The news is out! My neighbour confirmed today that our nearby colony of dassies (Rock Hyrax) have produced the first of the summer litters. Late this afternoon I went to investigate and sure enough found among the rocks evidence of the furry, bouncing bundles. A week ago, I suspected the happy event must be imminent after spotting “Fat Mama”, the charismatic alpha female munching my flowering arctotis daisies. She’d waddled slowly across the patio, telltale petals protruding from her mouth looking heavily pregnant. Between one to six young are born after a seven and half months gestation period, and this year “Fat Mama” has four. Some of the other females have also produced and so far there are eleven in all. Their numbers during the year decreased through predation by lynx; let’s hope it’s a good batch to make up for that loss.
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Nature on the Edge 
They are so cute!
🙂 they’re remarkably tough little creatures too! They’re born ‘ready to go’, miniature adults. Although they suckle for a couple of months, within a few days of birth they are trying out a nibble here and there of vegetation ‘solids’. Love that their closest relatives are elephant and manatee!
Oh wow these dassies looks lovely 🙂 nice picture!
Hope the lynx won’t catch them.
Thanks! They’re really skittish – their best defense is fleeing into the small crack and crevasses in the rocks. So far the male is doing a pretty hawkish job sentry duty, one warning squawk and they vanish into thin air. But lynx are crafty predators…. and so the cycle of life goes!
Adorable!
I must have been living under a rock for my entire life, as I have never heard of this precious animal species! I love them and am eager to learn more about them! Thanks for sharing such amazing and endearing images!
lisa/z from ecuador
They’re not that widely recognised, main distribution is Africa, some Middle East countries… fascinating little creatures, going to be posting more on them 🙂
i look forward to the new posts; it will be great to see more of those precious creatures!
z
An unknown animal too me, but the new arrivals are cute.
Updates coming to get you more aquainted! Cute, and playful too. They have a silly hour at dusk where they hop like fleas over the rocks. ..