What is the most famous savanna in Africa?

In this blog post, we have compiled some of the most common and lesser-known facts about African Savanna. Let’s take a peek!

The climatic condition of the tropical desert is mostly warm. It can also get a little touch dry. The savanna receives most of its rainfall in the summer season. The rest of the year, the temperature ranges from 68 degrees F to 86 degrees F. It’s important to note that the annual rainfall in the African Savanna is typically from 10 to 30 inches.

You can find an extensive range of animals in the African Savanna. As such, it is the perfect place to spot all kinds of big and small creatures. You will mostly find the desert filled with large mammals, including primary and secondary consumers such as giraffes, zebras, elephants, buffalos, lions, cheetahs, kangaroos, ostriches, antelopes, baboons, leopards, and rhinoceroses.

Tertiary consumers such as hyenas are also found in the African Savanna. They are popularly known as scavengers.

Shocking, isn’t it?

Research shows that about 65% of Africa is nothing but savanna. Much of the entire savanna is covered with lush trees, canopies, plants, and grass/woodlands. The savanna is also home to hundreds of animals.

You may think that the African Savanna is a land deprived of people, but that’s far from the case. The African Savanna accommodates many communities. For example, the Nubians live in the upper Sudanese Nubia, the Akan and Kulango in the Ivory Coast, and so on. The most popular group of people that live in the savanna is the Masai – a Nilotic ethnic group.

This is one of the most popular parks in northern Tanzania. It is massive and is home to a wide variety of animals, including lions, elephants, hippos, zebras, leopards, crocodiles, gazelles, and honey badgers. Because of the presence of a large number of animals, this park is considered to be the world’s greatest wilderness.

The best time to visit the park is in the dry season – from late June to October. This time period is ideal for witnessing the region’s epic wildlife.

Plenty of food crops are planted in the savanna, including corn, millets, maize, wheat, sorghum, sugar cane, etc. These staple food items are supplied to the people of savanna as well as exported to other parts of the world.

That’s because the tropical land sustains a wide variety of wildlife and plants. The desert also ensures the regulation of the global climate by storing lots of carbon and releasing oxygen. In this way, the tropical woodland maintains the delicate balance of the ecosystem.

These include Rhodes grass, lemongrass, Bermuda grass, elephant grass, red oats grass, and star grass. The land also features several types of trees and plants, such as the baobab tree, jackalberry tree, acacia tree, manketti tree, river bushwillow, umbrella thorn acacia, etc.

For instance, it consists of Abal shrubs that feature edible flowers with high concentrations of nitrogen and sugar. The baobab plant has edible roots and leaves; even its seeds can be used in flour. Other edible plants include the beech, marula, monkey orange, etc.

The drastic climatic change and human activities such as deforestation, poor land management, and illegal poaching have adversely impacted the savanna. The imbalance in the ecosystem has triggered a set of reactions in the plant life and wildlife. Due to the affected ecosystem, the savanna is more vulnerable to droughts, storms, etc.

These facts about the African Savanna just serve to highlight what an amazing place it is and the diversity of life present here.

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The African Savanna is a large grassland habitat found across central and southeastern Africa. In fact, the Savanna is so big that it touches 27 countries! The climate is warm and tropical, with heavy rains occurring in the summer season.

This unique habitat is home to legendary animals like fast-paced cheetahs, long-necked giraffes, stripy zebras, enormous elephants, and animals you might have never heard of, like the aardvark. There are some 45 mammal species and 500 bird species found in the Savanna. Together they form a complex and interconnected community, with every trophic level needed to maintain this fragile ecosystem.

The Savanna extends for miles into the horizon, an expansive plain of grass with irregularly occurring vegetation, such as trees like the acacia. There is little rainfall in this dry region of Africa. The Savanna, particularly areas like the Serengeti, have attracted tourists from around the world seeking to get close to the most impressive Savanna animals of the plains for decades.

