Travel-Trotter

by Caroline Niebauer

Baboons, giraffes, zebras, and elephants what do all these animals have in common?  They all can be found in the Lale Manyara National Park famous for its tree climbing lions which we sadly did not see.  We saw many other amazing animals like as mentioned before but I’ll be focusing on 3 the of them. Baboons, giraffes and elephants.

First baboons, we saw 100s of these interesting creatures and they are cool for many reasons but here are just a few fun facts about baboons. First they do not have hair on their butts and they are some of the worlds largest monkeys and they can grow from 27-30 inches tall (60-86 cm) and their tails can reach from 16 to 23 inches, that’s more than 50 inches in total and they can weigh about as much as a human child!

Next are giraffes, these tall creatures are very graceful despite their long legs and necks. We saw many of these at all the parks but we saw the biggest tower (group of giraffes) here. Giraffes are the tallest land mammal on earth and their legs can be more than 6 feet tall. Some other interesting facts about  these tall creatures is their tongue is a foot long and purple! Lions usually don’t go near them because if they feel threatened they will kick said lion and one kick can kill the lion.

Lastly I will be focusing on elephants, they are the largest land animal on earth. Some interesting facts about these animals is that they are targeted by many poachers because of their ivory tusks. Interestingly the way to tell African and Asian elephants apart is that African elephants ears are shaped like Africa and the adult African elephants are typically larger.

To conclude safari was very fun and I am very happy to have had to had this experience and to have seen all the animals.