffering repeat thefts, and reported in PLOS ONE, "Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft", Nettle D, Nott K, Bateson M (2012), that thefts at those racks fell by 62 percent. Thefts elsewhere on campus went up by 65 percent. 

The eyes did not abolish the behaviour. They relocated it. Which is precisely the uncomfortable question hanging over the cattle. Only about a third of each herd carried eyespots. Lions always had unpainted alternatives standing right there, and Jordan conceded in 2020 that he did not know whether the trick would hold once those easier targets were gone. 

Painting every animal in a herd has not been tested. Nor has the wet season, when the crew stayed out of the field and predators turn to livestock as wild prey disperses. 

Nineteen predation events are a thin base for a strong claim, in one landscape, with one set of predators. Eighteen of those kills were lions. A spotted hyaena took one animal from each group, which fits the theory rather than dents it, because hyaenas chase prey down instead of ambushing it and lose nothing by being seen early. 

One paper is one paper. The farmers themselves were not immediately convinced. 

“At first they thought it was a joke”, Radford told Atlas Obscura, before adding that they became glad to see the crew arrive. He also mentioned something more telling: informal copies had already started for leopards in India, jaguars in South America and predators in Nepal, back in 2020. No replication on the same scale has landed since. 

Cheap ideas travel faster than the evidence for them, and a bucket of acrylic paint travels faster than most. 

For the Botswana livestock, the lesson was clear: you don’t need to outrun the lion, and you don’t even need to outsmart it – you just have to stand there, look ridiculous, and let your unpainted herdmates do the dying for you! 😜

Namibian Cheetah Gives Birth to 5 Cubs at Kuno

India's environment minister Bhupender Yadav on Saturday announced the birth of five cubs to Aasha, a Namibian cheetah under Project Cheetah, at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, taking India's total cheetah population to 35 and the number of surviving Indian-born cubs to 24. 

Sharing the update on X, Yadav said Aasha delivered the cubs on Saturday, marking the eighth successful cheetah litter in the country. 

Last week, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav announced 8 more cheetahs would be brought in from Botswana – the country is said to have about 20% of the world's cheetahs – on February 28. He said he held detailed discussions with Bhupender Yadav in New Delhi on arrangements for the next phase of the re-introduction program, along with tourism development, expansion of reserve forests and wildlife conservation in the state.

Project Cheetah is the world's first intercontinental large carnivore translocation program. It was launched on September 17, 2022, with the aim of re-introducing the species to India, where cheetahs had gone extinct since 1952.

Donald Trump Appeals Sexual Abuse Verdict

Former US President Donald Trump has filed a court notice of appeal two days after a civil trial found he sexually abused a woman, E Jean Carroll, in a New York department store. [Refer my post “NY Jury Finds Donald Trump Liable for Sexual Abuse and Defamation” published Wednesday]. 

 

According to BBC News, while the jury found Trump liable for sexual battery and defamation of Carroll, they did not find the former liable of raping her. To do so, the jury would have needed to have been convinced that he had engaged in non-consensual sexual intercourse with the latter. 

 

Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina had told reporters outside the courtroom that it was "a strange verdict". 

 

"They rejected her rape claim and she always claimed this was a rape case, so it's a little perplexing", he said. 

 

And he added that, in Trump's hometown of New York, where the former president is now unpopular, "you just can't get a fair trial". 

 

The case goes to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 

 

Another female cheetah named Daksha has died in Kuno National Park in India's Madhya Pradesh state, taking the number of the big cats found dead to three since March. She was found injured on Tuesday morning and treated by vets but died at noon. 

 

Last month, a male cheetah called Uday died and officials said the cause of death was cardiac failure. He was one of 12 big cats brought to India from South Africa in February. 

 

And in February, a female cheetah named Sasha which was in the first batch of animals brought from Namibia died of a suspected kidney ailment. She was part of a group of eight – five males and three females – which were translocated to India last year amid much fanfare. 

 

Cheetahs have great symbolic value in India as they are part of many folktales. But it is also the only large mammal to become extinct since independence in 1947 because of hunting, shrinking habitats and lack of prey. 

 

The vast majority of the 7,000 cheetahs in the world are now found in Africa – in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. 

 

The Asiatic cheetah (Scientific name: Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) is critically endangered and now only found in Iran, where only a dozen members of the species are left in the wild, down from an estimated 100 in 2010.

Omicron Shows Itself

In my post published November 01, I had highlighted a subvariant of Delta labelled AY.4.2 that has been detected in the UK and a few other countries. The good news is that despite its spread, it is not labelled a “variant of concern”. 

But now, another coronavirus variant has emerged.

It was first reported to the WHO from South Africa on November 24, and has already been identified in Botswana, Belgium, China Hong Kong and Israel. 

