Dassies..even their name is adorable. Also called hyraxes, they can be found at a few picnic tables in some of Johannesburg’s and Cape Town’s parks. They can be garden pests, chewing on succulents best left alone. Visit the upper cable station in Cape Town’s Table Mountain and you will see some of them climbing about among the rocks. There is no other animal quite like the hyrax or dassie. They look like fat woodchucks or rabbits with rounded ears and long whiskers. The word “dassie” is from the Old Dutch dasje, meaning “badger”. Only three species survive today, the tree hyrax (Dendrohyrax dorsalis), the bush hyrax (Heterohyraxbrucei)
A yellow spotted hyrax shows off its unusual clawed feet with rubber-like soles to help maintain a grip on rock surfaces.
A young tree hyrax clings to a branch
which includes a subspecies known as the yellow-spotted hyrax, and the rock hyrax, Procaviacapensis, the species most commonly found in South Africa. In the prehistoric past the hyraxes/dassies and their relatives conquered both land and freshwater. Algeria is the site of fossils of the oldest known hyrax ancestors. The Fayum province in Egypt is a rich fossil site and has yielded very important mammal fossils, including early monkeys and large hyrax-like animals that are strange to our modern eyes. One of these was the 1.6 meter long Titanohyrax, a squat animal having its eyes placed high on the skull, strongly suggesting it lived in rivers and swamps much in the manner of a hippopotamus. Another was the pony sized Megalohyrax. It may have been as fast as a pony due to its long slender legs. Thirty-five million years ago the hyraxes were the most important small to medium sized browsers and grazers throughout the African continent.
Found in the Middle East and Africa and nowhere else, hyraxes weigh between two and five kilograms at maturity. They were familiar to authors of the Old Testament daysand were called conies. Hyraxes still live among the white bluffs at the Sea of Galileeand in the wilderness country of Lebanon. The name hyrax is Greek for “shrew mouse”.It is no wonder there was confusion in the ancient days about just what a hyrax was. The sharp front teeth face forward in the mouth like the sharp incisors of a rabbit, but the upper teeth correspond to the tusks of the hyrax’s relative, the elephant. The gestation period for hyraxes/dassies is seven months, far longer than any rabbit or rodent, a clue for the famed French anatomist Baron Georges Cuvier back in 1800 that this ball of fluff was neither rodent nor rabbit. He worked out the hyrax’s relationship to the elephants and sea cows, finding them to be a member of an early branch off the same family tree. Cuvier understood the concept of the “law of correlation of parts” in animal life. Many years before we discovered mitochondrial DNA and could use DNA to trace relationships among animal life, he was correct about most animal relationships, basing them solely on teeth, jaws, skull anatomy, spinal structures and foot anatomy.
Hyraxes in South Africa are classified as species of “least concern”, meaning that their numbers are sufficiently large at this time. The animals are prized by hunters for their woolly fur which is used to make rugs.
Little Pati-Pati the hyrax introduced a good part of the world to her species through her association with Joy and George Adamson and the book Born Free, the Story of Elsa, also titled Born Free, A Lioness of Two Worlds. Pati-Pati has the honor of being one of the very fewrock hyrax characters to be prominently featured in a movie, this one being the multiple award winning motion picture version of the book which was originally released in 1960. Pati-Pati was originally a Kenyan rock hyrax, found alone as an orphaned baby by game warden George Adamson and his artist wife Joy. She was quite attached to them and was their pet for more than six years prior to the arrival of the famous cubs that would be the focus of Born Free, the Story of Elsa. Pati-Pati, alas, had a drinking problem. If she was allowed to have access to a bottle of spirits the resourceful animal would extract the cork and drink the contents. “As this was very bad for Pati’s health, not to mention her morale, we took every precaution to prevent any indulgence in whiskey or gin.” Joy Adamson wrote in Born Free. The real life Pati-Pati “adopted” tiny lion cubs Joy and George Adamson took home with them when the mother had to be killed. Normally Pati-Pati was jealous of all the other animals in the Adamson household and hated for visitors to pay attention to them, so Joy was very touched by her concern for the cubs.
Hyraxes/dassies are browsers of soft leaves as well as grazers of a variety of grasses and bulbs. They can digest high fiber foods but do not ruminate. On chilly mornings and nights they huddle together for warmth because they have a somewhat primitive body temperature regulation system. They live in large family groups of about twenty or so individuals. The behaviour of wild rock hyraxes and tree hyraxes is generally mild and retiring,but if cornered these animals will defend themselves. Well known zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson and his animal collecting party came upon two male tree hyraxes in West Africa fighting furiously on a rock in the 1930s. He related this incident in his 1937 book Animal Treasure. The men broke up the fight and when they were capturing one male it bit the leg of his assistant Afa and caused him a good deal of pain. Sanderson formed the opinion that these animals were not as their reputation made them to be… but he certainly caught this hyrax at a bad time!
South Africa’s rock hyraxes sing! Like the songs of birds and whales, the songs of rock hyraxes can go on for more than a minute. They also emit a variety of repetitive snorts and what sounds like burps or belches!For such small and unassuming creatures, they certainly are full of surprises.