1. Grant’s Gazelle

Grant’s gazelles have a short and sleek coat of fur that is reddish brown on their upper bodies and along the outside of their legs, and white on their underside and rump. Their elegant, slender faces are decorated by two black and white lines that run from their antlers, over their eyes, down to their nostrils. Another black line decorates each side of the animal’s rump.

They have long, ringed horns. Males have horns that reach lengths of 32 inches, whilst females’ horns are about half the size. They forage for food, feeding mainly on browse, and migrate when food is scarce. Groups are herded by dominant males who mark out the herds’ territory with urine and feces.

2. Lion

Lions are found in various habitats in sub-Saharan Africa and are one of the most notorious animals of the Savanna. They are agile and fast, reaching top speeds of 50 miles per hour. Unlike other big cats, lions live in small groups, known as a pride, made up of up to 30 individuals.

They are apex predators, meaning they hunt but aren’t hunted, and can easily chase down and kill large prey like wildebeest, zebras, antelopes, and even small giraffes! Female lions do most of the hunting work. Lions have a loud and spectacular roar that can be heard up to three miles away.

3. Blue Wildebeest

Blue wildebeest are up to 8 feet long and 4.5 feet tall at shoulder height. These 600-pound animals are grazers that feed on grasses along their long migratory routes. They can run as fast as 50 miles per hour.

Wildebeests live in large herds of up to 500 individuals, though they tend to travel in groups made up of 10 to 100 females and their young. Male wildebeests have a loud calling sound that alerts the herd of a nearby predator. They are hunted by Savanna animals like lions and stampede as a way of self-defense.

4. African Bush Elephant

Elephants are some of the heaviest and largest animals on Earth. They are around 19–24 feet long, and 11 feet tall at shoulder height. Males can weigh up to a whopping 13,000 pounds, whilst females weigh half of that. These impressive mammals can live for up to 70 years.

They are easy to distinguish thanks to their size, long outward curved tusks, protruding trunks, and large ears. They spend their days foraging for leaves, bark, fruits, and grazing grasses off the Savanna floor; they need to eat around 350 pounds of vegetation daily to keep them going! Sadly, elephant populations have suffered declines for centuries due to poaching for ivory.

5. Black-backed Jackal

These cheeky animals have a black patch of fur that runs from their neck down to the end of their tail. They have white underbellies and otherwise reddish-brown body fur. The black-backed jackal’s pointy ears and long muzzle gives it a fox-like appearance.

They have keen senses of smell and hearing that helps them track and hunt down their prey. Opportunistic feeders, they’re also happy to scavenge for their meals. In the wild, they hunt during the day and during the night, ears pricked and alert. Females give birth to their pups in underground burrows.

6. African Leopard

These handsome big cats have cream colored fur on their bellies that fades into a reddish-brown along their upper bodies. They are easily identifiable thanks to the rosette shaped spots that cover their bodies. African leopards are highly athletic, able to run as fast as 58 miles per hour and leap up to 20 feet forward in a single jump.

African leopards are excellent climbers and spend a lot of their time up amongst the tree branches on the look-out for prey to pounce on from above. Once they’ve caught their meal, which can be anything from an insect to a large wildebeest, they hide it from other top predators in between feeds.

7. Eland

Elands are the largest antelopes on the planet. They are up to 11 feet long and stand at some 8-foot tall. These heavy mammals weigh nearly a ton, but still manage to lift their bodies off the ground and jump up to 4 feet into the air!

Their fur gets darker as they age, turning from a light brown to almost black. They have elegantly twisted horns that grow skywards. Not surprisingly, elands are a popular meal amongst the larger predators of the Savanna, like lions, hyenas, and humans.

8. Warthog

Warthogs look a lot like wild boar. They have tough grey skin and slender tails. Two tusks, up to 10 inches long, protrude from the animal’s mouth. A peculiar feature of this animal is the tusk-like protrusions that stretch the skin under their eyes outwards.

