October has arrived, which means it is time to turn off the lights, lock the doors and take a closer look at what has been moving through Okonjima after dark. You do not need a haunted house to find something unsettling around here. Our camera traps have captured animals staring directly into the lens, emerging from dark burrows, appearing from the shadows and, in one particularly memorable case, getting far too close for comfort.
Of course, there are no monsters hiding in the Okonjima bush. Just real animals going about their nightly lives. But put them in the right frame, under the right light, and even the most familiar species can look as though they belong in a horror film. So, for October’s edition of While You Were Sleeping, we are swapping wildlife documentaries for something a little more cinematic.
Welcome to The Okonjima Horror Picture Show.
Dim the lights. Roll the cameras.
The sequence has all the ingredients of a good found-footage horror film. The camera is seemingly abandoned in the darkness, the subject is far too close, and the increasingly intimate close-ups leave you wondering exactly what is going on. Only this time, there is no lost film crew. There is a porcupine.
The first frame shows it approaching the camera. Then comes an extreme close-up of its eye, glowing white in the infrared. Next, its ear fills the frame. The angles are so close and oddly personal that it almost looks as though the porcupine itself has discovered the camera and is investigating it from behind the lens.
It is less The Blair Witch Project and more The Blair Porcupine Project.
And those close-ups give us a rather good look at two important senses. Porcupines have relatively small eyes, but their large ears are highly mobile and help them detect sounds around them, an important advantage for a nocturnal animal moving through dense vegetation. Like many nocturnal mammals, their eyes are also adapted to low-light conditions. The bright white reflection in this image is caused by the camera’s infrared illumination reflecting from a layer behind the retina called the tapetum lucidum, which helps make better use of available light.
So perhaps this porcupine was not trying to make a horror film after all. It may have been trying to work out what that strange object was doing in its way. Nothing supernatural happened, though. Probably.
The first frame looks like the beginning of a small investigation. A leopard cub has stopped beside a narrow opening in the ground and is peering inside, apparently determined to find out what is hiding below. It takes a closer look, considers the situation, and then seems to decide there is nothing worth investigating. So the cub moves on.
Good call. Because in the very next frame, a pair of bright white eyes appears from the darkness. A brown hyena. By the final frame, its head has emerged from the opening, revealing that the cub had been looking into a rather more occupied hole than it realised.
Brown hyenas are largely nocturnal and make use of dens and sheltered sites for resting and raising young. Dens can be tucked away in the landscape, making them easy to overlook until something emerges from the darkness. Their eyes also reflect the infrared light from the camera, creating that unmistakable, white-eyed appearance in night-time photographs.
We cannot know whether this was an active den, a temporary shelter or simply a place the hyena happened to be using at the time. But the timing of these images is almost too perfect. The leopard cub came looking for something. Apparently, it decided there was nothing there. The camera disagreed. And then the hole looked back.
At first, it is difficult to tell what you are looking at. Deep inside a burrow, the camera catches a strange, almost alien shape. The animal is so far back in the darkness that its familiar outline has disappeared. Then it moves forward. A head emerges. The scales become visible. The shape begins to make sense. A pangolin.
Temminck’s ground pangolins are secretive, primarily nocturnal mammals that spend much of their time sheltered in burrows. Their appearance can seem almost prehistoric, with overlapping scales covering the body and a heavily protected tail. Those scales are made from keratin, the same structural protein found in human hair and fingernails. When threatened, a pangolin can curl into a tight ball, leaving its vulnerable underside protected behind a wall of scales.
This one did not need to defend itself from anything. It simply had to make its entrance. A little Night at the Museum, Okonjima style.
Spotted Hyena.
Spotted Hyena.
Spotted Hyena.
Apparently, the third time really is the charm. Spotted hyenas are among the more elusive carnivores at Okonjima. They are rarely seen by residents and researchers and, for many people, hearing one is considerably more likely than actually seeing one.
