It is inevitable that we are going to turn up some classic shots. So here is the answer to one of life’s mysteries – how do porcupines mate? ‘Carefully’ is the joke answer. Here we see that the female actually rotates her quills completely forward so as to make life a little less awkward for the male!

There are often images circulating on the web of tourists on safari completely unaware of animals in close proximity. Here is our version of ‘Behind You!’ – it looks as if this black rhino is not aware of the five lions right behind her. You can be sure she is not aware, since black rhino are one of the few species that regularly chase lions away from waterholes.

Sometimes the images we see on the camera traps are completely mysterious. Clearly here something hit the water with a large splash, yet we see only the splash and a strange yellow shape… Any guesses?

On occasion birds of prey trigger our traps as they come in to land. Here we see an augur buzzard (Buteo augur) arriving for a drink at one of our waterholes. The red tail markings are similar to that seen in the jackal buzzard (Buteo rufofuscus), however jackal buzzards are not found this far north in Namibia – likewise augur buzzards are not found in South Africa.

Both species of rhino can make a lot of noise, and most of the noise is made when two rhinos confront each other. Since that happens quite frequently at waterholes, in particular during the dry season when the rhinos have to come to water to drink, we quite often hear huffing, puffing and bellowing between individuals, even across species. Here we see a black rhino ‘encouraging’ their competitor to stop invading their personal space! These bellows can be very loud, and also involve very low sound frequencies (infrasound) that are known to have additional impact on recipients – in humans, these low frequencies (also found in the roars of large carnivores) can cause the subject to ‘freeze’, an almost visceral reaction.