Seeing wildlife in its natural habitat can be an extraordinary adventure. For example, the Serengeti National Park in northeast Tanzania has a fantastic concentration of plains game in Africa.
Its 5,700 square miles is dark with wildlife of every kind and teems with 1.5 million wildebeests, 1.5 million gazelles, 72,000 topi, 25,000 buffalos, 10,000 elands, 8,500 giraffes, 1,500 lions and 1,000 elephants, along with cheetahs, rhinoceroses, zebras, leopards, baboons, ostriches and much more, including the pangolins, which are scaly anteaters, and the primate bush babies, aptly named because when their call sounds like a crying baby.
It may be unimaginative to reduce the breathtaking beauty of this park to numbers, because, besides being world-famous as a wildlife sanctuary, the Serengeti (which means “endless plains that go up to the sky”) is unsurpassed for its natural beauty and scientific value. It offers the most complex and least disturbed ecosystem on Earth as it has hardly changed over the past million years in terms of climate, fauna and vegetation. What makes it unique are its different vegetation zones — the short and long grass open plains in the south; the acacia savannah in the central area; the hilly, more densely wooded area in the north, and extensive woodland and black clay plains in the west — and the fact that each zone attracts different types of animals.
Still, it is the staggering numbers that never fail to surprise, dazzle and stupefy visitors, especially when they witness one of the great natural wonders of the world — the annual Serengeti migration of the wildebeest.
One observer described these animals this way: “They look like they have been made from spare parts. Their forequarters could have come from an ox, the hindquarters from an antelope, and the mane and tail from a horse.” They have been called “the clowns of the savannah” and enjoy frolicking, snorting and loping along the plains with other wildebeests. Although their calving season is short — just a brief three weeks — it’s not unusual for 400,000 babies to be born within this period. These require little coddling, as they begin standing and running within 3 to 7 minutes after they are born.
They soon join the others on this annual trek that has been going on for hundreds of years. The wildebeests move along traditional routes like a mighty tidal wave in a never-ending quest for water and greener pastures, plunging down riverbanks and wading streams to make their way to thicker, greener grass in another area.
The migration usually starts after the calving season when 1.5 million wildebeest start to mass in May or early June (migration times are not precise as they depend on the pattern of the rainfall, which varies year to year). Traveling along with them are other hungry hangers-on — 500,000 Thomson’s and Grant’s gazelles, 200,000 zebras, 18,000 elands, as well as such predators as lions, hyenas and jackals who wait for the right moment to tackle and devour weak and sick members of the herd.
The herd starts moving, stringing out in a column that can stretch for seven or more miles. When the grass is depleted in one area, they swarm to another green pasture. In the midst of this, they find time to mate and calve before starting the entire cycle again in an annual circuit of 500 to 1,000 miles.
Once the migration starts, however, little can stop it. Their instinct is so strong that neither steep gorges nor giant crocodiles infesting the swollen rivers can hold back this surging, thundering mass as it grunts and stampedes its way across the plains.
Besides the thrill of the annual migration, the Serengeti offers other attractions. There is Lake Natron, known for the huge flocks of flamingos that gather at the end of the rainy season. There are the archeological finds in Olduvai Gorge, where the bones of early mankind were discovered; the Ngorongora Conservation Area, where the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera is located, covering an area of 100 square miles; and the Masai Mara Game Reserve, where some 42,000 Masai live and farm and graze their cattle on the floor of the crater.
Jeep safaris can be arranged to explore all that Serengeti National Park offers. For another perspective, you can float silently, high over the park, by booking a ride on the Serengeti Hot Air Balloon Safari.
