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Did You Know?
- The African Buffalo is also known as the Cape Buffalo, Nyati, Affalo or Mbogo
- They are known as one of the Big Five in Africa, which refers to the Top 5 most difficult animals to hunt on foot. Others include, the Lion, Elephant, Rhinoceros and the Leopard
- The African Buffalo is not closely related to the Asian Water Buffalo despite their striking resemblance
The Dangers of Hunting
As mentioned above, the African Buffalo is one of the most dangerous animals in the world and is reported to kill more people in Africa than any other animal, however, this same thing is also said about the Rhinoceros and the Crocodile so I will let you decide which is most deadly. Responsible for many human deaths every year, hunters are lucky that most of this species population are confined to the boundaries of protected wildlife areas. Unfortunately, many hunters seem to love a challenge and as such, the Cape Buffalo population is on the decline.
African Buffalo Sub-Species
Although there is only one species of buffalo in Africa, there are 2 distinct sub-species. There is the larger Savanna Buffalo, which is typically found hanging out near watering holes along the Savanna (shocking, right?). The second sub-species is the much smaller Forest Buffalo, which believe it or not can be found frequenting watering holes throughout the lowland rainforest. Although, quite different from each other, both sub-species rely heavily on water and as such will not be found in areas that receive less than 10 inches of rain each year. This characteristic also makes it easy to find the African Buffalo as you just need to head to the local watering hole since this is where they will spend much of their day.
CHARGE!
If you do come across a herd of Buffalo, I urge you to proceed with caution. Typically, these herds can be in the hundreds, however, herds of over a thousand individuals have been recorded. While this may be an impressive site, the standard defence mechanism of a threatened buffalo herd is to charge. I don’t know about you but I am not too keen on hundreds of large, powerful animals with sharp horns charging towards me. As you could imagine, this technique works quite well protecting even the youngest and weakest individuals against dangerous predators such as lions and crocodiles.
Slider Photo Credits:
Photo 1: lkiwaner
Photo 2: Jamie Lantzy
Photo 3: Dfg13
Photo 4: Wikimedia
