99 Fun Facts About Safari

The word 'safari' entered English in the 1800s from which East African language?

Swahili 'safari' simply means a journey, any journey at all, and traces back to Arabic 'safar'; explorer Richard Burton carried the word into English around 1860.

Which five animals make up the safari 'Big Five'?

Lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo became such a national emblem that South Africa put one on each of its rand banknotes in the 1990s; the rhino slot covers both the black and white species.

Africa's Big Five earned that name as the five animals that were what?

Hardest to hunt on foot: big-game hunters coined the term for their five most dangerous quarry, and the safari tourist trade later adopted it wholesale.

The Serengeti's name is believed to derive from a Maasai word usually interpreted as meaning what?

Endless plains is the gloss guidebooks give for a Maasai word, siringet, yet the word is said to be missing from Maa dictionaries, so the famous translation may be more legend than linguistics.

Which South African reserve, first protected in 1898, became the country's first national park in 1926?

Kruger began as the Sabi Game Reserve, set up in 1898 because hunters were emptying the Lowveld of big game, and took President Paul Kruger's name when it became a national park.

Which small bird rides on buffalo, rhinos and giraffes, picking ticks from their hides?

Oxpecker pairs look like the perfect cleaning service, but they also peck at their hosts' wounds to drink blood, so researchers now think the relationship is partly parasitic.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana is unusual among deltas because its river does what?

Never reaches the sea: the Okavango spills into a tectonic trough in the Kalahari, fans out across the sand and simply evaporates or soaks away, leaving a vast green oasis in a desert.

The Okavango's annual flood originates from summer rains in the highlands of which country?

Angola's highlands catch the summer rains, but the water takes months to creep south, so the delta floods at the height of Botswana's dry winter, just when wildlife needs it most.

Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania holds what geological distinction?

World's largest intact, unfilled caldera: a giant volcano erupted and collapsed on itself two to three million years ago, leaving walls 600 metres high around a floor of about 260 square kilometres.

Which famous Leakey family hominin site lies within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area?

Olduvai Gorge is where Mary Leakey spotted a skull about 1.8 million years old in 1959; its massive jaw and grinding teeth earned it the nickname Nutcracker Man.

What does the name Etosha, Namibia's famous national park, mean in Oshindonga?

Great White Place is the usual translation of Etosha, named for the vast mineral pan, dry and dazzling for most of the year, that covers nearly a quarter of the park.

Etosha was first proclaimed a game reserve in 1907 under which colonial administration?

German South-West Africa's governor proclaimed the reserve, and it then ran all the way to the Skeleton Coast; later boundary changes cut it to a fraction of that size.

Which Kenyan reserve do the Great Migration's wildebeest reach each year from Tanzania?

Masai Mara is the northern end of the circuit: around July the wildebeest pour in from the Serengeti in search of fresh grass, then turn back south around October.

The fastest land animal's claws differ from other cats' claws in what way?

They never fully retract: the blunt, exposed claws dig into the ground like the cleats on a sprinter's shoes, giving the cat grip as it accelerates and swerves after prey.

The dark 'tear streaks' running from the eyes to the mouth are unique to which safari cat?

Cheetah tear streaks run from the inner corner of each eye to the mouth and are thought to cut the sun's glare, a help to a cat that hunts by day.

What are the closest living relatives of the hippopotamus?

Whales and dolphins are the hippo's closest living kin: DNA studies show the two lines split about 55 million years ago, which puts a hippo nearer to a humpback than to the pigs it resembles.

The red secretion on a hippo's skin, nicknamed 'blood sweat', actually functions as what?

A natural sunscreen: the secretion, neither blood nor sweat, contains the red and orange pigments hipposudoric and norhipposudoric acid, which absorb ultraviolet light and also inhibit bacteria.

A feral population of hippos in South America descends from animals kept by which man?

Pablo Escobar kept four hippos at his Hacienda Nápoles estate; after his death in 1993 they were left behind, escaped, and multiplied along Colombia's Magdalena river basin.

How do a giraffe's neck bones compare with a human's?

Same count, far longer: a giraffe has seven neck vertebrae just as we do, but each can be over 25 cm long. Pumping blood up that neck takes a heart weighing about 11 kg.

Why is a giraffe's long tongue thought to be so dark, almost black?

To protect it against sunburn is the usual explanation: the dark pigment on the exposed front of the tongue is thought to shield it during hours of browsing in full sun.

The African bush elephant carries its calf for about how long before giving birth?