Though they aren’t very large or athletic looking, warthogs can run at impressive speeds of up to 35 miles per hour. They kneel to feed on grasses, or chomp away at bulbs, roots, tubers, and even earthworms that they dig up with their tusks. A much-loved warthog in popular culture is Pumbaa from The Lion King who taught the Hakuna Matata.

9. Caracal

Caracals have a light, brownish-red coat of fur with a cream-colored underside. They are a medium sized species of wild cat that roam the African Savanna. They weigh somewhere between 25 and 40 pounds, and have large pointy ears decorated with long, upward facing, black hairs.

Their large ears aren’t just decorative, they have 20 muscles in them that allow them to rotate, helping the caracal to listen out for nearby prey. They predate on rodents, small mammals, mongoose, monkeys, birds, and hyrax.

10. African Rock Python

The African Rock Python is Africa’s largest snake. It reaches lengths of 20 feet; that’s as long as a giraffe is tall. It is a non-venomous snake species that kills its prey by constriction, tightening its grip around the poor animal’s body on each outward breath.

They can take down animals as large as crocodiles and warthogs, and in a few rare incidents have been reported to swallow young children. As they are reptiles, they reproduce by laying eggs. Rock pythons can lay up to 100 eggs at once, which they defend ferociously.

11. African buffalo

Buffalos are structurally very similar to large cows. There are four subspecies of buffalo in Africa, and large variations in size and coloration exist across each. These heavy beasts are most recognizable by their thick, curled horns that follow the line of their heads and then curl out to the side above their ears.

Larger buffalos reach heights of up to 5 feet and can weigh up to 1,840 pounds. They live in large migratory herds of a few hundred individuals. Buffalos have been known to congregate in their thousands in the Serengeti. Their large numbers help protect them from their many predators.

12. Meerkat

These small mammals are just 10–12 inches long and weigh a mere 2.2 pounds. Meerkats live in small groups that gather and form larger communities. They are social animals that work together by distributing their tasks. Often a few meerkats will be allocated as lookouts, whilst the rest forage for insects, birds, fruits, and lizards.

They raise their bodies upright, putting their weight on their back paws, to give them a better view of their surroundings. If they spot a predator, like a hawk or eagle, they let out a loud, shrill call. After a warning sign, everyone runs for cover.

13. Rhinoceros

Rhinos are heavy mammals that weigh over 2,200 pounds (to as much as 4,400 pounds!). The white rhinoceros is found in the African Savanna, an ideal habitat for this large beast as there are water holes, mud wallows, grasses to graze on, and enough shade to hide from the hot sun.

White rhinos have two horns; their front horn can reach lengths of 60 inches but tends to measure some 24 inches. These large animals eat around 120 pounds of food per day and have a flat snout and thick lips evolved to help them get closer to the ground floor to pick at grasses and vegetation.

14. Ostrich

Ostriches are large, flightless birds. Their coloration is sexually dimorphic; males have a black body with white tail feathers, whilst females are covered in brown feathers. They have long, slender legs and a long, narrow neck. These large birds reach heights of 9 feet.

Ostriches are omnivores, and though 60% of their diet is plant-based, animals like insects, snakes, lizards, and small rodents are still on the menu. They can run at speeds of up to 45 miles per hour and they live in packs of about 10 ostriches, with a dominant female and male in each.

15. Hartebeest

Another of the Savanna’s antelope species, hartebeests have comically elongated faces. They have fawn colored fur, though some subspecies have black legs and tails. They can run as fast as 45 miles per hour, almost as fast as a cheetah.

At their largest, they are some 8 feet long, weigh 440 pounds, and measure 5 feet at shoulder height. Like other antelopes, they are elegant grazers that spend most of their time munching on grass with their heads down. But unlike other antelopes, they aren’t migratory.

16. Giraffe

Giraffes are the tallest mammals on Earth, reaching heights of 20 feet. They are long and slender, and covered in patchy markings. Each giraffe has a totally unique set of patches, like each human has an individual fingerprint. Another peculiar feature of this animal is its prehensile, blue tongue that is some 15–18 inches long.

