Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Sykes' male with tail wound
This male was heard (at first) being pursued by another through a Karura-side Muthaiga garden along the Gitathuru River. He was vocalising continuously and seemed to be in quite a bit of distress. No wonder. Could the other male have inflicted something so serious to his tail? Or might he have survived a crowned eagle attack? Male Sykes have been recently seen holding off a hunting crowned with rushes, battings, and branch-shaking. Perhaps the eagle had enough. Any views?
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Can't begin to imagine how such an injury could have happened... Seems fairly superficial thank goodness
ReplyDeleteOn 30 Sep 2016, at 08:02, Harvey Croze wrote:
ReplyDeleteHi, Simon,
No, not amputated, more like skinned. Here’s a reduced version of the pic. Hopefully won’t clog your bandwidth.
Apart from the odd way what I guess is the proximal section of the tail skin is left hanging in the middle of the skinned tail, there are no other significant signs of violence visible on the fellow: he was moving and climbing just fine. We’ve lost at least one Sykes and one young bushbuck to the electric fence, which is probably about all, since it’s patrolled daily. Getting caught in a wire or the fork of tree and struggling until skinned, as a couple of colleagues have suggested, is certainly possible, but would it leave that odd configuration. Can’t imagine that a fight with another male would leave such damage to the tail and no other wounds. Is it not possible that an eagle may have pounced a shade late and latched onto the tail, and was left only with a skin sample as the money escaped?
Best, Harvey
On 29 Sep 2016, at 16:33, Simon Thomsett wrote:
Harvey
Guessing picture of Sykes monkey with no or amputated tail. Can't open. Poor coverage here.
Severed limbs and or tail isn't the Crowned Eagle MO. Power lines, snares and other monkeys much more likely.
In India saw lots of monkeys with severed limbs due to electrocution, and know that ours too get well fried thanks to some of the worlds worst possible transmission line configurations.
Simon