African Safari

Highlights

To protect themselves from strong winds and the glaring sun during the day, addax dig ‘beds’ into the sand with their forefeet in which they rest, often in the shade of boulders or bushes.

Heavily built with short legs and long spiraled horns on both sexes. Coat color is white in summer, darkening gradually in winter. On the forehead is a tuft of dense black hair which resembles a toupe’. A band of white hair forms an “X” across the nose.

They are most active from dusk until dawn. Superbly adapted to desert conditions and can go most of their lives without drinking water. They get moisture from plants and the dew which collects on them during evening and early morning. Their light color helps to deflect heat from sun; their broad, flat hooves facilitate travel on desert sands. Daily variation in body temperature reduces the need for evaporative cooling, thus conserving water.

Highlights

African painted dogs’ large, round ears allow for excellent hearing that is vital to the pack hunt, but they also serve as radiators of heat in a hot climate.

African painted dogs are pack animals. Females leave the pack when mature and males typically stay with their pack.

Their unique coat patterns, specialize pack communication and teamwork have made them one of the most successful hunters in all of Africa, with a 70%-90% rate of success.

African painted dogs are threatened mainly by habitat loss, which has led to human-wildlife conflict. Painted dogs are also susceptible to diseases carried by domestic dogs, such as distemper and parvovirus. The Living Desert actively supports African painted dog conservation efforts through the Painted Dog Conservation organization.

Highlights

The Amur leopard is one of many species of animal that zoos are conserving through captive breeding.

The Amur leopard is the most northerly subspecies of the leopard species that occurs over most of Africa and southern Asia. It has a tawny-gold coat patterned with the distinctive black rosettes common in all leopards. The head, lower limbs and belly are covered with these solid black rosettes. Leopards eat just about any animal they can catch, including birds, hares, beetles, baboons or deer. Their principal predator is man, who hunts them for sport and their spotted pelts.

Leopards are solitary except during the mating season. Only females raise the young, litters of two to four cubs born after a gestation is approximately 96 days. Cubs remain with their mother for 18 to 24 months, when they become independent.

Hunting mainly at night, they stalk and ambush their prey by waiting in a tree until their quarry is within striking distance, then attack with a short burst of speed, grabbing their victim and strangling it. They are very strong and will often drag their kill up into a tree. This allows them to eat their meal at leisure, away from other large predators. Leopards have also been known to eat carrion.

Highlights

They are often called the “unicorn of the desert”, because, when you look at them from the side, they appear to have only one horn.

One of the grazing antelopes, this smallest oryx has a white body with black markings on the face and legs. Their horns, which measure up to 2 1/2 feet long, are nearly straight and their hooves are splayed and shovel-like.

They eat whatever vegetation is available, feeding mainly at night when it is most succulent. They do not need to drink free water, getting their moisture from plants and occasionally digging hollows under rocks and bushes with horns and hooves for shade. Before becoming extinct in the wild, they were preyed upon by Striped Hyenas, Arabian Wolves, Lions, and Bedouins. Herds usually consist of 10 to 20 animals, with one dominant male mating with the females.

As true desert specialists, they survive through several adaptations, such as remaining in the shade during the daytime; excavating scrapes in shady ground and lying down to offload body heat to the cooler sand and reduce body surface exposed to drying winds. Their temperatures can rise to 113F without ill effects and no valuable water is wasted by sweating or panting. Oryx may travel 10 to 20 miles at night to new feeding areas.

Highlights

Although dwarf and banded mongoose are cousins with similar traits, these African animals have unique characteristics all their own.

Highlights

The bat-eared fox is possibly named after the Egyptian slit-faced fruit bat, which also has ears that are large in proportion to its head.

Their coats are yellowish-brown with brown feet and ear tips and blackish brown faces. Their legs are relatively short, and tails bushy, darkening in color towards the tip and their ears are approximately 5 inches long.

They are the only canids that prefer insects to mammalian prey. Eighty percent of their diet consists of insects, particularly harvester termites and dung beetles, as well as fruits, scorpions and an occasional small mammal or bird. They are hunted by native peoples for their pelts and meat and also by carnivores such as the black-backed jackal, slender mongoose and brown hyena.

Bat-eared foxes usually breed in pairs, giving birth in self-dug dens. But single males may breed with two females and two or three breeding dens may be clustered within a few hundred meters, where soil and vegetation are suitable. After a 60-70 day gestation period, two to five pups are born. Juveniles achieve adult size at 4 months, when they begin to accompany adults on foraging trips. Groups can include up to 12 foxes.