Fantastic beasts and where to find them

Fantastic beasts and where to find them – In your own backyard

There are fantastic beasts in our own backyards! This is what I learn at  Bannerghatta’s badger, A science research and education field station at ‘Big Barn’ farmhouse in Kesserguppe village, right next to the Bannerghatta national park.

The field station runs projects in partnership with the government of Karnataka, Asian Nature Conservation foundation and  A Rocha India , jointly working towards resolving human – animal conflict, particularly to  ensure conservation of Asian elephants which thrive in this region. Roshan, a young man who volunteers here after college hours guides us. I am on a visit here thanks to Pencil Jammers , a community of artists and art – lovers, that organizes sketching events on weekends in Bangalore. This time, it is all about understanding the elephant and its ecosystem.

Roshan calls the elephant the ‘sumo ninja’ or ‘the bandit of the night’ because of the sneaky way in which elephants have raided the farmers’ crops in the surrounding villages. He takes us a little way ahead in the farm and we see an entire wall shattered to bits. Apparently, caused by an elephant.

There are signs of elephant dung but no sign of the sumo ninja himself. For all its weight, the elephant treads gently and Roshan tells me of many a field scientist surprised by an elephant somewhere close while all day was spent hunting for a sign of it. Reclusive and shy animals, they can be quite reckless at the sight of a sugarcane field, particularly young bulls out to prove their mettle.

We don’t see elephants, but we certainly learn some interesting things – that female elephants don’t have tusks, that elephant dung is an enormous treasure trove of information and you can gauge the height of the elephant, what it has eaten, whether it is stressed, at what period of time it had come to the farm, what route it took to enter and exit, all by those heaps of dung that are fallen on the ground! Apparently, male elephants can judge from the dung of the female if she is in heat. We see dried dung with a healthy- looking tamarind plant growing out of it. This sparked an idea for a story and illustration that was published in Gobar times green literature special. You can read it here ( This land is nobody's land)

We did see some other fascinating creatures, like the ant- lion, the signature spider, the wolf spiders and the ant- mimic spider.  Ant-lion larvae are cunning creatures, they dig pits and filter out the mud to extract the smoothest, silkiest sand and lie in wait for ants to fall in. The poor ants try in vain to get out of the pit until the Ant- lion eats them up. The Signature spider is a unique fellow. He builds a web with beautiful zigzag patterns on them. The male builds something called a companion web around the female’s web for mating, after which the female promptly eats him up. So much for companionship! The wolf spiders are, well, lone wolves of the insect world. They love solitude, have excellent eyesight and do not spin webs. The ant mimic spider is a master of disguise. It looks like an ant in shape and color. It is an interesting little predator and can apparently jump to the exact spot that is required to catch the prey. A real wolf in sheep’s clothing, that one.