Letter 10: Getting your Minerals

As I am sure you've learned by now, there are several chemical elements that you need to grow properly and live a healthy life. For example, if you don't get enough iron, your blood won't be able to transport enough oxygen around your body. If you don't get enough calcium, your bones won't be strong. The actual amount of these things we need each day would amount to a tiny pile of dust, but we can't be healthy without them.

Ordinarily, a healthy diet includes enough of these "minerals", but just to be sure we get enough, nowadays our bread and milk and breakfast cereals are often "fortified" to add small amounts of these necessary minerals. And if you take vitamin pills, they likely contain minerals as well as vitamins. This is why I grew up to be taller than my mother and why the girls among you will probably grow up to be taller than your mothers; and you boys will grow up to be taller than either of your parents.

Other animals also need minerals to be healthy, just like us, but they have nobody fortifying their food for them, so they must find their minerals themselves.

One of the most interesting places we visited in Africa was this waterhole and "salt lick".
Our room at the lodge on the slopes of Mt. Kenya looked out onto this area. Animals came to it day and night to get water, but more importantly to eat the dusty soil around the waterhole, which their instincts told them is full of minerals that they need.

Waterhole and salt-lick
Mt. Kenya
(Click on any photo to enlarge it)

We saw buffalo and warthogs and Bushbucks like this one eating the dirt.

Bushbuck at salt-lick
Mt. Kenya

Elephants carefully sucked up the dirt in their trunks and transferred it to their mouths.

Elephants at salt-lick
Mt. Kenya

The area was kept lit at night, so we could sit on our balconies and watch the animals come to get their minerals. The lights attracted insects, of course, and the insects attracted Marsh Mongooses, which eat insects. The mongooses attracted Verreaux's Eagle-Owls, like this one. The owls flew back and forth all night trying to catch mongooses to eat.
The people at the lodge also put out scraps of meat to attract Large-spotted Genets. Though it may look like a cat, the Genet is actually a carnivorous mongoose.
It was fascinating to sit on our balcony and watch all the animals a short distance below us. I especially enjoyed being able to hear an elephant suck up water from the pool and splash it into his mouth. I could feel the rumble of his low-frequency calls to other elephants reverberating in my flesh.
The lodge has a man who watches the salt lick and waterhole all night and will wake guests to come see unusual animals. At dinner, a member of the staff came around and took our room numbers and asked which animals we would like to be wakened for. Lee and I asked to be wakened only if a leopard came. (Our guide told us that when he was younger the guides used to play jokes on one another by finding out another guide's room number and telling this man to wake the person in that room if a warthog or some other very common animal showed up.) No leopards came, but Lee and I stayed up way too late watching the scene below us.

Verreaux's Eagle-Owl
Lake Baringo

I see that I haven't yet shown you a picture of Lee, which I should do, because he's the one who took all the photographs I've been sending you. Here he is a few years ago in Peru, sitting on a sandbar in the Tambopata River (a tributary of the Amazon) watching a clay-lick, which is a cliff where macaws and parrots come each morning to eat the clay to get the minerals that they need.
This Scarlet Macaw circled down and landed on Lee's shoulder, hoping Lee might have a cracker to give it. When that hope was disappointed, it left, but it couldn't take off from Lee's shoulder, as his head was in the way of one of its wings, so instead it hopped up onto the top of his head and took flight from there, leaving claw marks on his head that needed a few weeks to heal.

Lee with Scarlet Macaw
Tambapota River, Peru

It's not always easy being a bird-watcher.

Aunt Melinda

One of the most interesting places we visited in Africa was this waterhole and "salt lick". Our room at the lodge on the slopes of Mt. Kenya looked out onto this area. Animals came to it day and night to get water, but more importantly to eat the dusty soil around the waterhole, which their instincts told them is full of minerals that they need.	Waterhole and salt-lick Mt. Kenya (Click on any photo to enlarge it)
We saw buffalo and warthogs and Bushbucks like this one eating the dirt.	Bushbuck at salt-lick Mt. Kenya
Elephants carefully sucked up the dirt in their trunks and transferred it to their mouths.	Elephants at salt-lick Mt. Kenya
The area was kept lit at night, so we could sit on our balconies and watch the animals come to get their minerals. The lights attracted insects, of course, and the insects attracted Marsh Mongooses, which eat insects. The mongooses attracted Verreaux's Eagle-Owls, like this one. The owls flew back and forth all night trying to catch mongooses to eat. The people at the lodge also put out scraps of meat to attract Large-spotted Genets. Though it may look like a cat, the Genet is actually a carnivorous mongoose. It was fascinating to sit on our balcony and watch all the animals a short distance below us. I especially enjoyed being able to hear an elephant suck up water from the pool and splash it into his mouth. I could feel the rumble of his low-frequency calls to other elephants reverberating in my flesh. The lodge has a man who watches the salt lick and waterhole all night and will wake guests to come see unusual animals. At dinner, a member of the staff came around and took our room numbers and asked which animals we would like to be wakened for. Lee and I asked to be wakened only if a leopard came. (Our guide told us that when he was younger the guides used to play jokes on one another by finding out another guide's room number and telling this man to wake the person in that room if a warthog or some other very common animal showed up.) No leopards came, but Lee and I stayed up way too late watching the scene below us.	Verreaux's Eagle-Owl Lake Baringo
I see that I haven't yet shown you a picture of Lee, which I should do, because he's the one who took all the photographs I've been sending you. Here he is a few years ago in Peru, sitting on a sandbar in the Tambopata River (a tributary of the Amazon) watching a clay-lick, which is a cliff where macaws and parrots come each morning to eat the clay to get the minerals that they need. This Scarlet Macaw circled down and landed on Lee's shoulder, hoping Lee might have a cracker to give it. When that hope was disappointed, it left, but it couldn't take off from Lee's shoulder, as his head was in the way of one of its wings, so instead it hopped up onto the top of his head and took flight from there, leaving claw marks on his head that needed a few weeks to heal.	Lee with Scarlet Macaw Tambapota River, Peru