22 months, nearly two years, is the longest pregnancy of any mammal; the calf arrives weighing around 100 kg, and its mother will give birth only once every few years.

An African elephant's trunk ends in what?

Two fingers: the finger-like tips of an African elephant's trunk work together to pluck small food. The Asian elephant manages with a single finger at the end of its trunk.

Which hypothesis for zebra stripes is most strongly supported by the evidence?

They deter biting flies is the best-supported idea: Tim Caro's 2014 comparative study tied striping to tsetse and horsefly ranges, and later experiments showed flies failing to land on striped coats.

The last captive quagga died in which city's zoo in 1883?

Amsterdam's Artis zoo held the last quagga, a mare that died in August 1883. Nobody realised she was the last of her kind, perhaps because people then used 'quagga' for any zebra.

The name 'wildebeest' comes from which language, meaning 'wild beast'?

Dutch gave the name, but 'beest' meant cattle in South African Dutch, so the 'wild beast' was really wild cattle. Its other name, gnu, is thought to come from a Khoisan word.

Spotted hyena society is unusual among mammals for what reason?

Females dominate the males: they are larger and more aggressive, and even a low-ranking female generally outranks a high-ranking male.

Despite their dog-like build, hyenas are more closely related to which animals?

Cats and civets: hyenas sit on the cat-like branch of the carnivores, and their dog-like build is convergent evolution, the result of running prey down on open ground and catching it with the jaws.

A group of lions, the most social of wild cats, is called what?

A pride is the lion's group: typically several related lionesses, their cubs and a coalition of one to a few adult males; the females do most of the hunting together.

Outside Africa, wild lions survive only in and around which Indian national park?

Gir Forest in Gujarat holds the last wild Asiatic lions; they survived because the local Nawab kept the forest as his private hunting ground, and from that remnant they have recovered to several hundred.

The two man-eating lions of Tsavo, which attacked railway workers in 1898, lacked what?

Manes were missing on both Tsavo males, as on many lions there; railway engineer John Henry Patterson shot them, used the skins as floor rugs for some 25 years, then sold them to Chicago's Field Museum.

The African wild dog's scientific name Lycaon pictus refers to its coat and means roughly what?

Painted wolf: Latin pictus means painted, after the blotchy black, tan and white coat. No two dogs are marked alike, so researchers can tell every member of a pack apart on sight.

At a kill, which members of an African wild dog pack are allowed to eat first?

The pups eat first while the adults stand back. Hunters returning to the den also bring up meat for the young, their mother and any sick or injured dog that could not join the chase.

Which swollen-trunked African tree, nicknamed the upside-down tree, can live for some 2,000 years?

Baobab: radiocarbon dating put Zimbabwe's Panke baobab at about 2,450 years when it died in 2011. Since 2005 most of the oldest known baobabs have died or partly collapsed, and nobody is sure why.

The meerkat of the Kalahari is a small member of which family?

Mongoose: the meerkat, Suricata suricatta, is a small social member of the family Herpestidae; groups post a sentry while the rest dig for beetles, scorpions and larvae.

Which former US president's 1909 safari collected specimens for the Smithsonian?

Theodore Roosevelt set out three weeks after leaving office, taking his 19-year-old son Kermit. The haul ran to thousands of animals, and the museum's naturalists needed eight years to catalogue it.

Which long-legged African bird of prey hunts snakes on foot, killing them with kicks?

Secretarybird: it walks the grassland and stamps on a snake's head until it stops moving. One trained male hit a force plate with five times its own body weight, each kick landing in about 15 milliseconds.

Which American author turned his own East African safari into 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'?

Ernest Hemingway hunted in East Africa in 1933-34. The trip fed this 1936 short story, set on a big-game safari, and the non-fiction Green Hills of Africa.

Which mountain across the Tanzanian border forms the backdrop to Kenya's Amboseli National Park?

Kilimanjaro rises just over the border in Tanzania, behind Amboseli's swamps. The elephants in the foreground are among the best studied anywhere: researchers have followed the same families since 1972.

Newborn wildebeest calves can do what within minutes of birth?

Stand and move with the herd: a calf is on its feet about six minutes after birth. Most cows calve within the same few weeks, so predators are swamped and far more calves get through.

The 'king' variety of the fastest land animal differs from the ordinary form in what way?

A blotched, striped coat: the spots merge into blotches and dark stripes along the spine. It was once named as a separate species, but the cause is one recessive gene, the same one behind blotched tabby cats.

The hippopotamus belongs to which order of mammals, alongside pigs, deer and cattle?

Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates) includes the hippo, which bears its weight on four toes per foot, while the rhino, with three toes, sits among the odd-toed Perissodactyla.

A black panther in Africa is a melanistic form of which safari animal?

Leopard: in Africa and Asia a black panther is a melanistic leopard, the dark coat coming from a recessive allele with the rosettes faintly visible beneath; in the Americas the term means a jaguar.

Where does the rosette-coated big cat typically stash a large kill to keep it from scavengers?

Up a tree: the cat hauls carcasses heavier than itself into the branches, out of reach of lions and hyenas, a feat made possible by its powerful neck and shoulders.

What term describes the fused horn bases that shield the forehead of a male Cape buffalo?

The boss is the solid shield where a bull's horn bases fuse across the forehead. It takes years to fill in and cows never grow one, so the horns help tell a buffalo's age and sex.

How do the cows in a resting African buffalo herd appear to pick its direction?

By facing the way they favour: cows stand, gaze one way and lie down again, and the herd later leaves along the majority bearing. Biologist Herbert Prins likened it to a vote, with no single leader deciding.

Which is the smallest and hairiest of the five living rhino species?

Sumatran is the smallest rhino, at around 700 to 800 kg, and wears a shaggy reddish-brown coat. The hair is a family trait: it is thought to be a close relative of the extinct woolly rhinoceros of the ice age.

A rhino's horn is made of which material, the same stuff as human hair and fingernails?

Keratin: the horn has no proven medicinal value, yet poachers still kill for it. Because it grows back like a fingernail, some reserves sedate their rhinos and saw the horns off every couple of years.

Which Danish author's 1937 memoir Out of Africa recalls her Kenyan coffee farm and safaris?

Karen Blixen, writing as Isak Dinesen, ran the farm until drought and falling coffee prices sent her home to Denmark in 1931. The 1985 film, with Meryl Streep as Blixen, won seven Oscars including Best Picture.

Which 1966 film told the true story of Elsa, an orphaned lioness raised in Kenya and released?

Born Free followed Joy and George Adamson as they raised Elsa and then taught her to live wild. Its stars, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, went on to found the Born Free wildlife charity in 1984.

In Disney's The Lion King, the fussy royal adviser Zazu is which kind of large-beaked bird?

Hornbill mothers wall themselves into the nest hole with mud, leaving one narrow gap for the male to pass food through. Zazu is a red-billed hornbill.

Disney's The Lion King made a star of Pumbaa, which tusked safari animal that kneels on its wrists to graze?

Warthog was not the first idea: the screenwriter originally conceived Pumbaa as an elephant. Real ones reverse into burrows so that their tusks face any intruder.

An African elephant's tusks, used as weapons and digging tools, are greatly enlarged versions of which teeth?

Incisors from the upper jaw grow into an elephant's tusks, whereas the tusks of walruses and narwhals are overgrown canine teeth.

Which solitary forest animal of the Congo, with zebra-like stripes on its legs, is the giraffe's only living relative?

Okapi and giraffes are the only living members of their family, Giraffidae, yet the okapi was not formally recognised by science until 1901.

Which safari bird has just two toes on each foot, where most birds have four, to help it sprint?

Ostrich feet are built for speed: the larger inner toe carries a hoof-like nail, and the bird can sprint in bursts of about 70 km/h, faster than any other two-legged animal.

Shave off a zebra's famous striped coat and the skin underneath would be which single colour?

Black skin lies under the whole coat, even though a zebra's unstriped belly and legs make it look like a white animal with dark stripes.

Packs of African wild dogs in Botswana appear to vote on whether to set off hunting by doing what?

Sneezing works like a ballot: a pack is more likely to move off as more dogs sneeze, and about three sneezes are enough when a dominant dog starts the count.

On moonless nights, African dung beetles keep their dung balls rolling in a straight line by steering with what?

The Milky Way guides the nocturnal beetle Scarabaeus satyrus across the savanna, making it one of the few animals known to steer by the galaxy's glow.

The lesser flamingos that gather on East Africa's alkaline lakes owe their pink colour to what?

Pigments in their food, called carotenoids, are broken down in the liver and laid into the feathers; a captive flamingo fed too little of them fades to pale pink.

Which waterfall on the Zambezi River is known locally by a name meaning 'the smoke that thunders'?

Victoria Falls is about 1.7 km wide, forming the world's largest sheet of falling water, and its Lozi name Mosi-oa-Tunya is still in common use.

Which antelope, namesake of South Africa's rugby team, leaps stiff-legged into the air in a display called pronking?

