A blessing and a curse, the elephant tusk is actually an elongated incisor tooth. Elephants use their tusks for many things, including fending off predators or other elephants, foraging for food, stripping bark from trees and for moving larger objects out of the way. Unfortunately, humans have many uses for  tusks too, which has led to wide scale poaching over the years and the near eradication of the species before stricter laws were enforced. Elephants have been so decimated by poaching, in fact, that the gene that produces larger tusks has almost been bred out of the species. As a result, today’s elephants have smaller tusks than they did a hundred years ago.

Another lion cub from the Masai Mara. This little guy was really going at that branch, trying to gnaw it in half. In the process, he/she gave us a good look at the underside of those big paws. There were about nine cubs in the pride, several, like this one, only a month old.

There was a reason why the writers of the Lion King insisted that one of the main characters be a warthog. Ugly little guys, but they have lots of personality. Especially the babies, like this guy here from the Masai Mara.

These two three-month old lion cubs took a quick break from jumping on top of each other, to do their best Gene Simmons impersonation for the camera. I captured this one very early on a rainy morning in Laikipia, Kenya.

This little baboon had just jumped out of its mother’s arms and started to play in the rain. When a termite flew by, the baboon couldn’t help but try to grab it.

The short rains in Kenya also herald the onset of the impala rutting season. These are competing males — the one giving chase is defending his territory and right to mate.

This topi and her calf were running from a hyena. It wasn’t much of a chase as the hyena quickly got tired and gave up. Topi were the most conspicuous animals we saw in the Masai Mara and every mother seemed to have a baby with her.

I know I don’t usually post on Saturdays but I need to do a test because many subscribers to this blog haven’t been getting emails. I think I have finally figured it out, but who knows.

This is a black backed jackal, nipping at a lion’s tail. The lion had a wildebeest kill and was taking her sweet time with it. When jackals begin to get impatient waiting, they’ll sometimes try to annoy the lion to get it to leave. There were two jackals and they were walking circles around the lion, yapping. This guy got bold enough to sneak up and nip the lion’s tail. The tactic didn’t work and the jackals eventually gave up and left.

These three cheetah brothers were marking their territory — going from tree to tree — as a herd of nervous zebras looked. We would eventually see a chase — the cheetahs coming up on the losing end as they were unable to penetrate a wall of adult zebras boxing in their young.

For the Valentine’s edition of photo of the day, I figured I’d try to find the most romantic pair of creatures in my collection of images — an endeavor which led me to this pair of undeniably sexy ground hornbills. In Fact, we watched as the male hornbill, in an act of pure chivalry, shared a delicious dung beetle with the female before grooming.