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Episode 4411: Serengeti Hunting Plain, animal migration ecological habitat
"Huang Jie Bo Style Chasing Shadows" public welfare science education articles, any form of reprint please contact the author (WeChat Jumboheritagelist or Huang_Jumbo)
Serengeti National Park is a large national park in Tanzania located in the Serengeti region that is known for the massive migration of more than 1.5 million wildebeests and about 250,000 zebras each year. Inscribed on the Organization's World Heritage List in 1981.
The vast Serengeti Plains are home to 1.5 million hectares of savannahs and numerous herbivores, antelopes, gazelles and zebras. Every year, as they migrate in search of water, there are always predators trailing behind, making it one of the most spectacular sights in the world.
Located on the Serengeti Plain in northern Tanzania, Serengeti National Park borders Kenya's Masai Mara (which is actually one, artificially dividing the border into two parts). Its name comes from the Maasai language, meaning "endless plain".
Not only is it one of Africa's most famous national parks, it is also a huge ecosystem and the only place in Africa where a large number of terrestrial animals are still migrating. It was built in 1951 and inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1981, covering a total area of 14,763 square kilometers.
The altitude is between 920 and 1850 meters. It was enlarged in 1959. It is internationally recognized as part of the Serengeti-Ngorongoro Biological Reserve (together with the adjacent Masuwa Hunting Reserve) in UNESCO's Man and Ecology Programme and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in the same year.
The Serengeti is warm and dry all year round, except for the rainy seasons from March to May and From October to November.
If you have seen the movie "The Lion King", you will not forget the various animals in the film. That's right, Serengeti is the prototype for The Lion King, where there are about 1.5 million wildebeests, 200,000 zebras,
300,000 antelopes, 53,000 bison, 5,000 elephants, 3,500 hyenas, 3,000 lions, 1,000 leopards, 300 East African wild dogs, 225 cheetahs, 31 rhinos and a large number of animals such as hippos, giraffes and baboons. More than 500 species of birds have been recorded, including ostriches, hornbills, bald eagles and flamingos.
The "Great Migration of Animals", which takes place every year in the Serengeti, attracts tourists from all over the world. Millions of wildebeests follow the pace of 200,000 zebras, chasing fresh aquatic weeds, moving clockwise across the Serengeti-Masai Mara Plain. Even though almost 250,000 wildebeests are hunted and drowned every year on their migration, they repeat this feat year after year!
The Maasai people mostly grazed their cattle in the open plains, which they began to call the "endless plains" about 200 years before European explorers discovered the area. The pronunciation of the word "Serengeti" is close to what the Maasai people call the region. The German geographer and explorer Oskar Baumann entered the district in 1892 and killed three rhinos during his stay in the Ngorongoro Depression.
Stuart Edward White was the first Englishman to arrive in the region, arriving in the northern Serengeti in 1913, where he came in the 1920s and stationed himself in the area around Serrolena for three months. During this time, he and his companions shot about 50 lions. Due to the sharp decline in the number of local lions due to hunting, the British decided in 1921 to establish a 3.2 square kilometer prey game reserve in some areas.
In 1929 the area of the game reserve was expanded to the entire Serengeti area. These actions became the basis for the establishment of the Serengeti region as a national park in 1951.
The national park was made even more famous by the early work of Bernhard Gerzymek and his son Michael in the 1950s, who participated in the filming of the documentary Serengarti Should Not Have Died, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1959.
As the main inhabitation of the Maasai became part of the national park, and in order to protect the local wildlife, the Maasai moved to the Ngorongoro Highlands to live. This action remains quite controversial to this day, with opponents arguing that it was carried out under duress and deception by the colonial authorities.
Serengeti National Park is Tanzania's first national park and it currently has a demonstration and leadership role in Tanzania's tourism industry. Tourism departments often arrange tours that package the Serengeti area with Lake Manara, Tarangire, Arusha National Park and Ngorongoro Reserve.
Serengeti National Park includes 14,750 square kilometres of grassland plains and savannas, as well as forests and woodlands along the river. The park has a savannah climate, with an altitude of 920 to 1850 meters. Serengeti National Park is located in northern Tanzania, bordering Kenya to the north, connecting Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve. To the southeast is the Ngorongoro Reserve,
To the southwest is the Nyalikungu Game Reserve (Maswa Game Reserve), to the west is the Akhumbaigu and Groome Game Reserve, and to the northeast is the Loliondo Game Control Area. Together, these areas are called the Serengeti Ecosystem.
