A noisy business: listening to rock hyraxes on Ongava

Wildlife produces a lot of sound. From insects to mammals, including fish and birds, auditory communication –signals emitted through the acoustic channel – is widespread in the animal kingdom. Bioacoustics studies aim to unravel the mystery of the sounds Read more

Feasts of Grasses

Updated: Jul 25, 2022

ORC has enjoyed visits from several eminent scientists and conservationists in the past year: Paul Maritz (conservationist and software developer), Pasquale Scaturro (explorer extraordinaire), Rich Roberts (New England Biolabs geneticist and Nobel Laureate), Brian Huntley Read more

The early bird gets the worm, but the early termite gets the freezer…

It’s high biomass season here at Ongava which means ORC’s Bio-Indicator Project, funded by Nedbank’s Go-Green Fund, is in full swing. The project has been developed to sample across the ecosystem annually to capture long term information on environmental Read more

The only Empress moth in the bush…

All living organisms go through stages of growth and reproduction. The emperor moth does its growing and reproducing in remarkable ways. The egg hatches into a caterpillar in the summer in southern Africa, developing into a strong worm, hungry Read more

Sunday shopping done differently

The mopane worm (Gonimbrasia belina) is an unusual edible little critter found in parts of southern Africa. Its life cycle is particularly interesting. After hatching from an egg, the caterpillar feeds on mopane tree (Colophospermum mopane Read more