The longest big-mammal migration ever documented in Africa is discovered that surprised biologists and the mammal is a population of zebras that migrated more than 300-mile beeline across parts of Namibia and Botswana.
zebras migration
When we talk about Africa the food and water is aligned with the seasons, so the animals are. The Serengeti is the site of what most considers the most dramatic migration, with giant herds of millions of animals and the range is 750,000 zebras and 1.2 million wildebeests as well as gazelles and elands, traveling from the Ngorongoro area in southern Tanzania to the Masai Mara in lower Kenya and returning as the rains dictate.
When it comes to the longest trek endpoint to endpoint, Africa comes up with a new record. According to an article published online today in the journal Oryx, the migration, which has now been observed in consecutive years, isn’t on the scale of what goes down on the Serengeti.
The herd involves just a few thousand Burchell’s zebras. But the animals cover more than 500 kilometers in a straight-line, up-and-back journey across Namibia and Botswana.
“The almost unerring north-south direction was unusual, but there was an even bigger surprise. The distance covered by these zebra was a total shock to all of us involved in the study, as well as to people familiar with wildlife conservation in the region. Nobody knew that something of this scale, with this much ground covered, was occurring.” says lead author Robin Naidoo, senior conservation scientist at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
Nature is full of surprises and we cannot comment what comes next to shock us.
