The Big Five might get all the attention - but game viewing goes way beyond lions, leopards and large grey animals.

Travel with me to Botswana to chat with Grant Reed, co-founder of Letaka Safaris and veteran safari guide who has spent decades exploring the bush, training guides, and reminding guests that the “Small Five,” the “Ugly Five,” and even the “Sexy Five” deserve their spotlight too.

André and Grant unpack:

• Why the “Big Five” started as a hunting term (and why guides now wince when they hear it)
• What happens when you stop chasing sightings and start chasing experiences
• Why birdwatching can be addictive,  and how a “little brown job” might just steal your heart
• The magic of mobile tented safaris in Botswana, where you travel lightly and leave only footprints

It’s a conversation that celebrates the whole ecosystem: from black mambas gliding through the grass to lilac-breasted rollers painting the sky.

Because in the end, Africa’s beauty isn’t measured by the size of the animal, but by the stories you uncover when you slow down, listen, and let the bush reveal itself.

Deutsch: Du kannst diesen Podcast auch auf Deutsch hören: “Africa with André auf Deutsch”

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The Big Five: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_game

Letaka Safaris: https://www.letakasafaris.com/

Marabou Stork: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marabou_stork

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Sound credits: uppbeat.io/ and https://pixabay.com/ 

More than just the Big Five: Discovering the Magic of the Small, the Ugly and the Sexy

Welcome to a new episode of Africa with André, where we celebrate Africa - One Story at a Time.

The smaller animals, the insects, the birds, the plants, and in particular, how many of them rely on each other, or have some kind of symbiotic relationship, is really amazing.

We're gonna chat about this with Grant Reed from Letaka Safaris in Botswana.

Hi, Grant, and welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:01] André: Tell us about yourself. How did you get into guiding and what were you doing before you started Letaka?

So growing up, my father was very involved in the Wildlife Society and in theological and Birding societies and used to lead weekend walks. So, I think the first time I went on trail with my dad, I was about five years old. Um, I'd walk at the back feeling very important and, yeah, that was the entrance into guiding and the start of my passion.

[00:01:59] Grant: A hundred percent. I think it's in the DNA and i I really hope it continues with my boys.

[00:02:17] Grant: Well, yeah, when you invited me onto the show, my response was, uh, I enjoy the, the topic of the Big Five or the, uh, the phrase of the Big Five as much as a double tequila shot. It's something which has been vastly overused. And you know, like everything, it's not all bad. It is a hook.

It's something that people discuss and it's a reason that people travel. nobody really knows who coined the phrase, it comes from the late 19th century. When it was basically referred to the five most dangerous animals to hunt. Back then, there were no photographic safaris.

Buffalo, which have got an incredible reputation for aggression, um, and for being super dangerous when you're on foot and then leopard in line.

[00:03:48] Grant: Well, yeah, the warning is often a, a grunt, which comes simultaneously with a charge. So

[00:03:55] Grant: Yeah, it's like somebody giving you a warning shot straight between the eyes.

In terms of game viewing, obviously the buffalo is really the odd one out it's really just a big angry black cow. Whereas you've got cheetah and wild dog and all these other really, you know, sort of super exciting animals to see.

Those that don't know anything about the animals initially, are surprised that a giraffe or a hippo is not part of the Big Five. But I suppose that's because it doesn't make a trophy for the wall as easily as, or as beautiful as the other traditional Big Fives from the hunting days.

Absolutely. And we see it, you know, we also see it a lot, people come over and actually super high on their list is giraffe and zebra, because these are really charismatic animals that fill all the story books. People have known about them since they were kids. And you know, we as guides are often very guilty of glossing over these animals because they're common. we can also sometimes be guilty of trying to show people what we think they want to see rather than what they would like to see.

[00:04:59] Grant: I love leopard. There's nothing more rewarding as a guide than tracking a leopard, finding tracks early in the morning, thinking through where it's going, what it's doing, you know, following the tracks and you know, listening to alarm calls and, and actually finding a leopard and there is something spectacular about them.

And then on the other hand, wild dog, which are completely different. You really don't track wild dogs. You get lucky. You turn left, you turn right, the dogs are on the move. Um, you know, if an animal is hunting at 50 Ks an hour over five kilometres, you know, it's not something you're gonna get on the tracks.