On Friday, the WHO declared the variant to be "of concern" and named it Omicron. They said the number of cases of this variant, initially named B.1.1.529, appeared to be increasing in almost all of South Africa's provinces. 

The first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection had been from a specimen collected on November 09 – and the WHO revealed it would take a couple of weeks to understand the impact of Omicron, as scientists worked to determine how transmissible it was. 

Not a few countries are already getting jittery. The European Union and other major destinations, including the United States and Canada, have moved to block flights from southern African countries – Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe – following the discovery of the said variant. 

Believe me, Covid is just a never-ending story.

I also read news that Merck’s experimental Covid pill has shown lower efficacy in an updated study. 

Following the release of a full analysis of trial results, the pharmaceutical company said on Friday the oral drug, molnupiravir, showed a 30 percent reduction in hospitalizations and deaths when compared with a placebo, based on data from more than 1,400 patients. 

Last month, the company said data from 775 patients had showed that reduction was “approximately” 50 percent. I had reported this in my post that was dated October 03, 2021. 

I don't believe Big Pharma. They are not exactly trustworthy. 

Remember how Pfizer brought out its Covid vaccine “at the speed of science”? Now a whistleblower has told the world that speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. 

As was reported, Brook Jackson, a regional director employed at the research organization Ventavia Research Group had told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal Phase III trial. Not to mention that staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of problems they were finding. 

Pfizer's data fraud aside, Merck have speedily filed for a US authorization of the oral antiviral Covid treatment on October 11, following the interim data.

[Interestingly, Pfizer are already developing an oral antiviral drug Paxlovid for Covid-19, which requires patients to take three pills twice a day for five days]. 

Ever the follower, Malaysia has put in an order for molnupiravir that is said to force the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus to mutate itself to death. 

I venture a guess that even with our “high” vaccination rates, it is not giving us the results we are anticipating. Our infections are stubbornly clinging on to four digits – yesterday, that number was 5,501 cases and 45 deaths.

195 Million Cases and Covid is Again on the Rise in the US

We mustn't look down on Malaysia. We really did play our part to contribute to the overall Covid caseload. Global infections have now reached 195 million cases.

That’s why we have been steadily climbing one rung at a time – and we’re now at #30 among countries with the most number of cases. It’s no small feat for a small nation like Malaysia to have accumulated 1,027,954 cases as at today. FYI, we are the thirty-first country to have passed the one million mark.

And the Covid champion, the US of A is determined to stay #1! 

Covid cases are on the rise in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as the Delta variant rapidly spreads across the US and the virus once again tightens its grip. 

The US is reporting an average of about 43,700 new cases per day over the past week – far below pandemic highs but up 65% over the previous seven days and nearly three times as high as the level two weeks ago, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University shows. And yesterday, according to Worldometer, it was still above 30,000 cases. 

BTW, Vietnam and Botswana have joined the C100K grouping, making it countries #102 and #103:

200,000 Coronavirus Cases in Africa

The total number of coronavirus cases in Africa passed 200,000 yesterday, according to the World Health Organization’s office for the region. The continent had added 100,000 cases in eighteen days. 

According to the latest update by the UN health agency, 201,157 people have tested positive for the virus across the 54 countries in Africa, of whom 90,374 have recovered and 5,486 have died, the UN health agency said. 

The Top 7 African countries for confirmed cases are still the same as the list I had put out in my May 23 post (“The Covid-19 Situation in Africa”) – just that there has been a reshuffle in their positions, Nos. 3 to 7:

BTW, these seven countries constitute 72.3% of Africa’s total (or 1.9% of cases worldwide). 

Even for fatalities – where the Top 7 countries make up 81.8% of Africa’s total (or 1.1% of deaths worldwide) – it's the same seven countries as I last reported in May – except for a change in positions, Nos. 2 to 7. 

And just to compare with the Bottom 7 (i.e. the Least Affected countries):

Lim Kok Wing Proclaims Himself King of Africa

I don't know about you but Lim Kok Wing on a billboard is already an eyesore. And his latest attempt at self-promotion is sickening because it inflicts raw pain. 

I'm reminded of an insult I once came across and it describes him to a T. “You’re like the sun, not because you light up our world but because it hurts to look at you!"

Proclaiming himself King of Africa is an audacious act of impudent cockiness of the highest order. 

I cannot even begin to fathom where Lim (left)  is coming from, no matter how hard I tried – unless he is portraying himself as the “demi-god savior” of the continent because he offers young Africans tertiary education opportunities in his branch campuses in Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Sierra Leone?! If that is the case, he is guilty of preserving a “negative stereotype of Africans not having access to education. 

