348 W. H. PEARSALL 



human being to forty to fifty herbivore units, the human animals being 

 directly dependent on the herbivores for milk and blood (flesh is not eaten; 

 a cow can be blooded about once a month). Putting the matter in another 

 way, the stocking intensity used in the Masai pastoral areas, where there are 

 the best supphes of water and the most luxuriant vegetation, is somewhat 

 less than 80 cattle and 133 sheep or goats per square mile and this would 

 support between four and five Masai. (Compare this with the 300 small 

 sheep per square mile which is the typical stocking intensity on a sheep walk 

 in Highland Britain.) 



In the 2,000 square miles given over mainly to plains game, the available 

 estimates, probably more approximate, suggest about 100,000 wildebeest, 

 about 55,000 zebras and some 175,000 (Thomson's) gazelles. Each of these 

 figures could vary by 10,000. The wildebeest and zebra weigh about as 

 much or rather more than Masai cattle, the gazelles rather less than the 

 domestic sheep or goats. These figures, however, take no account of the 

 heavy game in the area, buffalo and giraffe (to say nothing of rhinoceros and 

 elephants), each unit of which would weigh perhaps three times as much as 

 one cattle unit, nor do they estimate the many other types of large buck, 

 some of which are numerous, e.g. topi, impala, hartebeest, and others less 

 common. I thought that collectively these did not much exceed zebra in 

 number, so that we can be as accurate as our knowledge will allow, but 

 probably underestimating if we say that all these additional species would 

 not exceed another 50,000 individuals of an average size of about that of a 

 zebra. We thus arrive at a total of about 200,000 large and possibly 180,000 

 small herbivores, that is about 100 large and 90 small herbivores per square 

 mile. As the gazelles are smaller and hghter than Masai sheep, the total 

 weight of stock produced is evidently not greatly different from the 80 cattle 

 and 133 sheep and goats per square mile of the Masai economy. Although 

 the latter is based on what looks to be more fertile and better-watered country 

 and is an over- rather than an underestimate. Both types of stock, of course, 

 use the Serengeti grasslands in the wet season. 



I confess that when I first arrived at this type of comparison from very 

 rough field estimates I was somewhat surprised. It means that the natural 

 eco-system on the poorer part of the area is as biologically productive as the 

 human pastoral system in the better regions. Moreover, while on the whole 

 the Masai have been extending their area of occupation in recent years, the 

 numbers of cattle in the Masai territory have not varied greatly. They have 

 been approximately constant in the six years for which figures are available 

 since mass inoculation for rinderpest was introduced. At any rate I think it 

 must be asked why with more intensive occupation and the better habitats, 

 the man-controlled pastoral system does not manage to produce a much 