Serengeti National Park is usually divided into three topographical zones:
Serengeti Plains: The Serengeti Plains are vast, and the almost treeless grasslands in the south are the national park's signature landscape. Wildebeests on the plains are mainly active from December to May,
In addition, zebras, gazelles, impala, oryx, horned wildebeest, buffalo, African oryx, etc. also inhabit this area during the rainy season. Crystalline rocks formed by volcanic ash are the main rock formations on the plains, and some areas of the hills are composed of granite.
Western Corridor: Located in the more remote location of the National Park, it is a swamp-like savannah covered with black clay. The Grande River in the corridor is the main habitat of Nile crocodiles, colobus monkeys, war eagles and other animals, and migratory animals also pass through this area from May to July.
Serengeti North: Consists mainly of open woodland (mainly myrrh) and hills, stretching from Serorana in the south to the Mara River on the border with Kenya in the north. In addition to migratory wildebeests and zebras (which usually occur from July to August and November), elephants, giraffes, oryx and others inhabit this dense savanna.
The rainy season in the park is from November to May, of which December, March and April are the rainiest months, with precipitation decreasing from west to east and north, and the grassland degenerates into a desert in severe drought years. The average annual temperature is 20.8 degrees Celsius.
Apart from the staff of the Tanzania National Park Authority, researchers and staff of the Frankfurt Zoological Association and local hotel and hotel services, Serengeti National Park prohibits permanent residence by anyone. Cerrolena is home to most researchers and is the main command centre of the national park, equipped with a small temporary runway for aircraft.
In addition to migrating ungulates, Serengeti National Park is also home to the "African Big Five". Of these, about 3,000 lions remain, considered the most abundant in Africa; African elephants, which declined in poaching in the 1980s, live mainly in the northern part of the park.
The population has recovered; about 1,000 African leopards remain; black rhinos inhabit mostly residual hills in the middle of the park; african buffalo are currently relatively abundant but threatened by disease.
Serengeti National Park also includes cheetahs, antelopes, wildebeest, bighorn impala, hyenas, baboons, impala, African wild dogs, giraffes and other animals. In addition, there are about 500 species of birds in the park, such as ostriches, snake vultures, South African great bustards, red-crowned cranes, African vultures, war eagles, lovers parrots, and vultures.
Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981 with an area of 1,476,300 ha, the Serengeti National Park is considered to meet the following criteria in the World Heritage Registration Benchmarks:
(vii) A natural phenomenon or region that contains outstanding natural beauty and aesthetic importance.
(x) possessing the most important and significant diversity of biological natural ecological habitats, including endangered species of endangered species that are of universal value from a conservation or scientific point of view.
At the end of 2010, Tanzania's governor, Jakaya Kikwete, proposed the construction of a road across the Serengeti National Park, arguing that the construction of the road would allow the development of poor areas along the way. Nature conservation groups and foreign governments such as Kenya believe that this move will cause irreparable damage to animal migration and ecosystems in national parks.
In late June 2011, due to public opposition from the international community, the local government decided to cancel plans to build a road from Musoma to Arusha through the national park. The Serengeti is currently well protected, but scientists remain concerned that the pressure from future population expansion will lead to the reopening of road construction plans in the future.
The Ngorongoro Reserve is a protected area in Tanzania's volcanic highlands, about 180 km west of Arusha. The reserve is under the supervision of the Ngorongoro Reserve Authority and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979. Ngorongoro Crater, a large caldera, is located in this reserve, and the reserve is named after this crater.
Based on the large number of fossils found in Oldaway Canyon, it can be judged that a variety of humanoids lived in the area 30,000 years ago. Thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers survived here. The Ambro people arrived in the district about 2,000 years ago, and the Datooga people merged more than 1700 years ago. The Maasai drove both of these people out of the region in the 19th century.
The World Heritage Site is considered to meet the following criteria in the World Heritage Registration Criteria:
(iv) the type of building that presents an important period in human history, or a combination of architecture and technology, or a model of excellence in the landscape.
(viii) Notable examples of major stages of development in the history of the Earth representing records of the evolution of life, important and continuous geological processes, significant topographical or geological features, etc.
(ix) Represents a significant example of ongoing ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems and flora and fauna.
