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Not long after moving to Dar es Salaam, and not far from our house, a single zebra trotted across the road in front of my vehicle. I braked abruptly in disbelief and felt sudden hope that my life in the city was about to become more exciting. In her 1970s memoir I Dream of Africa, Kuki Gallmann wrote of elephants eating her garden and lions her cattle. So far I had noted in my diary events like "awakened by air conditioner that sounded as though the repairman forgot his tools inside when he serviced it." Alas, the zebra wasn’t roaming free as it might have been in the past. Someone in the neighborhood had turned his property into a private game park from which it had escaped. Vervet monkeys and dangerous snakes remain part of Dar's urban landscape, but the last hippos in its creeks disappeared in the 1960s. "As a travel destination, Gombe is a distant and exotic one, but it didn't transport me away from my present as it did bring me closer to it. I was sobered by the parallels it presented between its world of primates and mine. One hundred years ago, there were two million chimpanzees across Africa's equatorial belt. There are possibly 150,000 left. In Gombe, there are 100. You know the expression, there but for the grace of God am I? That’s a temporary reprieve I think. Gombe's future is our own, and it is happening now." Here are the wildlife sightings - other than chimpanzees - you might expect in each of the northern and southern parks: The North Tarangire National Park Animal fact or fancy: A crocodile skeleton found in a tree top was thought to have been rocketed there by elephant trunk. One thwack of that multi-purpose appendage can kill a buffalo. Lake Manyara Animal fact: Hippos eat up to 40 kilos of grass in one day and are capable of galloping at speeds up to 30 km/h. Do not come between a hippo and the water.
Animal fact: Rhinos create a dunghill by returning to the same place to do their business, scraping backwards as they go about it with their hind feet which scatters the pellets of feces. This is not to upset the elephant by making a larger pile (an old joke), but to disperse their scent and delineate their territory.
The Serengeti Because visitors usually see plenty of lions in the Serengeti, they might leave with the impression that they are not endangered animals. This is incorrect. The Serengeti was made a game reserve in 1929 because hunters, who began arriving in earnest after 1913 when news of its natural bounty got out, were shooting too many lions. They were considered "vermin". The historical range of lions is the African continent, parts of Asia and the Americas. What remain are 300 in a sanctuary in India and an estimated 23,000 on the African continent in 2003, a serious decline from ten years earlier when their count stood at 100,000. I used to think that lions "roared" like the animal of the Metro Goldwyn Meyer movie studio logo. Instead, they more typically "grunt", great exhalations of air squeezed from deep within their bodies as if they were accordions and in rapid succession. You usually hear these grunt-calls at night when lions are active, their way of communicating with other pride members and broadcasting their territories to competing tribes. The calls carry five kilometers. The Serengeti was formerly home to approximately 1000 Black rhino. During the 1980s - not a good decade for East Africa's wildlife - poachers reduced them to two individuals, both of them female, which lived in the southern part of the park. In what is an inspirational story, an industrious male rhino in the Ngorongoro Crater intuited their existence and journeyed to the Serengeti, a distance of over 100 kilometers, where he impregnated them. In five years, he sired four calves. To prevent inbreeding, a female Black rhino and two calves, originally of East African stock, were introduced from South Africa in1998. The Serengeti population now stands at ten. They are rarely spotted. Animal fact: The great number of wildebeest born simultaneously ensures survival of the species despite the devastating losses to predators.
Animal fact: A zebra’s stripes are like fingerprints, no two individuals have the same. This is thought to aid in survival by making it difficult for a predator to single out one zebra in a fleeing herd. The South Mikumi National Park Animal fact: A giraffe has prehensile lips and a sticky tongue which extends 40 cms. These enable it to feed on the leaves of an acacia while avoiding knuckle-long thorns. The Selous Animal fact or fancy: Cape buffalo, when provoked, are said to take revenge with decisive intent. Hunters report being treed by buffalo for a day or more because the pugnacious animals refuse to give up and leave. Writer Rick Ridgeway in The Shadow of Kilimanjaro relates a game warden’s story of his encounter with an enraged buffalo which knocked him down and then urinated on him. Ruaha National Park Other park residents are crocodile, buffalo, hippo, lion, cheetah, jackal, zebra, giraffe, impala, leopard, waterbuck, and bushbuck. Ruaha is also home to the Roan antelope, a large ungulate with distinctive black and white facial markings; the continent’s most southerly Grant's gazelle; and the elusive Wild dog. Animal fact: It looks like a guinea pig, but the Rock hyrax is related to the elephant. Its teeth are thought to be the remnants of tusks.
Katavi National Park Animal fact or fancy: The leopard is one of the few animals which has been known to kill for sport.