Watching them and the social interaction, um, is, is phenomenal. So, out of the, the animals that people really wanna see, those are the two that really give me a kick.

But, going deeper into it, honey badgers and, caracal and animals like that I find a lot more interesting because they are more difficult to find, and really fantastic to watch.

Then there are also the Little Five where part of the names are named after the Big Five, like the elephant Shrew because it has a, a long snout. There's a buffalo weaver, the leopard tortoise, the buffalo weaver is a bird.

Um, the rhino beetle and an ant lion.

I remember this being told about the Ant Lion for the first time and I was absolutely fascinated by this. And I mean, you can see them everywhere, but I ended up sitting in a game lodge for a good 45 minutes an hour just watching a 50 centimetre by 50 centimetre square piece of land where um, basically what happens in the big world is happening in, on small.

And there I was watching these, watching basically everything just in the microcosmos. And that was fascinating for me.

I'm a very keen birder and I've kept a life list for southern Africa of all the birds I've seen, and a lot of my friends are, fairly critical of this whole, you know, we call them twitches, people who got to find a specific bird. And they, they're in the numbers game.

For me, the most incredible thing is, I set my sights on a bird, like a stripe fluff tail or something like that. And I'll get up at four o'clock in the morning and I'll go into some montane grassland, and I'll be sitting there playing the call, looking, observing, and then out of nowhere, a serval comes or you know, a peregrine falcon will fly over or something else and nine times out of 10, when you get to the point where you are looking for quite rare birds, you won't get your target, but you'll spend four or five hours out there. Whereas if you didn't have that reason to get out there, you would've glossed over that opportunity and just been lying in bed going, "oh, it's a bit cold outside, there's not really much to do".

So, you know, it's that little hook. You're going out looking for something. You've done the Big Five. Now you move into the Little Five and it gives you that opportunity to start talking a little bit about ecology and a little bit about what you spoke about in the beginning, the social interactions, symbiotic relationships between a lot of these animals and that's, a big part of the evolution of people.

That then becomes the intricate web, that just becomes more and more fascinating, and the further you go down there that you start to realize that you've actually got more questions and answers.

[00:08:42] Grant: Absolutely, yeah.

I took my partner to on a game walk a couple of years ago, and the only thing we saw on three hour was a giraffe. We literally saw nothing else. And I was so afraid that they would not like it and that they'd think it was a waste of time.

But he told me that he found it amazing 'cause for the first time he felt the vulnerability that humans generally don't have in this world. And that was for him, a very moving moment.

How do you make what I'm gonna call a boring game, drive more interesting?

And I suppose you use some of that in your guide training as well.

It's very difficult, um, for your guests to express the value that they got out of talking about a termite mound and understanding, the fascination of that whole world down there. I think where some guides get it right and, and some don't, is, is how you draw people into that conversation.

We often see with younger guides, you know, there'll be nothing going on, they'll stop and they'll just climb up and start talking about a leadwood tree, without the whole lead in.

It's how you get people into that topic and making people also understand that you're not taking away from, your game drive time. You haven't stopped looking for lion and leopard, et cetera. Sometimes it's really important, to stop and have that silent time, getting people to think about things before you start talking about them.

Create that curiosity.

If you create curiosity amongst your guests that they are starting to think about stuff, then they become receptive to information. It's a matter of reading the faces. Guides will often break out into this long soliloquy of the termite mount and you can actually just see the faces of the people, you know, four sentences in, you just know it's the wrong crowd.

And that's okay, you can't force people to be interested.

So, you keep throwing out a hook with different bait and see, when you get a nibble. And, and try and get people into it.

I always, really try quite hard, with the big and obvious birds, and then showing them some of the relatives and seeing if I can get a little bit of a birding thing going, because that's often a really good way, to get people to evolve from the whole Big Five and looking for wildlife, into looking at other things.

What would you put on your Ugly Five list?

[00:11:39] André: which is not quite fair though. Hyena is cute.

So, she has male gen… like basically what looks externally like male genitalia. and she gives birth through the same canal that she, urinates through. it is fascinating the whole exposure to these, male hormones, while they're in the womb, that basically develops these incredibly androgynous females that are super dominant over the males.

So, you know, once you get stuck into the fascination of hyenas, it's very hard to see them as part of the ugly five. But yeah, I can kind of see where people are coming from.

