The Lion, the Elephant, and the Dung Beetle

Six men sat by a fire underneath the stars in Hwange National Park. Their only protection from the wilderness was a small wire enclosure that surrounded a small picnic site with only the most basic of amenities. They were naturalists, two Swedes, an American, an Australian, one from Switzerland, and Tinashe their local guide. They navigated the park in their land cruiser by day, game driving, observing the animals, as well as collecting samples, and though they had every right to spend their nights at the nearby Somalisa Lodge and Resort, they decided to take this one night to “rough it”. They were well stocked with cooked chicken, boiled taro, hard-boiled eggs, and a cooler filled with local beer. Spirits were high.

The days in the park are peaceful. The sun shines bright and hot on the woodland savanna and keeps most animals and insects silent and away from the heat of the day. It is during the night that the forests come alive with the croaking of frogs and other reptiles, the roar of hunting lions, and the buzzing of various species of insects. The fire crackled as they laid back in the deck chairs they had brought along, chugging away on lager, laughing and making as much of a racket as all of the other beasts in the forest. That evening, Sven and Erik, professors at the University of Uppsala, occasionally chuckled aside in their native Swedish clinking their bottles together, once forcing Erik to lose his grip on his and spilling half of it in the dirt. Tyler was a grad student from Austin, Texas who had never tried taro before and was lapping it up. Ethan was originally from Gold Coast but had been living the last 12 years in Melbourne where he worked for the university in the plant and animal sciences department. Claude, from Basel, managed to monopolize the chicken which kept him quiet most of the evening. A native French speaker, he was also timid in this setting because he felt his aptitude at speaking English lacked proficiency. Between French, German, Italian, the local Shona, Bemba and Swahili, he spoke the most languages of anyone there but, as all were well-respected experts in their fields and using English as their lingua franca, he thought it prudent to stay mostly silent lest the others confuse his rudimentary English for ignorance. Tinashe, kept one eye on the fire and the other on the shadows in the night while using one hand to eat his dinner and keeping one hand on his rifle. Of the six of them, he was still at work and could not let his guard down but he trusted himself and his discipline to stay sober.

As naturalists, each had their own area of focus but their shared interests in ecosystems, flora, fauna, and animal behaviour, meant that the conversation revolved mainly around those topics. Tyler had come to Hwange to monitor the local population of impala and its breeding patterns and as he was yet to defend his thesis and earn his doctorate degree, and he was unable to contain his excitement at being out in the field. He could barely contain his enthusiasm and as soon as the conversation segued into other areas he was constantly finding ways to bring it full circle and relate it to his studies.

“Tyler, do you know why they call impalas the McDonald’s of the savanna?” Ethan asked.

“Do people call them that?” Tyler replied with muted astonishment.

“They sure do, son” Ethan said. “You can see it on their arses.”

“You mean the ‘M’-shaped black colouring on their bums?”

“That’s right. That and the fact that they make for a quick and tasty meal.”

Sven and Erik had both already polished off more than a few bottles and enjoyed the way Ethan, the elder statesman of the group, teased Tyler by cutting his enthusiasm down a notch.

“The lions have it good here I think,” Sven said. “I have seen many impalas.”

“We may need to propose a paper outlining the need for culling the impala population lest the lions begin to suffer from obesity. It’s important that they exercise and work for their food,” Erik added cheekily.

“The lions have it good everywhere,” Ethan added. “I’d love to be a lion. The ladies go out and do all the hunting so you barely have to work up a sweat. Then, when it’s that time of their cycle, you shag fifty times a day for the good of the species. Otherwise, you just lay out under a tree all day completely fagged out from shagging and nothing else. Sounds like the life if you ask me.”

“You’re not concerned about poachers and game hunters?” Tyler asked.

“There’s that, I’ll give you,” Ethan said, “but awareness and appreciation for lion populations is growing every day. They are, as they say, kings of the jungle.”

“That’s right,” Erik said, “they’re protected. The impalas, not as much I think.”

“No Ethan is right,” Sven added. “It’s good to be a lion. I would be a lion too.”

Ethan and the Swedes laughed and started to cajole poor Tyler because of his love affair with impalas and eventually forced him to concede that the life of a male lion was indeed preferred. Tyler kept wanting to offer an alternative but his brain felt somehow stuck and unable to create a compelling argument. Yes, he loved the impalas, but there was a strong and hard-fought dominance hierarchy, plus the constant threat from the populations of various predators – lions being just one of the many – and it was undoubtedly the reason for their notoriously elusive and skittish behaviour.

