Jedi Of The African Savannah - Waterbuck

Masai Mara National Reserve

Ever wonder where the concept of war paint came into our minds from? We wanted to look scary for battle obviously but were we emulating what we saw in nature around us? But it doesn’t really end there; we continue to show aliens and different fictional characters on TV that are so blatantly “inspired” by creatures of Nature. I watched Star Wars, Ahsoka and one look at her with her face paint and head gear and I thought to myself, “She Looks Like A Waterbuck”. Seriously, do the comparison and you’ll never get it out of your head like me. She’s got the same white patterns above the eyes, on the cheeks and the patterns of the horns. Man, all she’s missing is the heart shaped nose and she’d be a perfect Waterbuck Haha.

Well, these Jedi of Sub Saharan Africa are antelope. Beautiful, graceful, antelope. Id go as far as saying that they’re the most gorgeous antelope that I’ve seen. Just as not all people are made equally attractive to look at, to my eyes the waterbuck takes the beauty contest prize as far as antelope go. It’s an effortless, hands down, victory. Hey. I’m sure the guys over at Disney were seeing the same thing when they came up for the look for their Jedi character.

I met these guys a few times in The Mara and I think I got luckiest with that guy over in Pic : 1. What a stare ! How handsome is that guy? The pose too. Not much to photographing them really to be honest, you just need to get lucky with the light and the pose of the animal and the rest is upto your framing skills. A couple of them were play fighting and I got lucky with that as well on my first day there ( Pics 3 & 4). These guys are pretty chilled out around safari vehicles but I wouldn’t get too comfy no matter what given the length of those ribbed head sabers on these Jedi. I was a little tempted to ask David to let me get off the vehicle to get a ground level shot of my handsome guy but decided against it. They slap you with a trespass charge in the Mara if an animal attacks you cause of your idiocy and end that kind of matter with punishment and / or fine whether you’re hurt or not. No picture’s worth that much to me yet.

So, Waterbuck are mostly sedentary in nature and they form groups, namely, female home ranges, nursery herds, bachelor herds and territorial males. The way it works for these guys is that the males usually always stay around the female home ranges which can stretch upto 600 Hectares. They can’t tolerate dehydration and mostly stay around water. Young males, pushed out of their natal herds, form their own bachelor groups that roam within the female home ranges. Dominant males carve out their own territory within the same range. Now the unique thing about them is that the females are free to move between different Dominant male territories. So basically the male with the most resources in his territory will be visited the most by the females, thus increasing his chance of procreation. These guys love the water and secrete oil over their hollow hair to repel water and keep it dry. Their hollow hair helps in buoyancy and swimming. They will often run into water to get predators off their back and that oil is pretty useful in helping them stay afloat and dry, an advantage the predators don’t have.

My plans for these guys definitely includes spending more time observing the herd when I find my way to the Savannah next. There’s bound to be action especially around bachelor herds. I also totally missed seeing them in the water which I need to given that it’s supposedly their specialty. Again, I’m hoping for action, not with carnivores, I’ve given up on that hope as far as daytime is concerned and we’re not usually allowed out of the camps at night but some interactions between these gorgeous animals would sure look good in my collection.