Of course, the vultures just get lumped in there together, which is a little bit harsh. You look at a white-headed vulture, to me it's actually quite a beautiful bird. You look at a leopard face, vulture, I kinda kind of see where you're coming from, um, and then Marabou storks.

[00:13:02] Grant: No, that is definitely top of the list, and I'm not gonna try and justify anything with the Marabou Stork. The Blue Wildebeest looks like it was put together by a committee that were, uh, you know, high on marijuana.

Then, uh, the warthog, you know, I think Disney had a lot to do with that, with, uh, Pumba, and a lot of people see warthogs as a lot more cute than they used to, but if you sit and look at a photograph of a warthog, it seems to deserve its place. Um, so yeah, that is the traditional ugly five.

What's your opinion, André? Would you stick anything else in the Ugly Five?

[00:13:44] Grant: Yeah, it's tough because, you know, you develop a lot of respect for all of these animals. So, to lump anything into the Ugly Five does become counterintuitive when you get to know the animals.

But again, it's something to go out and game drive. Okay, cool, we've seen the Big Five. Let's see if we can tick off the Ugly Five. And it's just a reason to stay out that little bit longer and hope you bump into something really exciting that's going to create a once in a lifetime experience.

The Sexy Five or Beautiful Five is, in Botswana, we typically refer to the, the Lilac Breasted Roller, Cheetah, uh, great Kudu, which is an interesting one. I actually find the female great Kudu more beautiful than the male. Um, you know, with those big dough eyes and those massive ears. Um, African wild dog definitely deserves its place there.

And then giraffe. But it's so open to interpretation. The moment you throw in lilac breasted roller, what about Narina trogon, et cetera. But the lilac breasted roller is the really achievable, year-round resident. It's got that beautiful electric blue when it takes off. So, you know, if it's not necessarily the most beautiful bird in Botswana or through the Savannah ecosystems of Southern Africa.

It's one that you can show people reliably across the Savannah landscapes of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia, and all the way up into East Africa. So, you know, for that reason, it, uh, earns its place.

Uh, would I change that for a Saddle-billed Stork? Yes, I would.

My list had the zebra, the blue crane, the giraffe, the fish eagle, and the White-faced Scops Owl weekend.

[00:15:35] André: Yeah, I was also surprised, again, how birdy of it is when I read it up now.

[00:15:57] André: Yeah. I like owls generally, so, but that's a really beautiful one.

And then just back to hyenas, we came across a hyena, I think it's a den, you call it, right? Uh, we, so we came across Hyena Den, and we did what I love doing on game drive. we just sat there for 20 minutes and just watched the little ones running around and that's when I learned for the first time how the whole babysitting thing works in the hyena clan, that's basically the females go hunting and one of them stays at home every day to kind of, run the nursery, so to speak. Have I got that right?

[00:16:30] André: I found that fascinating.

Very often the, the Alpha female will allow the Beta to, to mate. Um, but often those pups are killed because they're not needed. But that does mean you've got a second female, producing milk to be able to feed.

Within a few weeks, the rest of the pack will be bringing back food, which is pre chewed, and swallowed. They'll be regurgitating that.

In times when there's a huge amount of food, they sometimes don't kill the Beta. So, if the pack is looking to, to grow its size, uh, the, the Beta pups will survive.

With the hyenas, with the wild dogs, with all of these social animals, when you start to scratch below the surface, that's where the magic lies. I kind of feel sorry for people that come to Botswana and do a self-drive. You know, as much as there's a lot to be said for the adventure of going through a water crossing on your own and, kind of finding your way from camp to camp, what you miss out on is peeling the layers of the onion, and getting to understand what's happening out there.

They're two very different experiences and I guess they shouldn't even be compared, but I think to go to any place without, a guide to, you know, open up the whole ecological interactions and the social interactions of these animals, is quite sad.

If you take a rental car, and you go and drive through the Kruger, but even then, you would sit at a water hole for two hours or three hours and just see what happens there, in the morning and the evening.

But I never want to miss out on getting all of that information from a guide who puts it all together basically.

I always, make a big distinction between when animals approach me and they choose to expose themselves to me and how close they can come, rather than me coming in on a sighting, finding them and imposing my presence on them.