I can only conclude Lim’s ego is the boss. This clod earnestly wants us to believe he is larger than life. This cacafuego desperately hopes the public will put him on a pedestal and maybe, even worship and deify him. This coccydynia has sadly, lost his marbles.

Nobody minds if he keeps his derangement to himself – but to make public his self-delusion is distastefully despicable. Besides, nobody gives a shit. 

In fact, somebody correctly initiated a petition “LIM KOK WING UNIVERSITY'S CONDESCENDING BILLBOARD NEEDS TO BE TAKEN DOWN” on Change.org on June 07, 2020, saying that portraying Lim as a “saviour” is condescending and robs African students of their agency to pave their own way in the world. 

“The use of a jungle animal and reference to ‘king’ perpetuates ideas of Africa as one big jungle and adds to the (wrongful) animalistic characterisation of the students. This perpetuates the notion that black people need saving, taking away their power and psychologically placing them in an inferior role”, this person wrote on the petition page. 

Worse, I'm told the photo of Lim being surrounded by Limkokwing University students in Freetown, Sierra Leone had been edited to make the crowd appear larger and more packed than it actually was. 

What a joke! Nothing more than a wretched exaggeration for the mere sake of self-glorifying himself.

Enough said. Suffice to say, my senses are already benumbed.  

I find this whole self-aggrandizing thingy disagreeable, debasing and demeaning.  It not only insults me but worse, it disrespects Africans. God knows what they've done to deserve this! 

As far as I am concerned, the billboard spews a racist message – and we mustn't tolerate it. Not in Malaysia, not anywhere else.

It is sad that Lim consistently sets low expectations for himself and stll fails to achieve them.

The Covid-19 Situation in Africa

More than three months have lapsed since Egypt became the first country in Africa to confirm a coronavirus case. Since then, the outbreak has reached every nation on the continent of 1.2 billion people – with 100,666 confirmed cases and 3,105 deaths on Friday, according to Africa CDC. 

No doubt Africa recorded just a wee fraction of the world's coronavirus cases – a mere 1.9%. 

Also WHO modelling has predicted that Covid-19 would move more slowly through Africa than elsewhere. It's very comforting to know, that’s for sure.

Still, the fact remains that the virus is raging in pockets of the continent. 

And it has been hit hard by the economic fallout from global trade disruptions, falling oil and commodities prices and the lockdowns deployed to fight the disease's spread. That can be just as hurting. 

I read that the presidents of Ivory Coast, Kenya, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone on Tuesday are already complaining that wealthy countries are failing Africa, with pledges of financial support and debt relief falling well short of the continent's needs as it battles the coronavirus pandemic. 

But it’s not only Africa that is affected – but everywhere too.

Already, the global economy is shrinking by around 5%. According to World Bank estimates, up to 60 million people could be pushed below the poverty line in their latest apocalyptic prediction. 

World Bank president David Malpass (right) said they have so far loaned money for emergency programs in 100 countries, accounting for about 70% of the world’s population, in response to the coronavirus crisis. 

He said the money would “reinforce healthcare systems” as well as pay for medical equipment and supplies.

Many countries' economies are already in dire straits.

The Government of Botswana's Response

The Botswana Government’s response regarding the alleged wholesale killing of elephants:

"The Government of Botswana has noted with concern unsubstantiated and sensational media reports on elephant poaching statistics in Botswana carried by some local and international media attributed to Elephants Without Borders (EWB), a non-governmental organisation contracted by the Botswana Government to carry out the dry season aerial survey of elephants and wildlife in northern Botswana covering Chobe, Okavango, Ngamiland and North Central District. 

The stories allege that about 90 elephants have been indiscriminately killed recently. 

To this end, the Government of Botswana wishes to inform members of the public and other key stakeholders that these statistics are false and misleading. 

At no point in the last months or recently were 87 or 90 elephants killed in one incident in any place in Botswana. 

The Government of Botswana wishes to further inform that the survey conducted by EWB started on 5th July 2018 and is expected to end by 30th September 2018. 

During the conduct of the survey from 5th July up to 1st August 2018, EWB reported that they had come across 53 elephant carcasses which were incidents that had already been cumulatively reported officially to the Government as early as July and August of this year. 

Of the aforementioned 53 reported, a verification mission between July and August established that the majority were not poached but rather died from natural causes and retaliatory killings as a result of human and wildlife conflicts. 

The Government of Botswana wishes to state that it is unfortunate that some media reports attribute the rise in elephant poaching primarily to the withdrawal of weapons from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) anti-poaching unit. 

The fact of the matter is that the withdrawal of such weapons from DWNP, did not in any way affect the effectiveness and operations of the anti-poaching units. 

