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Baboons thrive in many different kinds of environment, across most of Namibia.
However, all of Namibia’s baboons belong to just one species: Papio cynocephalus ursinis, known as Chacma baboons, or Cape baboons.
Click here to discover more.
If you think that there are only two baboons in this post’s image, you are not looking closely enough!
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This post’s heroes are superbly adapted to life in a very demanding, arid environment.
Oryx gazella – known locally as “gemsbok”, but labelled as “South African oryx” by many non-African English-speakers – is Namibia’s heraldic beast.
It is the largest oryx species.
Gemsbok are remarkably water-efficient.
Few, if any, other mammals can survive for so long, “between drinks”.
They can also reach/withstand amazingly high body temperatures – temperatures that would prove fatal to other mammals. (this ability reduces water needs and energy expenditure).
The pictured individuals are doing it “very easy”, in a place that offers green grass and mostly-moderate temperatures.
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Absolutely nothing “artificial” is going on here, and you are indeed looking at one of the least-rainy places on our planet – a few kilometres in from the “Skeleton Coast”, on the Namib’s western edge.
Presumably/perhaps, there is a rock barrier below the dune on which I stood, at 10.24 am on 14 November 2022.
(dolerite “dikes” are a common landscape feature, above ground, in northern Namibia)
In any event, the “surprising” mini-forest in front of me could not survive on light and fog alone!
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For quite some time, in the distant past, the Hoarusib River must have carried a lot more water, a lot more often, and had much more erosive power.
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This post’s, the previous post’s, and the next post’s photos were all taken within the space of a very few minutes.
Their vantage points were not at all far apart.
This is a place where a very selective view can create a highly misleading impression.
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You are looking at a “succulent” which is highly prized by gardeners, worldwide.
Very probably, this wild, uncultivated one is an example of Cotyledon orbiculata, commonly known as “pig’s ear”.
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Some Namib-dwellers – plants and animals – look extremely tough, “hard-shelled”, “brutal”.
Others, however, have a surprisingly “delicate” appearance.
I have no idea of even the common name of the pictured example.
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This post and the next two in this series are devoted to striking examples of plants that have evolved/adapted to survive in the least-rainy part of the Namib Desert.
The featured image’s stark centre of attention is (I am almost sure) a particularly hardy member of the geranium family.
It is probably one of the “Sarcocaulons” – members of what was formerly the generally-recognised genus Sarcocaulon.
Since 1996 these plants are usually numbered as members of the genus Monsonia.
One species – which may or may not be the one pictured above – contains a highly flammable resin which persists even when the plant is “dead”…or “dead”-ish.
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A hunch about the “castles”…
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The Hoarusib is one of several ephemeral Namibian desert rivers that have generated so-called “sand castles”, or “clay castles”.
These extraordinary landforms’ origins and age are shrouded in mystery, speculation, and competing theories.
I am quite unable to offer a definitive explanation, other than to quote some good sense from Roger Swart:
…there is abundant evidence that the silts were deposited by high-energy flows, separated by times of calm……The most likely explanation for the deposits is therefore flash floods during a wet period, which would have brought down a heavy sediment load that was dumped when the energy of the river waned.
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