Animals in nature (to avoid predation) must learn to run, find the best pasture and eat it.
The corridor is an extension of the central Serengeti region, where the Grumiti River meanders over its plains of steep hills, with bushes and forests scattered on both sides of the river. The northern corridor is a remote area that leads to the scenic Rob region, which also leads to the Marseille-Mara eco-region at the kenyan border and across the border line. It is often said that there are too many tourists in Serengeti National Park,
Of course, if you want to have a perfect wilderness experience, you naturally have to know how to properly arrange your trip to the Serengeti. Indeed, people tend to divide the tour period into several sections and play for a few days in the parks of Serengeti, Ngolongoro, Manyara and Tarangil.
This means that travel will be concentrated in a few areas with roads. And you have to know. Serengeti's vast expanse of land is deserted and sparsely populated, and it's great that people who really love to travel will be happy to go deeper into those areas.
In this extremely simple environment, there is an unbelievably large collection of organisms— vast grasslands, large herbivores, and the predators that surround them. When you first experience this simplicity, you can't help but be impressed by this self-operating law of the natural ecosystem.
This life force is so intense, so shocking, if we want to effectively illustrate this power, we can only say: it makes all the other big wildlife parks in Africa look like barren wasteland. However, when we return to the same location during the dry season, you will find that it also looks like a wasteland.
The biggest characteristic of herbivores is that they eat grass. The real spectacle of the Serengeti lies not only in the huge herd of wildebeest that travels a long way once a year, but also in the combination of different kinds of herbivores. Although they have different habits and herbivorous techniques, they can be combined to become the world's largest "lawn mower".
One obvious way to protect yourself from being hunted by the enemy is to be large enough and strong enough. Elephants are clearly an outstanding example of this survival technique. However, they also have to pay a huge price for this - they must consume a staggering amount of food to maintain their huge bodies. However, because the main thing all herbivores do every day is to eat grass, this method is also feasible in some regions.
As for body size, it is worth noting that all herbivores use their body size to a greater or lesser extent for self-defense. It's not just an elephant that won't be caught by a lion; a strong buffalo won't be easily killed by a cheetah; just as a wildebeest won't be subject to a serval cat; not even a little Thomson gazelle won't be thrown down by a lion.
Usually when lions are slaughtering cattle, they give priority to hunting calves or sick cattle, and usually adult strong cattle are not afraid of lions unless they are alone in the grassland.
The herbivores are likely to be in the territory of a lion herd or group of hyenas. Maybe one day a member of this group is destined to be dragged away, but from the probability point of view, it is not necessarily the individual who is full of worries.
If it were about the size of the wildebeest or zebra in this group, it would not be a bigger target for predators standing in the herd. Assembling in groups is obviously a very interesting idea, because not only can you not be too noticed by the enemy, but you can also work with your companions to protect yourself with collective strength.
Known for its unique geological and meteorological environment, the Serengeti has created a seasonal distribution of grass growth with significant time lags, which is the driving force behind the annual migration of herbivores.
During migration, wildebeest's main enemies are lions and hyenas. Because they have to take care of their own incapacitated pups, the wildebeest's predation movements are greatly limited. Indeed, Serengeti's carnivores have little significant impact on the overall number of herbivores, whereas Ngolongoro's non-migratory wildebeest is greatly limited in number to the locally resident hyenas and lions. However, for migratory animals, injury or fatigue can lead to high mortality, because they are followed by large flocks of vultures on their journeys...
In general, wildebeests march from the plains of dwarf grass and march northwest until they reach the Western Corridor of the Serengeti and the Grumiti River. After fearlessly crossing the Grumiti River, the migratory procession moves northward – usually in a huddle,
Crowd the entire Coleine Campground concession area, then cross the Tanken border into Massemara. Here they have to cross the Mara River, which is the real obstacle they encounter - the giant crocodile is waiting for these hesitant prey...
Jumbo Huang Notes: The Serengeti National Park is a Tanzanian national park in the Serengeti ecosystem in the Mara and Simiyu regions. It is famous and well known for its annual migration of over 1.5 million white-bearded (or brindled) wildebeest and 250,000 zebra and for its numerous Nile crocodile and honey badger.
That migration is the largest remaining unaltered animal migration. It contains 1.5 million ha of savanna. The park is the centerpiece of the Serengeti Ecosystem and twice as large (which includes neighboring Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Maasai Mara National Reserve in bordering Kenya.)