It should be noted that the Government of Botswana has from the 1980’s directed all security agencies to commit resources towards anti-poaching, a practice that continues to this date. 

Therefore, the withdrawal of weapons from DWNP has not created any vacuum in anti-poaching operations as the anti-poaching unit in DWNP continues to play a pivotal role in combating wildlife crime through other strategic interventions. 

Furthermore, the public is informed that withdrawing weapons from DWNP is in line with the existing legislation which does not allow the Department of Wildlife and National Parks to own such weapons. 

This action was taken whilst corrective measures are to be undertaken. 

In conclusion, the Government of Botswana wishes to condemn in the strongest terms possible attempts by individuals or groups who give a false impression that they love Botswana wildlife more than citizens of Botswana. 

The Government wishes to reiterate the fact that wildlife remains a national heritage and our citizens will protect it at all costs. 

Thank you. 

Thato Y Raphaka, Permanent Secretary".

The ABOVE was sent to me by my former student from Botswana, Khumo Seamogano yesterday. 

Therefore, I am publishing the Government of Botswana's official statement on the matter.

The blog post titled "Elephant Massacre in Botswana" dated September 06, 2018 carried contentious concerns, namely, the cause of death as well as the number of fatalities. 

From the government's position, the casualties recorded were clearly incorrect and therefore, invalid. And poaching is not to be blamed for ALL deaths.

Thanks again, Khumo. As well as Mschats Motlhabane and Molly Modutlwe.

[Side note: I miss you all!]

Elephant Massacre in Botswana

Photos by Elephants Without Borders

An elephant carcass found during verification/ investigation exercise. Picture: Facebook/BWGovernment 

Still from video @ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6t4wil 

Image credit: Webpage http://wrldnws.ddnss.de/news/nearly-90-elephants-in-botswana-reportedly-poached 

White-backed and hooded vultures feed on a dead elephant carcass in Chobe National Park, Botswana. Image credit: Beckie Garbett via AP

Ninety elephant carcasses have been discovered in Botswana, Elephants Without Borders says, but the government is fiercely contesting that figure. Whatever lah but I just know that the gentle beasts are being slaughtered.

The non-profit Botswana-based organization said on Tuesday that the grim discovery of scores of dead bodies, made over a number of weeks during an aerial survey that commenced on July 10, indicated that this was surely one of Africa’s worst mass poaching orgies. 

EWB worked together with Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, asserted that most of the expired pachyderms were large bulls, which would have had heavy tusks. 

They had been shot with heavy-calibre rifles at watering spots near a popular wildlife sanctuary in the Okavango Delta in the northern part of the country. 

According to EWB's Dr Mike Chase (left), the carcasses’ skulls were "chopped open by presumably very sharp axes, to remove their tusks". In some cases, the trunks were also removed. 

I read in one news report that the killers were often impatient. They didn’t even wait for the animals to die after being shot – they had immediately started to hack and hew. It made me teary-eyed to learn of this.

Botswana has had a reputation for an unforgiving approach to poachers and had largely escaped the elephant losses seen elsewhere. 

Despite having no barricades on the international border, data from tracking collars showed the mammals retreating from Angola, Namibia and Zambia and deciding to stay within the boundaries of Botswana where it was thought to be a safe haven. Until now.

The killings allegedly began after the government of President Mokgweetsi Masisi (right) decided to disarm the anti-poaching units that used to have a shoot-to-kill policy. 

The country, with its unfenced parks and wide-open spaces, has the largest elephant population in Africa at over 135,000. 

According to Chase, the tuskers in Zambia and Angola have been poached to the verge of local extinction, and poachers have now turned to Botswana. 

The number of African elephants (Order: Proboscidea; Family: Elephantidae; Genus: Loxodonta)  has fallen by about 111,000 to 415,000 in the past decade, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. 

And the cold-blooded murders continue at a dizzying pace of about 30,000 elephants a year – to meet the insatiable demand for ivory in Asia, where tusks sell for about $1,000 (€860) per kilo (2.2 pounds).

Even as the world is informed about the massacre – it’s not the end. Not yet.

Botswana's 2018 Wildlife Aerial Survey is only half-way done.

The fear is real that the final figure of elephants being slain will be a lot higher. 

And Chase worries that if Botswana can’t protect its elephants, there’s little hope for the species as a whole.

Please, Batswana, it's a matter of urgency that something is done to stop the butchery. 

Marketing Collaterals

Last Thursday, the MKT3034 New Product Development class showcased their projects and again, I was a panel member – this time for Dr Cheah YS. I judged students who presented their marketing collaterals for new products/services that they were promoting. And I didn’t miss the many photo opportunities as you can see from the above. After all, these are SUBS students whom I have also previously taught.