Springbok pronking, from the Afrikaans for 'to show off', sends the animal up to 2 m into the air with its back bowed, possibly to warn of a predator or confuse it.

Which graceful African antelope, able to leap 3 metres high, gave its name to a Chevrolet car launched in 1958?

Impala leaps can also carry it 10 m forward, clear over bushes and even over other members of the herd; Chevrolet used the leaping antelope as the car's logo.

The wildebeest, star of East Africa's Great Migration, also goes by which three-letter name of southern African origin?

Gnu is thought to echo a Khoekhoe name for the animal, and it survives in the names brindled gnu and white-tailed gnu for the two wildebeest species.

Which nocturnal African mammal, whose Afrikaans name means 'earth pig', digs ants and termites out with its claws?

Aardvark means 'earth pig' because of its burrowing, yet the animal is no pig: it is the only living member of its entire order, Tubulidentata.

Which scaly, ant-eating mammal found in Africa and Asia is considered the most trafficked mammal in the world?

Pangolin scales are soft at birth and harden with age; a threatened animal curls into an armoured ball and tucks its face under its tail.

An African elephant family herd on the savanna is usually led by which of its animals, a role held until death?

The oldest female, known as the matriarch, usually leads, and when her time is over her eldest daughter takes charge rather than a sister.

Besides hearing and signalling, an African bush elephant's enormous ears chiefly help the animal by doing what?

Shedding body heat is the big job, which is why African bush elephants, living in the hottest climates, have the largest ear flaps of any elephant.

Which feature, hooked on the black rhino and square on the white rhino, best tells the two species apart?

The upper lip is pointed and grasping on the black rhino, which plucks leaves and twigs, but broad and square on the white rhino, which crops grass.

Which East African capital has a national park, home to lions and black rhinos, about 7 km from its centre?

Nairobi National Park, opened in 1946, is fenced on three sides but left open to the south so that migrating wildlife can still come and go.

Which primatologist's study of wild chimpanzees at Gombe, begun in 1960, showed humans are not the only tool-users?

Jane Goodall watched a chimpanzee push grass stalks into a termite mound to draw out the insects; her mentor Louis Leakey said science must now redefine 'man' or 'tool'.

Which American studied mountain gorillas from 1966 until her murder in 1985 and wrote Gorillas in the Mist?

Dian Fossey founded the Karisoke Research Center between two volcanoes in 1967 and was buried there beside Digit, a favourite gorilla killed by poachers.

The dominant adult male who leads and defends a mountain gorilla group is known by what name?

Silverback males are named for the saddle of grey or silver hair that grows across the back with age, and one of them is a typical group's undisputed leader.

Which East African country offers gorilla tracking in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and tree-climbing lions at Ishasha?

Uganda's Bwindi shelters roughly half of the world's mountain gorillas, and tourists have been able to track them there since 1993.

Cecil, a lion studied by Oxford scientists and killed by a trophy hunter in 2015, lived in which country's Hwange park?

Zimbabwe's Hwange was Cecil's home, where he was the park's main attraction; his death drew international media attention and outrage among conservationists.

The word safari, brought into English by the explorer Richard Burton, ultimately comes from an Arabic word meaning what?

Journey is the sense of the Arabic safar, and in East Africa the word still covers any trip at all, even a routine bus ride between two cities.

Which colonial-era slang term do safari-goers use for the cocktail that marks the end of the day in the bush?

Sundowner began as colonial slang, especially in southern Africa, for a cocktail drunk at sunset, and it now also names an early-evening drinks party.

Which thorny savanna tree, one species of which is called the umbrella thorn, supplies most of a giraffe's diet?

Acacia leaves, flowers and fruit are the giraffe's staple, browsed at heights that most other ground-based plant-eaters cannot reach.

Which blood-feeding African fly spreads sleeping sickness to people and the disease nagana to cattle and horses?

Tsetse mothers skip egg-laying: each raises a single larva in her womb, feeding it a milk-like secretion, and gives birth to it live.

Which part of the black mamba, a feared African snake that is usually grey or brown, is actually black?

Its mouth lining is inky black, and the snake gapes to display it, spreading a narrow neck-flap and sometimes hissing, when it feels threatened.

Which small, nocturnal African primate with huge eyes and a long tail is also called a galago?

Bush baby cries are so child-like that they probably inspired a myth, told to keep children indoors at night, of a powerful animal that kidnaps people.

The sex of a Nile crocodile hatchling is decided, not by its genes, by which feature of the nest?

Its temperature during the middle third of incubation settles the matter: nests cooler than about 31.7 °C or hotter than 34.5 °C produce only females.

