48 Fun Facts About Savanna

Which pack-hunting savanna carnivore is also known as the painted wolf?

African wild dog: the pack that hunts together also looks after its own, sharing food with members too weak, sick or injured to hunt.

Savannas mostly form a transition belt between which two biomes?

Rainforest and desert: savanna grows where too little rain falls for closed forest but enough for grass and scattered trees, which is why it rings the tropical forests on both sides of the equator.

'Savanna' reached English via Spanish from which Caribbean language?

Taíno speakers met the first Spanish ships in the Caribbean, and the sailors carried home their words for things Europe had no names for, hurricane and hammock among them.

Which savanna cat routinely drags its kills up into trees?

Leopard: on the ground it would lose the carcass to lions or hyenas, which are bigger or come in packs, so it hauls the kill into the branches and returns to feed in safety.

Dry-season fires sweep through savannas again and again; how do they stop forest taking over?

By killing tree seedlings: the flames stay in the grass layer, so thick-barked adult trees survive and the grass resprouts from deep roots, but few saplings live long enough to close the canopy.

Which nocturnal savanna mammal rips open termite mounds with its claws and laps up the insects?

Aardvark: its Afrikaans name means 'earth pig', and it keeps digging fresh burrows, so the ones it abandons become ready-made dens for many other animals.

Which animal of South America's Llanos grasslands is the world's largest rodent?

Capybara: with slightly webbed feet it is as much at home in water as on grass, which suits plains that lie under water for months each year, and it can stay under for five minutes to hide from predators.

Which African bird rides on rhinos and zebras, picking ticks from their hides?

Oxpecker: it eats the ticks on its host's hide, but researchers have argued over whether it is a helpful cleaner or a parasite that also feeds on the animal's blood.

Regular Indigenous burning is credited with the savannas of tropical Australia and which neighbouring island?

New Guinea: its southern lowlands hold savanna much like northern Australia's, and villagers there still set it alight at the end of each dry season.

Which tree dominates the canopy of Australia's tropical savannas?

Eucalyptus: many species keep spare buds protected under their bark, so after a grass fire has scorched the trunk the tree simply sprouts new leaves and branches.

The Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna, spreads across the central plateau of which country?

Brazil: the Cerrado has become the country's soy and cattle heartland, and that farming boom has cleared much of its native vegetation.

The Llanos, a vast tropical grassland east of the Andes, straddles Venezuela and which other country?

Colombia shares the Llanos with Venezuela: one grassland that the rains turn into a seasonal wetland and the dry months turn back into cattle range, worked since Spanish colonial days.

The Serengeti spans southwestern Kenya and which country, home to most of its protected area?

Tanzania holds the bulk of the Serengeti, including the national park, which meets Kenya's Maasai Mara reserve at the border, so the migrating herds walk from one country into the other.

The name "Serengeti" is usually said to come from a Maa word meaning what?

Endless plains is the meaning every guidebook gives, tracing the name to a Maasai word, siringet, yet that word turns up in no dictionary of the Maasai language.

The great wildebeest migration begins each year in which conservation area of the southern Serengeti?

Ngorongoro: the herds gather on its short-grass plains early in the year because the rains have just greened them, and about half a million calves are born there before the loop north begins.

A rhino's horn is made of the same protein as which part of the human body?

Fingernails: the horn is keratin and has no healing power at all, yet demand for it as a traditional remedy drives the poaching that has left most rhino species endangered.

Wildebeest of the Great Migration usually begin crossing the Mara River into Kenya in which month?

July: the herds are following the rains north in search of fresh grass, and the crocodiles waiting at the crossing points are what draw the safari crowds.

The Sahel, the savanna belt south of the Sahara, takes its name from an Arabic word for what?

Coast or shore: the belt is pictured as the shoreline along the Sahara's southern side, and in Algeria and Tunisia the same Arabic word names real coastal plains and hills.

Which South African park became the country's first national park in 1926?

Kruger: Paul Kruger's Boer republic set the land aside in 1898 because hunters were wiping out its game, and a British army officer, James Stevenson-Hamilton, became the reserve's first warden in 1902.

What is the largest and heaviest living land animal?

African bush elephant: bulls stand more than 3 metres at the shoulder, and unlike Asian elephants both sexes carry tusks, which they use to dig, lift and strip bark from trees.

In 2021 the IUCN split Africa's elephants into savanna and which other species?

Forest elephant: genetic evidence persuaded experts that the smaller of the two is a species of its own, and judged alone it proved Critically Endangered, a step worse than its savanna cousin.

What are an African elephant's huge ears mainly for?

Shedding heat: flapping moves air over large blood vessels on the inner side and cools the blood, and African elephants have far bigger ears than their Asian relatives.

Giraffes are the tallest land animals and also the largest of which group of mammals?

Ruminants: like a cow, a giraffe swallows its leaves, then sends a ball of cud all the way back up that neck to the mouth for a second chew.

What are the horn-like structures on a giraffe's head called?

