Lions of Tsavo: Calling Them In

music
ambience: Water Buffalo Calf Moaning – dying

OK, so you’ve gone to Kenya to study lions. The question is — how do you find them? I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

“If you’re driving down a road that has got very thick thorn bush, you may see a lion run across a road and disappear into a bush and you didn’t get a chance to see what the animal was like or what the mane was like or even what sex it was so, lion researchers have developed tools to bring lions to us instead of having to go out to find the lions.”

Earthwatch scientist Roland Kays has traveled to Kenya many times to study lions. He says one of the tricks of attracting a lion is to play a sound that it’s interested in.

“And there are a number of noises that have been used in the areas that have lots of hyenas, the lions will listen for a hyena kill and then go and chase the hyenas off and eat the food. So researchers have had success playing back sounds of hyenas and the lions hear that and they think there’s a free meal, I can go kick them off.”

But if there are no hyenas in the local ecosystem, that technique probably won’t be very effective.

“We were fortunate enough to observe a dying young buffalo calf that was bleating for it’s mother, but couldn’t keep up with the herd, because it was very sick, and couldn’t hardly walk and as soon as the lions heard this, they came running and killed it. And luckily we got some recordings of this bleating, dying baby buffalo and that turned out to be our most effective way of bringing lions in. So if we, if someone told us that they saw some lions over in this area, we could park our truck there, put the loud speakers on the top and play back the sound of this dying baby buffalo and the lions would come running in, looking for the free dinner. And they’d kind of look at our car and wonder. But we got them come in from at least a kilometer with some very loud loudspeakers.”

We’ll hear more about lions in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

music

Lions of Tsavo: Calling Them In

What sounds do you use to make a lion come when you "call" it?
Air Date:01/10/2005
Scientist:
Transcript:

music
ambience: Water Buffalo Calf Moaning - dying

OK, so you've gone to Kenya to study lions. The question is -- how do you find them? I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

"If you’re driving down a road that has got very thick thorn bush, you may see a lion run across a road and disappear into a bush and you didn’t get a chance to see what the animal was like or what the mane was like or even what sex it was so, lion researchers have developed tools to bring lions to us instead of having to go out to find the lions."

Earthwatch scientist Roland Kays has traveled to Kenya many times to study lions. He says one of the tricks of attracting a lion is to play a sound that it's interested in.

"And there are a number of noises that have been used in the areas that have lots of hyenas, the lions will listen for a hyena kill and then go and chase the hyenas off and eat the food. So researchers have had success playing back sounds of hyenas and the lions hear that and they think there’s a free meal, I can go kick them off."

But if there are no hyenas in the local ecosystem, that technique probably won't be very effective.

"We were fortunate enough to observe a dying young buffalo calf that was bleating for it’s mother, but couldn’t keep up with the herd, because it was very sick, and couldn’t hardly walk and as soon as the lions heard this, they came running and killed it. And luckily we got some recordings of this bleating, dying baby buffalo and that turned out to be our most effective way of bringing lions in. So if we, if someone told us that they saw some lions over in this area, we could park our truck there, put the loud speakers on the top and play back the sound of this dying baby buffalo and the lions would come running in, looking for the free dinner. And they’d kind of look at our car and wonder. But we got them come in from at least a kilometer with some very loud loudspeakers."


We'll hear more about lions in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.

music