Observing and learning more about sambar

In March 2022 I decided to do two things: shake the COVID-19 blues by travelling to India, and to spend time in India observing as many sambar as possible in a week.

I achieved both aims and learned a little more about sambar behavior in the process.

I spent six days in Panna National Park, Madya Pradesh.

The Park is renowned for tiger, leopard, sambar, bear, chinkara, four-horned antelope and chital.

Being a sambar tragic, my interests lay firmly in getting as many opportunities as I could to observe sambar.

I achieved this as evidenced by the 300-plus photos I took of sambar.

Of course, I was interested in seeing tiger and leopard and was fortunate to see both on several occasions.

But it was sambar that I focused on, much to the amusement of my naturalist guides and the drivers of my Suzuki long-wheel base four-wheel drive.

Their amusement stemmed from the fact that I was the first person they had met who only wanted to see sambar and was not concerned with seeing “the cats”.

What follows are some of the sambar photos I took.

Each photo is accompanied by some comments about what I observed.

I make these observations knowing that some of the behaviours I saw may not be seen in Australia or, if seen, would not be seen often.

However, before getting to the photos, I should provide some background on the environment.

Panna is in central India, and during my stay there the temperature hit the 40°C mark, and even a little higher.

It was a dry heat with no humidity.

Water was to be found in the river that bordered one side of the park and in many of the artificial watering holes.

The best times to see the sambar moving around was before 10 am and after 5 pm.

The heat also meant that lots of the trees had lost their foliage, so sightings of sambar were very clear.

The foliage is a combination of grassland and forest. The terrain is rocky, hilly and has three plateaus.

I visited all three plateaus.

Now to the photos and my observations.

I observed this magnificent stag in the evening just after it had stepped out of the wallow. Our vehicle had disturbed it. What is interesting about the stag is that he was still with his hinds and focused on breeding. This, I was told, is unusual because by March the stags have usually lost their antlers and are therefore not interested in breeding. I counted five hinds that he was with and noted that none of them were overly concerned with him being around. I watched him for about 20 minutes as he wandered with his hinds.

At one stage during his walk, I watched him build up momentum to bipedal to rub his orbital glands on a preaching tree. The seconds he took to build up to his bipedal were fascinating: walking to the tree, sniffing around it, looking up at the branch he was aiming for (almost as if he was gauging the distance) and then the bipedaling.

I also saw this stag in the late evening. Like many of the sambar in the park, he has shed quite a bit of his hair. It almost looks like he has mange. However, I know from my observations of sambar in India over the years, and discussions with naturalists, that sambar in central India will often lose much of their hair in summer. It is a form of moulting. While I have found sambar in Victoria on a couple of occasions with patchy hair, I have never seen it this bad.

I took this photo in the morning. The hind has a wood apple in her mouth. There are two matters to note in relation to this photo. First, wood apple is a favourite of sambar. Unfortunately, some sambar die with the fruit stuck in their jaws. A naturalist I spoke to told me that the wood apple gets stuck in the mouth because the sambar cannot spit it out. I watched this hind struggle to bite into the apple for about 15 minutes. Until I saw her spit the apple out, and pick it up again, I feared that she too might get it stuck in her mouth. Second, I watched a monkey drop the apple on the ground and the hind pick it up. An example of the relationship between the two animals.

This photo was taken in the morning and on the third plateau in the park. This plateau is quite some distance from the front gate of the park, so it does not get much traffic. Consequently, I noticed the sambar were more skittish and wary. Apart from the fact that I managed to squeeze three generations of sambar into this photo, the other point to note is the sore spot on the neck of each sambar. This sore spot is most interesting. Each naturalist seemed to have their own theory as to why the sambar have it, and when it weeps. The theories I heard included that it is another gland, that it occurs because of fighting, its occurrence is not natural, and it occurs to distract flies and other insects from bothering the sambar. An internet search provides this response:

On the ventral surface of the sambars neck there is a line of hair which is darker and less sleek than the surrounding pelage. This runs down the mid-line from the throat to the lower part of the neck. During the rut, which occurs from November to December, the hair falls and the skin sloughs off giving a circular area about an inch to two in diameter a bloody appearance. This area exudes a fluid and is commonly called the sore spot. There were conflicting opinions in the past as to the function and nature of the sore spot. It is now acknowledged, however, that due to the limited period of the year when it occurs and its widespread appearance among the animals it is in all probability a gland and the fact that it appears at the beginning of the rut suggest that the two are interlinked.

See: www.indiawilds.com/forums/showthread.php?1115-Sambar-s-Sore-Spot

I have seen sambar in Australia with a similar spot, but I have never seen one in India or in Australia with the sore spot weeping.

I end these brief observations with a photo of another excellent stag. I observed this stag in the morning, just before I watched a leopard move past him. He was unconcerned by the leopard’s movements; I suspect because the leopard was walking away from its kill and the sambar sensed that it was not hunting. I asked a naturalist who has a deep knowledge of sambar why this stag was rubbing his antlers when he should be without them. The naturalist explained that he has seen sambar doing this to force their antlers to fall. I watched a chital in hard antler doing the same.