Ossicones are cartilage that has turned to bone and stay covered in skin and hair, and bulls use them as clubs when they swing their necks at each other.

What gives a giraffe its towering neck?

Seven very long vertebrae: a giraffe has exactly as many neck bones as a human, but each of them is more than 25 cm long.

A giraffe's tongue is dark, almost black; what is the colour thought to protect it from?

Sunburn: the tongue is about 45 cm long and spends much of the day out in the sun wrapping around leaves, while thick saliva and tough skin deal with the thorns.

Which sound does a cheetah mother use to call her hidden cubs?

A chirp: unlike lions and tigers, a cheetah cannot roar; it chirps, purrs, growls and hisses instead, and adults greet each other with the same call.

Unlike most cats, a cheetah cannot fully do what with its claws?

Retract them: with no sheath to slide back into, the claws stay out and bite into the ground like the cleats on a running shoe, giving the cat grip at full sprint.

Outside sub-Saharan Africa, wild lions survive today in which one country?

India: several hundred Asiatic lions live in and around the Gir forest of Gujarat, the last of a population that once ranged west to Turkey and was largely shot out by hunters.

A lion pride is made up of related females and cubs plus what?

One or a few unrelated adult males hold a pride only until stronger rivals fight their way in, often within a few years, while the lionesses stay together for life.

Spotted hyena clans are unusual among mammals in which way?

Females dominate males: they are about a tenth heavier and more aggressive, and even a low-ranking mother's cubs outrank an adult male who has joined from another clan.

The spotted hyena's famous 'laugh' is usually a sign of what?

Nervousness or submission: the giggle comes from an animal that is on edge or giving way to a higher-ranking one, and despite the scavenger image this is mainly a hunter that kills its own food.

What colour is a zebra's skin beneath its coat?

Black: the stripes are only in the hair, where the white bands are simply fur that grows without pigment, and no two animals wear the same pattern.

Most evidence supports which explanation for why zebras have stripes?

They deter biting flies: in a 2019 trial horse flies kept failing to land on zebras, and on horses dressed in zebra-print coats, while plain-coated horses nearby got bitten.

By what shorter name is the wildebeest also known?

Gnu: Dutch settlers called the animal wildebeest, 'wild beast', while the shorter name, with its silent G, was borrowed from the Khoisan peoples who knew it first.

Blue wildebeest drop most of their calves within about three weeks; what does the timing achieve?

It swamps the predators: lions and hyenas can eat only so many calves at once, so most newborns get through the first risky weeks, and each is on its feet and running within minutes.

Rather than bury its head in the sand, what does an ostrich really do when it cannot outrun danger?

Lies flat on the ground: with its pale head and neck stretched along the soil the bird blends in, and from a distance it looks as if the head has vanished, which may be how the myth began.

The secretarybird, an African bird of prey with crane-like legs, kills its prey how?

By stomping on it: the bird runs prey down on foot with its wings spread and crest raised, then hammers it with its feet, a method it uses even on snakes.

The springbok's stiff-legged leaps into the air are called what?

Pronking: the word comes from the Afrikaans for showing off, and the leaping springbok gave South Africa's national rugby team both its emblem and its nickname.

Australia's compass termite gets its name from mounds that are aligned how?

Along a north–south axis: the broad flat sides catch the mild morning and evening sun while only the thin edge meets the fierce midday sun, which is thought to keep the nest from overheating.

Unlike ants, most termite colonies are founded by what?

A monogamous king and queen pair: a male ant dies soon after mating, but the termite king seals himself into the first chamber with the queen, helps raise the first young and stays her mate for life.

The baobab genus Adansonia is native to Africa, Australia and which large island, home to most of its species?

Madagascar has six baobab species found nowhere else, and like their African cousin they sit out the long dry season on water stored in their swollen trunks.

Which African bird leads people to wild bees' nests and then feeds on the wax left behind?

Honeyguide: it chatters and flies ahead until the honey-hunters reach the nest, waits while they smoke out the bees and take the honey, then moves in for the wax.

Meerkats live in arid, open habitats in Namibia, South Africa and which other country?

Botswana: much of it is Kalahari, where a meerkat mob posts a guard on a rock or bush to bark a warning while the others keep their heads down digging for food.

The Everglades, the Pantanal and the Sudd are examples of which category of savanna?

Flooded savanna: grass stands in slow, shallow water for part or all of the year, which is why Marjory Stoneman Douglas called her 1947 book on the Everglades 'River of Grass'.

Mediterranean savannas have mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers; which US state's oak-dotted grasslands are the classic example?

California: its widely spaced valley oaks can live for centuries, but farms and housing have taken much of the valley land where they grew.

Which savanna pig kneels on its padded front wrists to graze?

Warthog: the tough pads on its wrists form before birth, and at night it backs into a borrowed burrow so that its tusks face anything that tries to follow.

Which thorny, flat-topped tree of the African savanna is the giraffe's favourite food?

Acacia: its long thorns keep most browsers away, but a giraffe simply reaches around them with its tongue and leathery lips, and spends most of the day doing so.