Science writer Ed Yong is confronted by a flatulent rhino while on safari.
Ed Yong is a science journalist who reports for The Atlantic, and is based in Washington DC. His work appears several times a week on The Atlantic's website, and has also featured in National Geographic, the New Yorker, Wired, Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, and many more. He has won a variety of awards, including the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for biomedical reporting in 2016, the Byron H. Waksman Award for Excellence in the Public Communication of Life Sciences in 2016, and the National Academies Keck Science Communication Award in 2010 for his old blog Not Exactly Rocket Science. He regularly does talks and radio interviews; his TED talk on mind-controlling parasites has been watched by over 1.5 million people. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES, his first book, looks at the amazing partnerships between animals and microbes. Published in 2016, it became a New York Times bestseller, and was listed in best-of-2016 lists by the NYT, NPR, the Economist, the Guardian, and several others. Bill Gates called it "science journalism at its finest", and Jeopardy! turned it into a clue.
This story originally aired Aug 11, 2017.
Story Transcript
Eight years ago, I was in South Africa in a jeep, in the dark, thinking about the life choices I had made that had led to my safety and well-being being at risk by a flatulent rhino. So I was at this point about two hours into a safari, and I'd arrived at the safari lodge in the mid afternoon. So this first drive was going to be an evening one, which started at dusk, and then would continue into the night. It goes really well, at first. We see a giraffe and some impala, and a hippo, and some impala, and some impala.
Now, you might think it would be really churlish to be in a place of such beauty, of life at its most diverse in what was like a living David Attenborough documentary and to get irritated at seeing too much of any particular thing. You would be right, except safaris are sold on the basis of variety. You were told you'll see all of this incredible stuff. There's even the checklist, the big five: the leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo, and rhino.
In my head, I know that this is a dumb conceit. Safaris are not like zoos. There is no checklist. These animals are wild. They don’t march to any timetable or schedule. But in my heart, I know that I've come a long way for this. I've paid a lot of money for this. This is probably one of the few chances in my life that I'll actually get to see this stuff in the wild, things that I've only seen before in zoos and in nature documentaries and in books.
And I really want to see it all. I really want to see a wild elephant or a lion or a leopard, or some impala. Whoever said that familiarity breeds contempt was probably talking about impalas. It is really astonishing how quickly you can go from the first time you see them thinking, “This is such a beautiful animal. Look at the elegance of its slender build, the peaceful corkscrew of its horns, the way the sunlight beams down upon its hide and reflects into my eyes filling me with joy for all of creation,” and then like an hour later you're like [sighs], “Impala. They're like horned rats, like hooved pigeons.”
Then as the sun sets fully and it gets properly dark, even the impala go away. Now, it is the time, we are told, for seeing Africa’s nocturnal animals. Its small, scurrying, less common, less frequently observed species. That is true except, because it’s very dark, the only light we have are the giant headlamps of our jeep. It turns out that Africa’s nocturnal, small, scurrying animals are also super skittish in the face of giant headlights beaming down upon them. So the things that we do see are very fleeting and kind of hard to make out. So over there we see a maybe mongoose, a sort of bushbaby, a possibly owl.
So we’re driving along and we’re not really seeing very much. And the worst bit of it is because of my own stupid fault, I am very uncomfortable. Because I arrive at the safari lodge so excited about going on this trip that I have forgotten three key pieces of information. One, it’s springtime in South Africa. When the sun goes down, it gets really cold, much like in this room. Imagine with me.
Two, safari vehicles, though they have canopies, do not have coverings on the sides and back so they're open to the elements. And three, they rush through the elements at very high speed. So between the cold and the wind chill, and the fact that yours truly has rocked up in just a T-shirt like an idiot, I’m really, really cold. Fortunately, the safari guides have prepared for the arrival of possible idiots by packing blankets inside the vehicle.
So I have got the blanket wrapped over me and I’m sort of shivering my way through this otherwise uneventful, pitch-black game drive. We’re not seeing very much until six white rhinos trundle out of the bush onto the path in front of us and sit down, which is great. Maybe the driver knew that they were there and was expecting this, but we certainly had no idea. Because you might think that Africa’s large animals, or its elephants and rhinos and hippos, would be large, lumbering animals that would rustle the undergrowth and shake the ground with every footstep. But it turns out they are surprisingly stealthy.
Because while a rhino’s leg is like this giant, sturdy, columnar tree trunk, underneath that its skeleton is basically doing this. It’s like standing on tiptoes. And the heel is resting on this giant pad of fat and muscle like the world’s largest platform shoe, which means that a rhino’s footsteps are very quiet and which means that we didn’t hear these things. A rhino is basically like a cross between a tank and a ninja.
So these six giant ninja tanks come out of nowhere and they walk in front of us and they lie down in front of the path. So we aren’t going anywhere. We just sit down and watch them. This is great because they're white rhinos. They're amazing animals. It’s some of my favorite animals. They are inherently paradoxical. There's something really weird about them that doesn’t quite fit together. They are seemingly impervious, but they're also critically endangered. There is an obvious threat to them, because of the horn, but they're also strangely comical and endearing. And there are six of them in front of us and we get to spend some time with them, which is fantastic.
But after a while, we start getting a bit impatient, not because they're not cool. They are. But, because, as I said, it’s very cold and it’s really late. We had already decided to call the drive quits and go home, and we were very close to home and we definitely needed to get home. But the path to home was being blocked by six rhinos. So we sat there and we waited.