Very often, you'll end up with a change of behaviour when you really want to appreciate animals' behaviour. You need to spend time there and sometimes that's where the guided experience actually can be a little bit, um, of a compromise. Because if you are on a vehicle with a lot of other people, um, and there's a lot of pressure on the guide to find the Big Five, then you don't actually get to sit and watch the behaviour.

With the first 10, 15 minutes you arrive at a sighting, it is an interruption to those animals. They all look up, they all change their behaviour, and then slowly they settle down. And it's only really with patient tourists and a good guide that can really explain to people the value of breaking through that area of boredom to then appreciate what the animals are doing, and then see them to start interacting with each other, getting ready to hunt.

The true magic only happens once those animals sort of blank you out and you become part of the background noise.

[00:19:55] Grant: Absolutely, it's become really obvious. There's a lot of people wanting to change the pace, a lot of people wanting to get back to basics, get out on foot, uh, get away from the, you know, the, the plunge pools and spas.

A lot of people are actually wanting to come to Africa for an experience. And if you have, everything that you have at home, on Safari, it's not really an experience.

An experience is something that, takes you outside of your comfort zone, um, and you are doing something different and experiencing something slightly unnerving.

You related it to, your friends and partners, just being humbled by feeling part of the food chain, uh, that, that in itself for a lot of people is something they don't really put their finger on, but, it really makes them feel alive because we are allowed to become so arrogant, you know, we are so well protected in the world that we live in.

That's what experiences are made of is that feeling of being humbled, that feeling of feeling slightly insecure. those are the things that people really remember.

You're a big birder. How would you get me interested in birding?

The moment you see that it's got a conical shaped bill, you know it's a seed eater, we're going to the back of the book, it's in this group and, and empowering people to be able to do that. Then when they get to camp, they take their bino's. We've always got that period in the middle of the day, where things are a little bit quiet. People sit with their bino's and suddenly they're like, "oh, that's got a conical shaped bill, that's gonna be at the back of the book".

Instead of having to go through 900 birds of Southern Africa, suddenly you're going through 150 birds. Um, and it's a bit do-able. And then they'll go to the guide before afternoon drive and say, "Hey, I saw this bird, I think it was a weaver, da da da".

And that's, it's a slippery slope, André, because once become a birder, you can't un bird yourself. So, uh, be careful.

[00:22:30] Grant: Absolutely

[00:22:37] Grant: stunning, isn't it?

[00:22:47] Grant: Interesting question. Mobile tented safaris is fairly unique to Botswana, um, in terms of the fact that our camps really are mobile. In East Africa they talk about mobile safaris, but they generally follow the migration. They're in one place for, between three to six months, some of them. Um, so they're not moving all the time.

The terms are a little bit fluid, but in terms of the Botswana mobile safari, the concept is that you take everything with you.

We are in the semi luxury non-participation mobile safari. And that sounds like an absolute mouthful, but I'll get to that distinction now.

But basically, we have a team that goes ahead. They'll set up camp, it's, you know, a nice walk-ins Meru style tent. With lots of space and en-suite shower, en suite toilet, there's a chef that does three course meals. It's all fully inclusive with really nice South African wines, all the, booze. So basically, our guests don't do anything.

And the distinction between that and the lodge safari is firstly, it's small group travel, so our maximum group size is seven. I think the greatest, selling point for the mobile safari to me, is having the same people for the 10-day safari, um, because people really relax with each other.

André, I know you did a lot of educational or familiarization trips, as some people call them. In day one, day two of the educational everything's a little bit stiff, you don't know what jokes you can or can't crack, you don't know people's backgrounds.

Day three, day four is where the magic happens, and people really relax around each other. And the lodges as, as comfortable as they are, and as amazing as the cuisine and everything is, you never achieve that on those safaris, you know. You're changing guides every three days. So, there's that little bit of interruption in the guided experience.

But from a guest point of view, you know, today with the Joneses. Tomorrow you with the Smiths, you on day nine of Safari, the Smiths on day one or two. So, the guide has to go back to the whole impala spiel. Um, so the, there isn't that continuity, and which leads me into the biggest point as having the same guide from start to finish.

If you really want to delve into the safari experience and understand the ecological interactions when a guide can refer to on day nine, what you saw on day two and how this ties into that, they've just got this really incredible blank canvas that over 10 days they can paint this really incredible picture.

