50 Fun Facts About Kalahari

What colour is the sand that covers vast areas of the Kalahari?

Roughly 900,000 square kilometres of it spread across three countries with no permanent surface water.

The name Kalahari comes from a Tswana word meaning what?

The related word Kgalagadi means 'a waterless place', and the desert has huge areas of red sand with no permanent surface water.

Roughly how large is the Kalahari Desert?

The surrounding Kalahari Basin is far bigger still, at over 2.5 million square kilometres.

The Kalahari's only permanent river ends not in the sea but in what?

Its marshes in the north-west of the desert are rich in wildlife.

Why is the Kalahari not strictly a desert even where rainfall is very low?

Only the far south-west, around the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, is bare enough to count as true semi-desert.

Which true desert lies to the west of the Kalahari, along the Atlantic coast?

After good rains the Kalahari has huge tracts of excellent grazing and supports far more life than its coastal neighbour.

Roughly how much rain do the driest parts of the Kalahari receive each year?

The wettest north-eastern areas get just over 500 mm, and the driest spots log more than 4,000 hours of sunshine a year.

During which months is frost common in the Kalahari?

Its altitude of 600 to 1,600 metres keeps it cooler than the Sahel, so winter nights can drop well below freezing.

Which cavern beneath the Kalahari holds the largest documented non-subglacial underground lake?

Huge subterranean water reserves under the desert may be leftovers of the ancient lakes that once covered it.

Which vast ancient body of water once dominated the Kalahari before draining or drying up about 10,000 years ago?

It may have covered 120,000 square kilometres, an area larger than Switzerland; its salt pans are what remain.

Which fruit, also called the horned melon or jelly melon, is endemic to a region of the Kalahari?

Its exact home region within the desert is unknown.

For roughly how long have the San people lived as hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari?

They hunt with bows and poisoned arrows and get most of their water from roots and desert melons.

In what do the San traditionally store water in the Kalahari?

During droughts they also dig sip wells, sucking water up through a hollow grass stem into the shell.

The San tip their arrows with diamphotoxin, a slow-acting poison produced by what?

The larvae belong to the genus Diamphidia, and insects also supply about a tenth of the San's animal protein.

Which South African writer brought the Kalahari San to world attention in the 1950s with The Lost World of the Kalahari?

The most famous rock-art panel at the Tsodilo Hills is named after him.

What is the Kalahari Debate, which began among anthropologists in the 1980s, about?

Traditionalists like Richard Lee say yes; revisionists led by Edwin Wilmsen argue the San long traded with and were marginalised by neighbours.

Which 1980 comedy follows a Kalahari San hunter trying to return a Coca-Cola bottle to the deities who dropped it?

Jamie Uys's film became the most successful South African movie ever made at the time and spawned a sequel plus three unofficial Hong Kong follow-ups.

Jamie Uys's 1980 Kalahari comedy was shot in Botswana and in Tsumkwe, in what is now which country?

Its star, Nǃxau ǂToma, had actually grown up as a herder on a farm rather than as a hunter-gatherer.

Roughly what share of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park lies on the Botswana side of the border?

Its 38,000 square kilometres combine two adjoining national parks, and Kgalagadi means 'place of thirst'.

How often are the Nossob and Auob rivers in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park said to flow?

Water still runs underground beneath the dry beds, feeding grass and camel thorn trees.

In 2000 the Kgalagadi reserve was launched as southern Africa's first what?

Presidents Festus Mogae and Thabo Mbeki opened it; a section within it later became Africa's first International Dark Sky Sanctuary.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is the second-largest game reserve in the world and covers what share of Botswana?

At 52,800 square kilometres it is larger than the Netherlands, and a 2008 bush fire burned about 80 percent of it.

In 2006, Botswana's High Court ruled that the eviction of which people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve was unlawful?

Removals had begun in 1997, the year after De Beers evaluated diamond prospects at Gope; a mine called Ghaghoo opened inside the reserve in 2014.

Which fossil riverbed in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve began forming around 16,000 years ago?

It is one of four fossilised rivers meandering through the flat, bush-covered reserve.

The Okavango Delta became which numbered site on the UNESCO World Heritage List in June 2014?

A year earlier it had been declared one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa.

The Okavango's floodwaters come from summer rain in the highlands of which country?