As if to sort of lighten the mood, one of the rhinos decides to fart really loudly and extensively. Now, I know you're serious people here for some serious stories about serious science, but let me tell you that a farting rhino is exactly as funny as you might imagine it to be. So lured by this sort of false sense of comedic security, our driver decides to skirt around the sleeping rhinos and make his way back home, which is a mistake because Farty McRhino does not like that one bit and gets up and walks over to us.
Now, I say gets up and walks over -- it more like teleported. I said rhinos are paradoxical and that also applies to their speed. They look slow and lumbering, but they are in fact… you would be very surprised how quickly a sleeping, flat rhino can go from that position to not only on its feet but in your face.
So it’s there and I did what any twenty-something man-child would do. I tried to obsessively take a really good photo of it.
I'd come prepared for this safari. I had bought a new bridge camera, which is what you call cameras that look like they're for people who know what they're doing but are in fact designed for people who have no idea what they're doing, and I was in that latter group. So I was sort of ineffectually pissing around with f numbers and shutter speeds and ISOs like I had any idea what any of these things were, let alone how best to use them effectively. Fortunately, we had a lot of time in which to piss around with that because we couldn’t go anywhere and there was a giant rhino standing in front of us now.
I had thought, as it got close, “It’s really close now. I can get a great photo,” which was sort of the wrong thing to think because a rhino weighs around two tons. This thing is only slightly smaller than the jeep, and it is about a body length away from us. Its head is lowered, its horn is pointing at us.
Now, maybe we were in no danger whatsoever. Rhinos have very poor eyesight so maybe this thing was just checking us out. But still, it is right there and we've already seen how quickly it can move when it wants to. So we decided to give it a lot of respect and we are all very, very quiet. No one particularly told us to be very quiet, but I think we all knew. Some of us knew that rhinos make up for their poor eyesight with exceptional hearing. And even those that didn’t were painfully aware of the fact that its ears were doing this. One was sort of scanning around like a periscope and the other was just glued onto us.
So we waited, and it waited, and we were very quiet. Now, I’ve stopped trying to take a photo of it and I’m very, very present in this scene and I’m sort of understanding what is happening. So I think to myself, “Don’t be an idiot. Put the camera away.” So I turn it off and it makes this noise [makes whirring noise]. And now both ears are glued upon us.
And so we wait. We’re very quiet and I’m not taking photos, but I am very, very cold again. Because the now two blankets that I've wrapped around me have done pretty much all they're going to do, which means that… I don't know. Like ten, fifteen minutes into our standoff with this rhino, with this two-ton, cantankerous, horned ninja tank with the super hearing, my teeth start doing this [teeth chatters].
I don't know how long we were there for. It could have been fifteen minutes, could have been twenty, half an hour, but we had no control over the situation. I was trying my best not to make any more noise.
It kind of reminded me of the very first time I'd been on safari several years before. We were watching -- again, out the side of an open-sided vehicle -- a cape buffalo. An aggressive animal with very powerful hearing. Our driver leans over to us and says [whispering], “This is a very dangerous animal. It has really, really good hearing so I need you all to be very, very quiet.”
And the passenger next to me leans over and says [yelling], “What did you say?” So we drove away really quickly.
But with the rhino, there was no driving away. It was blocking the way and so we had to wait. Eventually, it gave way. Took several steps back, and our driver takes this opportunity to try again to go around the herd. This time, all of them get up and walk away and they disappear into the bush to do whatever rhinos do at night. And we also disappear off to the bush into the other direction heading back to the lodge. Me, with a very grainy photo of a rhino in my camera, mild hypothermia setting in to my limbs, and also a giant smile on my face.
I don't remember being nervous or scared by this experience. It was one of the most incredible wildlife encounters, or really any encounter, in my life. For a start, I think it exemplifies how nature can very quickly turn from tedium to comedy to threat in a flash. But it also felt like a gift because these are incredible animals. There are only like twenty thousand white rhinos left in the wild, and we got to spend our time with six of them. And with this one animal in particular we got to take in the curve of its horn, the twitchiness of the ears, the texture of its skin, the way its breath was condensing on the cool night air.
I think our society turns us very easily into collectors, not just of material things but of experiences and photos and knowledge and memories. We’re always looking for the next thing to the extent that sometimes we forget about the thing that’s standing right there in front of us.
The wonderful thing about nature is that it sometimes gives us no choice but to do that. Whether through its beauty or its immensity or the danger it poses, it has a way of grabbing our attention and wresting it from our control. It forces us to abandon the desire to see everything and focus on seeing just the one thing, unless that thing is an impala.
So two days later, we are on the final drive of this safari. Against our better judgment, we decided to pursue a leopard which has disappeared around the bend in front of us. So our driver decides to climb up this inclined drive onto a plateau where you might be able to see the leopard looking down. As we get to the top of the incline, we see a very large elephant that’s foraging on a tree and, again, we try and skirt around it, which is a mistake because the elephant decides to charge us and its trunk is raised and it’s trumpeting like a demon and its ears are spread out and our driver whacks the jeep into reverse. Now, we’re going backwards, down the same incline we just drove up with this big elephant bearing down on top of us. The driver leans out the side of the jeep and he slams his hand against the door and the thwack stops the elephant dead in its tracks.
Now, we are stopped and it is stopped, and we are looking up at it and it is looking down on top of us with all its immensity. Again, I am not scared. I am not nervous. I take one surreptitious photo with my camera that has been set to silent, and I put it away and then I take in the rest of this incredible animal. And this time I am wearing a fucking coat.