A word about insects: The Serengeti has over 100 species of dung beetle. This industrious insect is the beneficial housecleaner of the savannah by rolling a perfect sphere of animal dung the size of a ping pong ball and steering it, using its hind legs, back to its burrow, where the excrement becomes food for several days. Some females of the species lay their eggs inside the ball so their beetle young have something to eat when they hatch. Beetles navigate by moonlight, setting efficient courses for home, but supposedly on moonless nights their sense of direction is impaired. I have camped under rainy skies when beetles have lost their way and carried on their labors like Sisyphus under my tent. Another common sight of the African savannah is termite towers, the world’s tallest non-human structures. Termites are related to the cockroach and are sophisticated architects and engineers. Hard packed walls made of soil, insect saliva and dung seal in moisture and keep the African heat out. After rain, millions of termites may escape the cooled comfort of their mounds to begin new nests. They fill the air like snowfall. If you are camping, extinguish all lanterns. Insect fact: The tsetse fly has played a huge part in protecting tracts of African wilderness from human populations who would clear, cultivate and graze them. The flies carry disease that neither man nor domestic cattle can tolerate but from which wild animals are immune. A word about snakes: We hope not to encounter them. Reptile fact: The crocodile cools off by opening its jaws. |
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With Mikumi National Park a half day's drive away, I didn’t have to go far from Dar to find animals which were free. That the wilderness remains so accessible in Tanzania (with a few exceptions) never ceases to fill me with wonder and gratitude. It isn't something I take for granted. Nature is under threat in Tanzania as it is elsewhere. After visiting Gombe National Park in Western Tanzania where Dr Jane Goodall remains committed to the world’s longest continuous study of chimpanzees - longest of any animal in fact, I wrote:
Birdlife is excellent too. There are 550 species. Possible sightings are the Bateleur, Long-crested and Martial eagles; the Verreaux’s eagle owl; the Saddle-billed stork, the White-bellied go away bird; the Brown parrot; and the White-browed coucal, the long, soft repetitive call of which I associate with Africa. The Tropical boubou wins for the sheer beauty and clarity of its song. My favorite East African bird has to be the Lilac-breasted roller. He is an exceptional work of creation, dressed in a pretty palette of violet, turquoise and indigo. The carnivorous Indian house crow has pretty much exterminated it in urban areas, so when I return to the bush and catch sight of my first roller I think of it as a kind of welcome back by the wilderness.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area
The Ndutu area is perfect cheetah country. My husband and I once spotted five young cheetahs resting in the shade of a solitary acacia near a spot called "Three Trees". Vultures picked at the scant remains of their recent kill of a gazelle. Cheetahs put all of their considerable energy into speed going after prey and can be easily driven off their winnings by stronger predators, so they bolt meals down.
Lions are threatened for the same reason that so many species are facing an accelerated extinction: humans are taking over their habitats. At the moment, parks and reserves offer one solution to aid in their survival, but ultimately, this won't be enough. Big cats have a huge territorial range. It is inevitable that they will wander out of any safety net that we create for them and into conflicts with us. Nor does isolating lions in parks necessarily protect them from disease. The inbreeding that results leaves them more susceptible to diseases such as the canine distemper spread by domesticated dogs that affected Serengeti lions in 1994.
The Serengeti has 500 bird species. Among my most memorable sightings there is that of a Martial eagle, Africa's largest, with a meal of a Bat-eared fox. Other notable Serengeti birds are the Kori bustard, the largest bird capable of flight; the elegant, long-legged grey and black Secretary bird; the Crowned crane with its distinctive golden halo of head feathers, and the cinnamon-colored Hoopoe with black and white wings and a wonderful crest. Even East Africa's starlings take your breath away. The Superb starling is iridescent blue.
Arusha National Park
With luck, it is possible to see Wild dogs in Mikumi and the Selous Game Reserve. Exterminated by hunters and farmers, few of the species remain in Africa. Wild dogs have blotched fur and large rounded ears; they run in packs and are highly efficient hunters. Friends in Dar es Salaam sent me a gift of a framed photo of the Wild dogs they encountered in the Selous. I have yet to see them, but I haven’t given up. There is always next time.
The Selous' bird life includes bee-eaters, herons, spoonbills, and fish eagles. I watch for the tiny Malachite kingfisher. This beautiful bird has bright red feet and a beak like a miniature spear, a head and back of ultramarine blue, white throat and cheek patches and a cinnamon breast. At dawn in the Selous there is often the sound of mumbled conversation as though your fellow campers are talking from under a deep pile of blankets. This is the chat of the Southern ground hornbill, a heavy, turkey-like bird with a two-and-a-half meter wingspan which takes to the air with effort. To many tribal people, ground hornbills are the spirits of the dead. Kill one and you bring calamity upon yourself.
Ruaha is a good place to see Greater and Lesser kudu antelope. The male Greater kudu is a magnificent animal, with a long corkscrew set of horns that he avoids entangling in the brush by elevating his head so that his fancy gear lies flat on his back. He can disappear with ease, if you’ve perceived him in the first place in forest that is near perfect camouflage for his natural shades and striped and dappled markings, which are just like sun-spotted leaves. Both he and the female kudu have disproportionately large and pinkish paddle-shaped ears, all the better with which to hear your approach. Ruaha tends to be associated with elephants since it has more of them than any other national park. Between it and its game reserve buffer zones their population is thought to be around 8,000. But when I think of Ruaha the gentle kudu comes to mind. Unlike most males in the animal kingdom, the kudu rarely fights over turf and females.
Katavi claims the greatest concentrations of hippos and crocs in the country, and buffalo herds with over 1000 members. There was easily that number in a herd on the shores of Lake Katavi where I set up one camp. Among this great hoofed congregation were zebra, topi, oribi, and steinbok antelopes. Timid waterbuck grazed on the periphery of the crowd, and giraffes in the woods next to the lake. Other residents of Katavi are lion, leopard, hyena, eland and elephant. There are some 400 bird species.