That's the way I think mobile's come into their own. The solitude of being out in a wilderness campsite with nobody else around you. There's no kitchen area, there's no generators, there's no staff area, you are literally together on this tiny little wilderness site. And when we leave, there's nothing but footprints. So, you know, for the animals, we are a temporary interruption.

So, mobiles in Botswana, just as a broad overview, basically range from where you put up your own tent and, help the guide cook the meals, super budget, all the way through to what we do, which is the semi luxury. And then there are the super luxury mobiles.

We at Letaka Safaris put ourselves, where we are in the market, is we are pretty much as comfortable as you can be, where you can still move the entire camp within a day, which means we don't have to break it up with a lodge or something else in between, so you have that continuity of every day with the same staff.

[00:26:23] Grant: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, a lot of people are really tempted when they look at a, an African itinerary, it's like, okay, well we want do Konica, we want to do the panhandle, we wanna do Khwai, we wanna do this, we wanna do that. And people jam so much in there and they look at this itinerary and it's, it's, it's really attractive because it's covering all of these aspects.

But actually, you've got one afternoon activity in the panhandle on a boat, and then the next morning you've got a full day traveling. basically, you need to have a look at the ratio of time that you're spending traveling from one place to another, and the amount of time.

We are all about experiences. And I like that about the mobile because even when you're moving from site A to site B, because we don't do long trips, the moving day is part of the experience.

You're not worried about what time do we have to be at the airstrip with packing.

You don't have to worry about transfer times You just arrive at the next place and, and everything happens.

"Okay. The dogs are there, I've seen these leopard tracks here, I've heard the lions calling in the south". By the end of day two, I've got a really good picture. And day three is when I can do my best work, as a guide. So, we built our itineraries around, what Brent and I experienced.

We haven't spoken about Brent, sorry, he's my brother and my business partner. We wanted to create the best possible experiences, and that's for both of us the best recipe.

If I think how many times you, go to your second lodge and you're on a vehicle with people that have arrived in Africa for the first time, and then you have to start way back with the basic information again, and you never really go very far in that sense.

And the nice thing with mobile safaris is it does tend to select out the precious traveller. You know, the people that want to be pampered. I call them the fashion travellers.

You know, the people that have never been to Africa, and they've gotta kind of go and do it. Um, and because of what we do and how we do it, we tend to get very down to earth, um, real people and very much like-minded people.

I like to finish my episodes off with questions about favourites. What is your favourite spot in Botswana and why?

[00:29:44] André: Absolutely. If you look at the entire animal kingdom, which is your favourite animal?

[00:29:50] André: The Black Mamba. Why?

And everything just stands in awe of watching this mamba move, um, through the wilderness.

I have always loved snakes. I dunno, it's just a genetic impairment that I was born with. But there is no snake like a black mamba. You know, even for myself who is not afraid of snakes, I see a black mamba and the hairs on the back of your neck raise a little bit, and there's just this visceral sense of deep, deep, profound respect.

[00:30:36] Grant: An average good size Black Mamba is three meters. Anything over four meters is considered exceptional.

[00:30:53] Grant: I think my advice to people would be, don't rush past the tranquillity. Take time for the tranquil moments. Take time to listen. It's so often those times when I'm on a drive and I just switch off and you're listening; you're in tune with what is happening. Very often that's when you will hear a read buck alarming at a leopard, and had the engine been running, you would've missed the sighting So don't be in that mindset where you need to chase around.

Open yourself up and make the distinction between a sighting and an experience, because they're two very different things.

You know, people will tick a leopard off their list because a leopard darted across the road and they, "yeah, yeah we saw a leopard", but actually a leopard experiences where you sit with a leopard for an hour and you watch licking the cubs or, grooming herself and getting ready, you know, starting a hunt. Um, there's a massive difference between seeing and experiencing, rather than chasing sighting, after sighting.

Thank you, Grant, this was amazing, thank you so, so much for, for this conversation today.

[00:32:37] André: What animals would you put on your list of the Ugly Five and the Sexy Five? I'd love to hear from you.

Today we spoke about various animals and birds and about guiding with guests. We also learned about mobile tented safaris, and we have the first snake on the lists of guests favourite animals.

I hope that Grant and I could inspire you to want to learn about all the different animals you can see and hear when you go on safari, and not just the Big Five.

Being in the bush on safari is so beautiful and humbling. There really is a lot to see and experience.

Send me your questions and comments by email to podcast at Africa with André and see you next time.