The surge travels 1,200 km in about a month, and the delta peaks in Botswana's dry winter, swelling to three times its permanent size.

What ultimately happens to nearly all the water that reaches the Okavango Delta?

About 11 cubic kilometres a year spread over the sandy floodplains, and much seeps into the shallow aquifer first.

Which of the Makgadikgadi's individual pans is the largest, at about 4,900 square kilometres?

Sua Pan is also the lowest point in the basin, and holds the baobab-studded national monument of Kubu Island.

A 2019 DNA study suggested what about the Makgadikgadi region 200,000 years ago?

At the time it was a fertile wetland of lakes, rivers, marshes and grasslands rather than a salt crust.

Which birds arrive on the Makgadikgadi pans in tens of thousands during the rainy season?

The pans also host one of Africa's biggest zebra populations once the rains bring grass.

What kind of animal is a meerkat?

Packs of up to 30 live in burrow systems with around 15 openings and two or three levels of tunnels.

Meerkats are immune to the venom of which creature, which they happily eat?

They are mostly insectivores, feeding heavily on beetles and moth larvae, with the odd small bird or lizard.

Which zoologist founded the Kalahari Meerkat Project, the long-term study behind the TV series Meerkat Manor?

The series followed one of more than a dozen study families, with narration by Bill Nighy.

Which meerkat family starred in the documentary series Meerkat Manor?

Bill Nighy narrated the original British broadcasts, with Sean Astin and later Stockard Channing dubbing the American versions.

The gemsbok, the Kalahari's signature antelope, takes its Afrikaans name from a Dutch word meaning what?

Despite the name, the chamois and the oryx are not closely related; the antelope's straight horns average 85 cm.

How do gemsbok get enough water in the Kalahari without drinking?

They can also dig a metre down for roots and tubers, and reach 60 km/h at full tilt.

The camel thorn tree of the Kalahari gets its name because which animal feeds on its leaves?

Giraffe is kameelperd in Afrikaans; the tree's seeds can be roasted as a coffee substitute and it is protected in South Africa.

Hoodia gordonii, the Kalahari succulent nicknamed Bushman's hat, became threatened by collectors after false claims that it was what?

Its flowers smell of rotting meat and are pollinated by flies.

The Tsodilo Hills in Botswana, a UNESCO site, hold roughly how many rock paintings?

Some are up to 24,000 years old, and the hills are known as the Male, Female and Child.

Which South African town, fed by a spring called 'The Eye', is known as the Oasis of the Kalahari?

Robert Moffat's mission there produced the Tswana Bible, and David Livingstone arrived there for his first posting in 1841.

Which Botswana town in the middle of the Kalahari supplies about 75% of the country's beef exports?

Its Afrikaner ranching history began with the flamboyant ivory trader Hendrik van Zyl around 1870.

Which national capital lies within the Kalahari Basin?

Bantu-speaking Tswana, Kgalagadi and Herero peoples share the region with the San and a few European settlers.

Which two hyena species both live in the Kalahari?

They share the sands with lion, cheetah, leopard and the African wild dog.

Botswana was home to about 63,500 San in 2017, giving it what share of the world's highest proportion of San people?

The neighbouring country to the west came second at 2.4% with just over 71,000 San counted in 2023.

Fossils from which site in northwestern Botswana show the Kalahari was far wetter 30,000-11,000 years ago?

The region then had permanent water and abundant vegetation, and probably even supported hippopotamuses.

What are the Kalahari's ancient dry riverbeds, which hold standing pools in the rainy season, called?

They cross the central northern reaches of the desert; the seasonally flooded pans and salt pans handle the rest of the drainage.

Roughly how large is the Kalahari Basin, which extends well beyond the desert itself?

It reaches deeper into Botswana, Namibia and South Africa and beyond, while the desert proper is about 900,000 sq km.

What dominates the desert's atmospheric circulation in winter?

In summer strong surface heating flips the pattern to a thermal low that steers moist easterlies from the Indian Ocean.

Ancient Lake Makgadikgadi may once have covered as much as how much of the Kalahari?

It drained or dried out about 10,000 years ago, and huge underground reserves may be its leftovers.

Which De Beers-linked site in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve was evaluated for diamond mining in 1996?

Evictions of the San and Bakgalagadi began the following year; the High Court later ruled them unlawful.