So when this Spotted Hyena appeared in front of a camera trap, it felt like a very Okonjima version of Beetlejuice. And this time, saying the name three times actually worked.
Spotted hyenas are highly social carnivores that live in complex groups called clans. Their diet is broad, and although they are capable hunters, they also make use of carrion. They have an impressive range of vocalisations, including the famous whoop, which functions as a long-distance contact call. Their distinctive vocal repertoire is one reason a hyena can sometimes announce its presence long before anyone manages to see it. This one skipped the soundtrack. It went straight for a starring role.
Some animals are frightening because they look frightening. Others are frightening because you almost never see them. The serval belongs firmly in the second category. This elusive cat has made a rare appearance on our camera traps, briefly stepping into view before disappearing back into the landscape.
Servals are specialised hunters of small prey, with small mammals making up the vast majority of their diet. They also take birds, frogs, reptiles and insects. Their large ears help them locate prey by sound, while their long legs allow them to move through vegetation and launch powerful pounces when they pinpoint something beneath the grass. They are particularly well suited to hunting in areas where visibility is limited. A serval can stand almost completely still, listening carefully before moving towards its prey, and has even been recorded leaping to catch birds.
That combination of long legs, large ears and a slender body makes the serval instantly recognisable once you get a good look at one. The problem is getting that good look. For a species this elusive, a camera trap may be one of the few witnesses. For a few seconds, the ghost was caught on camera.
Something has happened. We just do not know what. This aardwolf was photographed with the long mane of hair along its back standing dramatically on end, giving the normally understated animal a completely different appearance.
Aardwolves are small, nocturnal members of the hyena family, but their lifestyle is very different from that of their larger relatives. They are specialised termite eaters, feeding almost exclusively on termites and using a sticky tongue to collect them. They are generally solitary and rely heavily on their senses of smell and hearing while foraging at night.
When an aardwolf detects an intruder or feels threatened, it can erect the mane along its back. The sudden increase in apparent size is part of its defensive display and can make the animal look considerably more formidable than it really is. So, what caused this particular reaction? That is the mystery. The camera caught the response. Unfortunately, it did not catch the culprit.
Alfred Hitchcock might have approved of this particular scene. A Spotted Eagle-Owl sits at the leopard bait tree with a mouse firmly in its beak, caught in the unmistakable moment between predator and prey.
Spotted Eagle-Owls are primarily nocturnal hunters with a remarkably varied diet. They take insects, rodents, shrews, birds, reptiles and amphibians, with the exact menu depending on what is available in their surroundings. The bait tree may have provided an opportunity to investigate an area where food was available, but whatever brought this owl to the camera, the mouse was clearly the prize.
Unlike the birds in Hitchcock’s famous film, this one has no interest in terrorising the humans. It only wants dinner. And perhaps that is the most unsettling thing about wildlife. Sometimes there is no horror story. Just a predator doing exactly what it evolved to do.
And that brings us to the end of this month’s feature. No ghosts were confirmed. No monsters were found. No camera traps were harmed in the making of this production.
Just seven very real animals, going about their very real lives after dark.
A porcupine came far too close. A brown hyena appeared from the darkness. A pangolin emerged from its burrow looking like something from another age. A Spotted Hyena finally answered the call, a serval briefly stepped out of the shadows, an aardwolf raised its hackles at something unseen, and an owl arrived with dinner.
Wildlife does not need special effects to be fascinating. Sometimes all it needs is darkness, a camera trap and a perfectly timed frame. The Okonjima Horror Picture Show has finished for the night. But the cameras are still rolling.
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When night falls at Okonjima, a hidden world emerges. Through AfriCat’s extensive camera trap network, While You Were Sleeping reveals rare nocturnal moments that shape conservation research and deepen our understanding of wildlife after dark.
When night falls at Okonjima, a hidden world emerges. Through AfriCat’s extensive camera trap network, While You Were Sleeping reveals rare nocturnal moments that shape conservation research and deepen our understanding of wildlife after dark.
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