Kruger Safari Wildlife: other cool animals
Top of the "other" cool animals category is the chameleon, one of my favorite animals in the world because it's so cute! We saw four or five of them, all at night. I was amazed that our rangers could spot the small creatures by just passing the spotlight across the landscape, but apparently they're easier to spot at night because they show up as a pale green arc in the branches. They are their "natural" color (a yellowish green) when they sleep, just clinging onto the narrow twig.
We also saw a few leopard tortoises, and learned how to identify their sex.
On the last day, the really expert South African guy in our group spotted a python in the bushes. So our ranger Steve went and picked it up, and let us touch it. It was really quite docile eventually, adn the skin is very smooth and almost soft-feeling. After Steve let it go in the water, we saw it swim. They are really good swimmers! They swim really quickly, and you can just see the little head above water, and ripples behind it. Steve estimated that this python was only about 2.5 years old.
There was one lake where we always saw the same hippo. It just loved to hang out in the water, and often you could only see its two ears sticking up. Hippo have really interesting dung - they spray them on land. Our rangers told us one story, where the hippo really wanted to hang out in the water but God said, that's where my crocodiles and fish hang out. The hippo said that he wouldn't interfere with them, only eating the grass in the water. As part of the deal, every night he would come out on land, and spray his dung so that God could see he only eats grass.
