9 Fascinating Serengeti Facts to Spur on Your African Adventure
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According to World Atlas, the Serengeti is one of the "most visited wildlife sanctuaries in the world," with over 150,000 international and 100,000 local tourists visiting every year.
If you're thinking about visiting another wildlife sanctuary, then you need to hear these amazing Serengeti facts first!
Check out these nine fantastic features of the Serengeti, and there's nowhere you'll be more excited to visit!
The Serengeti plains are home to more than 2 million wildebeests, 300,000 gazelles, 200,000 zebras, and 100,000 buffaloes.
Nowhere else in the world can you see such huge herds of giant herbivores traveling together across the plains. The sight of hundreds or thousands of wildebeest running together with their hooves shaking the ground is an epic experience that you'll never forget.
Seeing the leaping, sprightly gazelles and the beautiful, striped zebra with your own eyes is sure to make you appreciate the beauty of nature and the world.
The Serengeti National Park takes its name from the word Serengeti from the Maasai language, which means "endless plain." These endless plains cover almost 15,000 square kilometers of land!
They include an amazing variety of habitats, including forest, woodlands, the Serengeti savanna, and of course, the plains themselves.
The eco-system of these plains is perhaps the oldest in the world. The plant life and animal life of Serengeti are estimated to have remained almost exactly the same for the last million years. Seeing them with your own eyes is like looking backward in time.
Maasai people are famous for their fascinating customs and bright dress. Rather than using a court system, like we're used to, to settle disputes, an informal process they call "amitu" is used in which the offender must apologize, possibly with a payment in cattle.
They are known for wearing elaborate earrings that stretch the earlobes. The earrings are made of pieces of elephant tusks, stones, wood, and more. Maasai clothing is often a bright red color. Warriors and others will often wear pink or include blue in their outfits.
Kopjes are giant collections of rocks that come from ancient volcanic activity. These unusual rocks create a micro-habitat that allows even more diversity of life to thrive in the Serengeti.
The kopjes are the inspiration for "Pride Rock" from the Lion King. You can see this for yourself if you visit the Simba Kopjes, the tallest kopjes in Serengeti National Park, and a common place for lions to gather.
The "Big 5" animals are five of the biggest, most fantastic animals in the world. Many places in the world have one or a few of them, but the Serengeti plains include all five. The Big 5 include the elephant, the lion, the rhino, the cheetah, and the Cape buffalo.
The term "Big 5" originally started as a reference to the five animals in Africa that were the most difficult of all to hunt.
The elephant is the largest land animal in the world. Elephants are amazing family animals that care not only for their own young, but for the young of other members of their group.
They are also famous for their memories. In times of great difficulty, sometimes the oldest member of a group is the only one that knows where to find resources. Some elephants are known to live for more than 80 years, but they can still guide the group to the places they remember from their youth.
The cheetah is the fastest running animal in the world. With a spine like a spring, its whole body is built for speed.
Rhinos are famous for their impressive horns. Their name even means "nose horn." Seeing these living bulldozers up close is an awesome experience you won't soon forget.
Lions are known as the king of beasts. A lion's roar is so loud that you can hear it from 5 miles away. Their cubs are often born around the same time, and the mothers watch each others' children for them.
Buffalos may not have the size of elephants, the single powerful horn of the rhino, or the teeth of the great cats, but they are incredibly fearsome animals. Buffalo actually kill more hunters than any other animal in the Serengeti, and they can even kill lions.
Along with the Big 5, you can capture magnificent photos of zebras and huge herds of wildebeests. Hippos lounging in the water, hyenas, stately giraffes, and more will make for fantastic photos to show off when you return home.
If you're lucky, you can also find great shots of Nile crocodiles floating stealthily through the water, or exploding out of the water to attack their prey. The Serengeti is also home to the famous honey badger species, renowned for its toughness and care for its young.
The Serengeti is famous for its Great Migration. The annual trip is most known for wildebeests, but hundreds of thousands of zebras and gazelles make the trip as well as they all search for grass.
You can watch some of the best animal hunters in the world as they work for their daily meals. The powerful and stealthy cats in actions make an awesome sight that you'll never forget.
Listen to the beautiful taarab music of Swahili culture during your Serengeti trip. It mixes Arab and Indian sounds for a combination you won't hear anywhere else.
Try their unique Ndizi na nyama, a stew made of meat and bananas, or the chipsi mayai, a potato chip omelet. You can tell all your friends back home about these unique dishes.
We hope you enjoyed reading about these Serengeti facts. To learn more about the beautiful sights and experiences in Africa, or to book a trip to see them for yourself, check out our other pages
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