49 Fun Facts About Safari

Via which explorer did 'safari', from Swahili for 'journey', enter English in the 1850s?

Richard Francis Burton brought 'safari' into English around 1859 in his writing on the expedition to Lake Tanganyika; the Swahili word comes from Arabic 'safar', a journey.

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

Lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo are the Big Five; the term covers both black and white rhino, and the buffalo meant is the Cape buffalo.

Why were the Big Five given that name?

They were the hardest animals to hunt on foot: big-game hunters coined the term for the 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 usual gloss of the Maasai word siringet, 'the place where the land runs on forever'; the neighbouring Mara takes its name from the Maa word for 'spotted'.

Kruger National Park became South Africa's first national park in which year?

1926 is when the National Parks Act turned the Sabie Game Reserve, proclaimed in 1898, into Kruger National Park, South Africa's first; it later joined the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

How many mammal species are recorded in Kruger, more than any other African game reserve?

147 mammal species are recorded in Kruger, more than any other African game reserve; they include all of the Big Five plus wild dog and hippo.

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 and mostly evaporates or soaks away; in 2014 it became the 1,000th UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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

Angola's central highlands catch the summer rains; the flood pulse travels about 1,200 km down the Okavango over roughly a month, then spreads slowly across the delta, peaking in the dry winter months.

Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania holds what geological distinction?

World's largest intact, unfilled volcanic caldera is Ngorongoro's claim: a large volcano collapsed on itself two to three million years ago, leaving a floor of about 260 square kilometres.

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

Olduvai Gorge, where Louis and Mary Leakey found Zinjanthropus in 1959 and the first Homo habilis fossils, lies within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a UNESCO site since 1979.

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 Friedrich von Lindequist proclaimed Etosha a game reserve by Ordinance 88 on 22 March 1907; national park status followed in 1967.

In which year was Kenya's Masai Mara reserve originally established as a wildlife sanctuary?

1961 is when the Mara was first set aside as a wildlife sanctuary of about 520 square kilometres; it was later enlarged into the 1,510-square-kilometre national reserve in Narok County.

Roughly how fast can the fastest land animal, an African big cat, run?

93 to 104 km/h is the measured top-speed range of the fastest land animal; its semi-retractable claws grip like running spikes, and it hunts mainly by day.

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

As of 2022 only about a dozen of the Asiatic subspecies survived, in Iran.

What are the closest living relatives of the hippopotamus?

Whales and dolphins are the hippo's closest living kin: molecular studies group them in Whippomorpha, with the lineages splitting about 55 million years ago; 'hippopotamus' is Greek for river horse.

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 tall does a fully grown giraffe stand?

4.3 to 5.7 metres is the adult range, with males at the top; pumping blood up that neck takes an 11 kg heart generating roughly double human blood pressure.

Why is a giraffe's 45 cm tongue thought to be 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's gestation period, the longest of any mammal, lasts about how long?

22 months, nearly two years, is the longest gestation of any mammal; a newborn bush elephant weighs around 100 kg, and both sexes grow tusks throughout life.

How many finger-like tips does an African elephant's trunk end in?

Two finger-like projections tip the African elephant's trunk, one above and one below, letting it pluck single leaves; the Asian elephant has just one, on top.

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 on 12 August 1883; the plains-zebra subspecies had already been hunted out in the wild during the 1870s.

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

Dutch gave the name: 'wilde beest', wild beast, was what early Dutch-speaking settlers at the Cape called the animal, which is also known by its Khoekhoe-derived name, gnu.

Spotted hyena society is unusual among mammals for what reason?

Females are larger and dominate the males: even the lowest-ranking female outranks the top male, and she sports a pseudo-penis, an enlarged clitoris through which she urinates, mates and gives birth.

Hyenas belong to the suborder Feliformia; they are closer to which animals than to dogs?

Cats and mongooses: hyenas sit in Feliformia, the cat-like carnivorans, and their nearest relatives are the mongooses and civets; their dog-like build is a case of convergent evolution.

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, a population that fell to perhaps a few dozen in the early 1900s and recovered to several hundred across the wider Saurashtra region.

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

Manes were missing: both Tsavo males were maneless, as many Tsavo lions are; Lt Col John Henry Patterson shot them in December 1898 and their remains are displayed at Chicago's Field Museum.

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

Painted wolf: Lycaon pictus combines Greek for a wolf-like creature with Latin pictus, painted, after the patchy yellow, black and white coat that is unique to each individual.

What share of African wild dog chases typically end in a kill?

More than 60 percent, sometimes up to 90, of chases succeed because the pack runs prey to exhaustion over long distances; lions succeed far less often.

Panke, the Zimbabwe baobab that was the oldest known flowering plant, was roughly how old when it died in 2011?

2,450 years was the radiocarbon age estimate for Panke, which died in 2011; baobabs can store up to 120,000 litres of water in their trunks, and six of the eight species are Madagascan.

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.

Roosevelt's 1909-10 African safari collected roughly how many specimens for the Smithsonian?

11,400 or so animal specimens, from insects to elephants, came back from the Mombasa-to-Khartoum trek, and Smithsonian naturalists took eight years to catalogue them; Andrew Carnegie was a principal funder.

Which explorer established the classic safari daily routine in 1836?

William Cornwallis Harris, on his 1836 expedition into the South African interior, set the pattern: up at first light, a hard day's walking and shooting, an afternoon rest, then a formal dinner and storytelling.

Which American author's 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber' helped popularise the safari?

Ernest Hemingway drew on his 1933-34 Kenya safari for 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber', published in 1936, and for the non-fiction Green Hills of Africa.

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

Kilimanjaro, just over the border in Tanzania, rises behind Amboseli's swamps and elephant herds, giving the park its classic photographic backdrop.

Newborn wildebeest calves can do what within minutes of birth?

Stand and move with the herd within minutes: a calf is on its feet about six minutes after birth and can keep up with its mother within a day, which helps it survive the January-to-March calving glut.

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

A rare coat mutation of blotchy spots and three dark stripes down the back marks the king form, caused by a recessive variant of the Taqpep gene, the same gene 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; from it the horns sweep down, then curve up and out, the tips over a metre apart in big bulls.

How do female African buffalo appear to decide which way the herd will travel?

They sit facing their preferred direction, a kind of vote: Herbert Prins's study found cows standing, facing a bearing and lying down again, and the herd then moving the way the majority faced.

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

Sumatran is the smallest rhino, around 700 to 800 kg, and the hairiest, with a shaggy reddish-brown coat; it survives only in scattered forests of Sumatra and Borneo.

How many chromosomes does the black rhinoceros have, unlike the 82 of every other rhino species?

84 chromosomes (2n) is the black rhino's count, two more than the 82 shared by the four other living species; the black rhino stands up to about 1.75 metres at the shoulder.

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

Karen Blixen, writing as Isak Dinesen, published Out of Africa in 1937 about her farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills and her safaris with Denys Finch Hatton.

Which 1931 film is cited as the start of the safari's long run in sound cinema?

Trader Horn, MGM's 1931 adventure shot on location in East Africa, opened the safari genre in sound cinema, which ran through the Tarzan and Jungle Jim series and was spoofed in Road to Zanzibar.