Which African bird works with human hunters in the wild, then feeds on the wax they leave behind?

Honeyguide birds respond to a special call made by Mozambique's Yao hunters, and following one makes Tanzania's Hadza far likelier to find a nest.

Which small African mammal, also known as the dassie, is in fact a distant relative of the elephant?

Rock hyrax males sing, and higher-ranked males tend to sing more often; a pair of long, tusk-like upper teeth hints at the animal's kinship with elephants.

White rhinos, the most social of the rhino species, live in groups known by which collective noun?

A crash can hold up to 14 white rhinos, most of them cows, whereas adult black rhinos are solitary and come together only to mate.

Which African tree, also called the elephant tree, bears the fruit used in a famous South African cream liqueur?

Marula fruit flavours Amarula liqueur, and elephants love the tree so much that stripped bark helps identify it; they also spread its seeds in their dung.

Which dugout canoe, poled along by a boatman standing in the stern, carries visitors through the Okavango Delta?

Mokoro canoes were traditionally dug out of one large, straight trunk such as ebony, but many are now fibreglass, which spares the big trees.

Which word, borrowed into English from Afrikaans around 1823, do trackers use for an animal's footprints and trail?

Spoor covers more than footprints: a tracker also reads scents and broken foliage, and the word is a cousin of the English 'spur'.

Which Hollywood star led a team of game catchers in Tanganyika in Howard Hawks's 1962 safari film Hatari!?

John Wayne played Sean Mercer, whose crew lassoes animals for zoos from speeding trucks; Hawks had planned to cast Clark Gable beside him until Gable died in 1960.

Which large, grey-brown African antelope is recognised on safari by the white ring circling its rump?

Waterbuck owe their scientific name, ellipsiprymnus, to that ring, from the Greek for 'ellipse' and 'hind part'; they dehydrate easily and stay close to water.

Which tiny antelope of eastern Africa is named for the alarm call its females whistle when threatened?

Dik-dik pairs are monogamous and share a small territory, perhaps because roaming to find new partners is too dangerous with predators all around.

Which foggy stretch of Namibian shore, littered with shipwrecks, did Portuguese sailors call 'The Gates of Hell'?

Skeleton Coast took its modern name from a 1944 book about the wreck of the Dunedin Star; lions, elephants and black rhinos roam the riverbeds and flatlands inland.

Which country's South Luangwa park, where Norman Carr swapped rifles for cameras, is the home of the walking safari?

Zambia's South Luangwa is where Carr broke with the track-and-hunt tradition, taking guests out to photograph wildlife instead of shooting it.

Which Congolese national park, created in 1925, protects mountain gorillas beside two of Africa's most active volcanoes?

Virunga began life as Albert National Park, the Congo's first, conceived as a science-oriented reserve; UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 1979.

Which word, literally 'little head', names the small rocky hills that rise from the grasslands of the Serengeti?

Kopje is pronounced like the English word 'copy', and these outcrops count among the Serengeti's distinct habitats alongside its swamps and woodlands.

Which African scavenger is considered the highest-flying bird after one met a jet engine 11,300 m above Abidjan?

Rüppell's vulture carries a special variant of haemoglobin with a great affinity for oxygen, letting it breathe efficiently in the thin air of the upper troposphere.

Serengeti Shall Not Die, the Oscar-winning 1959 documentary, was made by the director of which German city's zoo?

Frankfurt Zoo's director Bernhard Grzimek made the film with his son Michael, who was killed when his plane went down over the Ngorongoro crater during the shoot.

Which aristocratic hunter, played by Robert Redford in Out of Africa, steered a future king from rifles to cameras?

Denys Finch Hatton hosted the future Edward VIII on safaris in 1928 and 1930 that switched from hunting to photography, and died when his Gipsy Moth plunged to the ground in 1931.

Which South African park's Operation Rhino, led by Ian Player, saved the southern white rhino from extinction?

Hluhluwe–Imfolozi sheltered the last southern white rhinos, believed extinct by 1895, and its capture unit later moved hundreds to restock other reserves.

Which long-necked East African antelope, nicknamed the giraffe gazelle, stands upright on its hind legs to browse?

Gerenuk comes from the animal's Somali name, and by rearing up and stretching its neck it can feed more than 2 m above the ground.

Which caustic alkaline lake in northern Tanzania is East Africa's only regular breeding ground for lesser flamingos?

Lake Natron's brine can pass pH 12, and that is the attraction: the caustic water keeps predators away from nests built on islands of salt.