“What about you, mate?” Ethan cried out trying to get Claude’s attention. “You’re awfully quiet. Any thoughts?”

“You mean, of all of the animals in Hwange, which is the life I would like for myself?” Claude asked shyly under his thick French accent.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Ethan said.

“And this is assuming I can not just choose to be who I am? I must choose from these other animals?”

“That would kind of be the point of playing along, yeah.”

“Come on Claude,” Erik chimed in, “you must have been listening this whole time. What do you think? Is Ethan right? Or can a case be made maybe for Tyler’s impalas?”

“Well you know, this is a big question. It says a lot about what we want from life and about what we think is important. I think life here in the park is difficult for all of the animals, and I would not like to be an impala that is for sure. I think I would like to be an elephant. Yes, a male elephant.”

“An elephant, really?” Ethan said with some surprise. “Many of the elephants around here don’t make it to their first birthday. The perimeters of the watering holes are like graveyards for baby elephants who couldn’t complete the journey just to get water.”

“This is true,” Claude replied. “But, you know, where I come from people believe that childhood should be an easy and carefree time of life, but in nature, it is never like this. In nature, childhood is always the most difficult period. It’s almost, how you might say, a gamble. And an easy childhood doesn’t always make a well-adjusted adult, you know what I mean? But the ones who survive, especially the elephants, live a long time. The oldest elephants in this park are older even than you Ethan. And they are smart, they know this forest better than any of the other animals here. And as for their life, well when the boys are old enough they leave the breeding herd and live closely with a wise old elephant, a master, so they can learn how to live a solitary life. And when they understand the ways of the forest, they do not need to rely on a herd or, like the lion, a pride for their well-being. The male elephant is one of, if not the only, animal that can survive in the wilderness completely on his own.”

“Well done,” Ethan conceded grudgingly. “Not for me, I mean give me the lion’s life any day, but a well-made case all the same.”

“Oh! And as for the, how you say, the good of the species side of things, as you were referring to for the lion, in the case of the elephant a solitary male can enter a breeding herd and do what he pleases with any female that’s in estrous. But they are so heavy that they have to get the job done in mere seconds or their weight could permanently injure the female, so the expectation with regard to, shall we say, satisfying the female is low. As a man who has been a bachelor all his life, I prefer when female expectations are similarly low. I’m sure you know what I’m referring to, yes, monsieur Ethan?”

Claude offered a not-so-subtle wink and a grin in Ethan’s direction which made the Swedes laugh uproariously. Their cackling echoed into the night but was silenced suddenly by the sound of breaking twigs. Tinashe, with his rifle at the ready, sprang from his chair and stared out toward the line of black on black of the forest and the night sky. Tyler’s heart was in his chest. He had seen every beast that roamed the savannah before, but always during the day and from the comfort and safety of the land cruiser. The lions could be heard breathing just outside the enclosure and their eyes twinkled, reflecting the faint light of the fire. The hunt was on and it was nearby. Ethan, Tyler, Claude and the Swedes sat motionless so as not to draw attention. They were confident that Tinashe understood the forest and would protect them, but there was always a lingering sense of what if today is the day that things go wrong?

Without adjusting his gaze from the forest, Tinashe spoke with slow and deliberate words:

“You know what animal I would be if I could be any animal in the forest? I would be the dung beetle. I like Claude’s answer, but the life of a male elephant is a lonely life and this is not the life for me. When you talk about the life of a male lion, for a lion this is fine, but it is not the life for a real man. God gave the male dung beetle, and only the males, wings to fly. God gave the male dung beetle wings to fly so that he could fly all across the savanna looking for dung. When he finds a great big pile, he begins to roll it. He rolls it and rolls it for days and days. And why does he do this? He does it for the female who cannot fly. Then, if he has made her happy, she lays her eggs in the dung and together they bury it in the earth until their babies hatch. They are the only lovers the other will have in their whole lives. When we talk about the for the good of the species, the male dung beetle works and works and works so hard his whole life for his female and for his future children. But he’s not done. Through his work, burying dung in the earth he makes the savanna a cleaner place for all of the other animals. Every male dung beetle is a hero, not just to his own species, but to all species that cross this patch of Earth. We may not recognize one single beetle from the rest, but as a species, they work so that the rest of us, the elephant and the lion included, can enjoy the lives that they have lived. If I live well, maybe this is how my children will remember me and be reminded of how to never stop working for the ones you love and that that is how we make the world a better place.”