Giraffes are ruminants that have 4-chambered stomachs that help them digest their plant-based diet. They browse on leaves from bushes and trees; the leaves of an acacia tree are a particular favorite. To fuel their large bodies, they have to spend between 16–20 hours a day grazing.

17. Impala

These graceful and elegant mammals structurally resemble a gazelle. They are slender, with light cinnamon-brown fur and black type ears, a white chin and underbelly, and two black stripes on their rumps and one along their tail. Males have dazzling lyrate horns that are 18–36 inches long.

Impalas have evolved a clever feeding system that perfectly suits their environment; they feed on fresh grasses in the rainy season and switch to browse during the dry season. They live in large herds of up to 100 individuals, led by a male. These hypervigilant animals can jump up to 10 feet high and 33 feet across, an Olympic medal worthy high jump!

18. Aardvark

These mysterious creatures have large, pointy ears, elongated heads, armadillo-like tails, and clawed feet. Their bodies are covered in a short, brown fur that is darker along their limbs. These medium-sized mammals measure some 43–53 inches in length and have 21–26 inch long tails. They are found south of the Sahara.

The word aardvark means ‘earth pig’ in the Afrikaans language of South Africa, and although these little mammals do have some pig-like qualities they are far from identical. Aardvarks spend the day hiding away from the heat in underground burrows and come out at night to forage for termites.

19. Spotted Hyena

Hyenas stay together in groups known as clans. Spotted hyenas are the largest of all three hyena species; they are some 34–59 inches long. These well-known mammals look like spotted dogs but are actually closer related to cats. They are famous for the curious laugh-like sounds they make.

We tend to think of hyenas as merely scavengers, that spend their time feeding on the carcasses and scraps left behind by more skilled hunters. Whilst these opportunistic feeders will happily scavenge for food, they are also skilled hunters themselves that work in groups and can take down grazers as large as a wildebeest.

20. White-Backed Vulture

White-backed vultures have brown plumage on most of their body, pale underwings, a white feathered neck, and a telling patch of white feathers on their rump that can only be seen when the bird is in flight. They are Africa’s most common vulture but are suffering declines in population numbers.

These large birds have a wingspan of up to 7.5 feet and glide up above on the lookout for abandoned carcasses to feed on. They prefer more open and wooded areas of the Savanna, where they gather on tree branches in loose breeding groups.

21. Plains Zebra

Are they white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Some questions about one of the Savanna’s most popular animals, the plains zebra, have puzzled humans for centuries. These black-and-white striped animals are ungulates with long tails, a short, upright mane, and a long face with a black patch around the mouth and nostrils.

They stand at some 4.5 feet tall and weigh a surprising 550–700 pounds. These eye-catching herbivores stay in large herds and are always alert and on the lookout for their many predators, like cheetahs and lions. Zebras have long migration routes and migrate up to 1800 miles in search of fresh grass to feed on.

22. African Pygmy Falcon

This cute little bird is Africa’s smallest raptor species. Adults are about as long as a pen and have a wingspan of just 14 inches! They live in communal weaver bird nests that hang off tree branches and accommodate a group of pygmy falcons and their weaver neighbors.

But they aren’t squatters, they defend the nests from snakes and other egg-snatching reptiles, creating a symbiotic relationship between them and the weavers. Despite its size, the African pygmy falcon is an avid hunter that can swoop down and effortlessly catch insects, small rodents, lizards, and birds.

23. Cheetah

The African Savanna is home to the fastest animal on Earth, the cheetah. Cheetahs can reach running speeds of up to 80 miles per hour, leaving their prey with little chance of escaping. They hunt antelopes, gazelles, sable, and birds.

Cheetahs are solitary like most big cats and can live for up to 12 years in the wild. Their light brown fur is covered in small, black spots. This unique fur pattern makes this wild cat easily recognizable in the wild.

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