Episode 70: Field Notes - At the Watering Hole (GRAPHIC - Warning)

Hyenas aren't scavengers. They're one of the most effective predators on the planet, and their genius is not strength — it's separation.

Anyone who has run a business, a family, a team, or a country has watched a version of this play out. Most of us just haven't seen it done with teeth.

If you're a dentist and looking for more dental specific content, I have another podcast called, The Sovereign Dentist. I'd love to see you there. 

More can also be found on my YouTube channel. 

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to The Sovereign Guide. I'm your host, Alistair MacDonald. Let's get started

Speaker 0:08

In the winter of 1995, I was, uh, operating a multi-week safari out of an area called Makololo, which is on the western border of Zimbabwe and Botswana. It was nested inside an area that was, uh, Kalahari sands. The Kalahari sands blew in from, uh, the, the Namib and, and Kalahari Desert in Botswana into what is now Zimbabwe during the Pleistocene period. And these soils were white and, uh, very porous. They were terrible for trees and so forth. And, uh, but what it created was the sense of being in a white savanna, but with grasslands and shrubs and palm trees. It was, it's the most beautiful place. One of the most beautiful places I've ever, ever spent time, and I've spent a lot of time there. And, uh, I was staying at this tent at safari camps, extremely remote. It was about three and a half hours from the nearest telephone. Uh, we didn't have any sort of comms with the outside world and would be stationed there for many weeks. Of course, the consequences were high. There was no roads, there was no infrastructure. You just figured it out as you went along. Took multiple weeks worth of food and, and went from there. And in the middle of the night, one night, from where we had our camp set up, there was a water hole, or what we call in Zimbabwe a pan. This shallow, circular, kind of, uh, dry water... Excuse me, water hole that was no more than about, uh, maybe mid-thigh deep for the average person. And we're all in camp about to go to bed one night at 10:00, and we just heard this furious roar and battle coming from the watering hole that was probably about 100 meters, 150 meters out in front of us. Now, with nothing but the cover of the stars, we couldn't really see it too clearly. Uh, we couldn't see it over that distance. And so I immediately got my clients into my open vehicle, the Jeep, and we headed down there. I took out my spotlight, on which I had, uh, a kind of one of those infrared lens covers so that we could view the situation without necessarily, you know, torturing any of the animals' eyes. You know, a big million candle power spotlight can really disrupt the, the, uh, the experience. And as we got there, we discovered that there was a, uh, lioness, a large lioness, and the pride that lived in this area, there was a pride of three lionesses and one seriously alpha male black-maned lion. And there at the water hole- Was a lioness in the waterhole with a young, uh, buffalo calf that she had killed or had been killed, and she had dragged it into the waterhole because she was surrounded by hyenas, five different hyenas. We tend to think of hyenas as scavengers. hyenas actually are some of the most successful predators on the continent. Certainly, they're scavengers, but they're killing machines, and they are, with the right pack... You'll see where I'm going with this story. Uh, with the right size volume of pack, they are incredibly brave. They are fearless, and they'll take on anything. And they had this lioness encircled around this small waterhole. She was in the center, and they were trying to rip this buffalo away from her. It was just one of her. I don't know what had happened to the other lionesses. When we first got there, they weren't on the scene, and there was no sign of the male lion. These hyenas were in the water with her and fighting. And because they surrounded her, one would engage by biting her backside, and one of the others would start pulling the, this dead buffalo calf out of the waterhole. And this went on with roaring and splashing. And there's blood. You could see they'd torn a chunk of flesh out of her hindquarter. She would turn on these hyenas. As soon as she did, she would lose the kill that she had. And this went, but it was a phenomenal experience. And we're sitting there under the African dark with the spotlight on, and then we noticed these two lionesses come in. These lionesses came in, tried to join her, tried to help out. One of them got into the waterhole with her, and the other got separated. Very quickly, these hyenas were so good at separating the power, uh, concentration. Wherever power was concentrated, they would separate them, and then each lioness had to look out for themselves, which is to say the hyenas thrived when they could create a, decentralized situation, from which so they didn't have to fight five against five. They were always going two on one, four on one, et cetera. This went on for probably 45 minutes, and we sat there in awe under the African stars, watching this incredible scene unfold in front of us, complete with all of the sounds of screaming and roaring and tearing of flesh and splashing of water, which had become bloody because of this buffalo carcass that had been torn almost to shreds And as I sat there, I was wondering how this was gonna go because this alpha male that had been around this pride forever was nowhere to be seen. At one point, I turned off the light, and once your eyes of course adjust, the whiteness of the African, of the Kalahari sand started capturing the reflection of the stars and the, the burgeoning moonlight. And it was like we could all see in the dark. It was phenomenal. And then we could see these lionesses out there. And sure enough, as I turned my lamp on, we heard this roar that if you had ears, that roar was gonna turn your stomach and give you goosebumps. And out of the left side came this giant enraged black ma- black-maned male lion, and he tore into that scene like a weapon arriving in a playground. He came straight into the water hole, went exactly for the lead hyena. He could s- tell exactly which... The hyenas are matriarchal s- uh, societies. The females are larger than the males, and they're run by a dominant female, a very interesting kind of social infrastructure. He knew exactly who he was going for. The two of them got into a war in this, right in the water hole in front of us. As she tried to turn and fight him, the others came around. He was fighting all five hyenas at once, but he was not for a moment distracted about his prey. Not for a second did he turn to the one biting him and give it all of his energy. He was focused on this lead female, and he wasn't gonna look anywhere else. She backed out. The other four hyenas circled around him. He literally tore straight through them and chased her out of the pan. We're watching this whole thing unfold with this infrared, this, like, ul- ultra, this red lens that I've got, happening within 20 feet of my vehicle. The hyena ran up and grabbed her by the back, her tail end, and absolutely crushed this lead hyena's spine. Crushed it right in front of us. She let out this screaming, screaming sound, instantly paralyzed in her back end. He then turned around as she was trying to drag herself with just her front two legs working, and ran back into the pan and destroyed another two hyenas with exactly the same move. Paralyzed one of them and broke the other's neck i- in a matter of minutes. It was carnage at a level I had never seen in my life. The craziest thing was he knew exactly who to go after, in what order, and that what he had done was enough. He literally, like a house cat with a mouse that it doesn't care enough to kill, catches, releases, catches, releases, paralyzed that alpha female and let her drag herself to die in the bush The trippiest part of this whole experience was when he entered the scene, the roar that he let out had all of the hyenas turn and bolt. What am I saying? They knew him by his arrival. They knew him by his reputation. They knew him by what he would tolerate, and they ran for their lives, but they weren't quick enough. They weren't quick enough Never forget that scene. I had so many of those in my life, but it was one of the most powerful, visceral experiences I've ever had of when true authority, when the arrival of true authority is preceded by its reputation of what it will not tolerate what it will not tolerate I can't help but think that this is the one version, one version, uh, less blood, less fangs, less screaming, uh, less death of the type of power that one might aspire to. Just a little less blood, little less murder, but an equivalent weight of reputation, an equivalent level of power. Talk about an ability to affect outcomes

Speaker 2 9:38

That's it for this episode. Thanks for being here. Hey, there's only two things that you have in your life, your time and your attention. That you've given both to me for these few minutes of today means

9:49

everything. Cheers.