Africa Big Five Curios

The world has great land animals that must be protected from poaching and extinction. All of Earth’s continents have magnificent animals.

Africa has the Big Five: lion (Simba), African buffalo, leopard, African bush elephant, and black rhinoceros.

Asia has panda, Bengal tiger, snow leopard, King Cobra, Asian elephant, and black panther.

North America has grizzly bear, moose, bison, gray wolf, and polar bear.

South America has jaguar, caiman, poison dart frog, ocelot, and anaconda.

Australia has kangaroo, orangutan, Komodo dragon, birds of paradise, and crocodile.

Europe has reindeer, lynx, Eurasian wolf, brown bear, and urban fox. Antarctica has penguins that travel there for breeding.

The oceans host blue whale, great white shark, manta ray, cuttlefish, and bottlenose dolphin.

There are thousands of types of birds and insects that need conservation and protection.

Birds are the magnificeint living creatures in Africa and some of the examples of the birds in Africa are ostriches (Struthionidae), mesites, sunbirds, secretary bird (Sagittariidae), guineafowl (Numididae), and mousebirds(Coliidae). 

Also, several families of passerines are limited to the Afrotropics. These include rock-jumpers (Chaetopidae), bushshrikes (Malaconotidae), wattle-eyes, (Platysteiridae) and rockfowl (Picathartidae). Other common birds include parrots, various cranes, storks, herons, shoebill, bustards, sandgrouse, Coraciiformes, phasianids. 

The woodpeckers and allies include honeyguides, African barbets, African piculet, ground woodpecker, Dendropicos and Campethera. The birds of prey include the buzzards, harriers, Old World vultures, bateleur, Circaetus, Melierax and others. Trogons are represented by one genus (Apaloderma). African penguin is the only penguin species. Madagascar was once home to the now extinct elephant birds.

Africa is home to numerous songbirds. The red-billed quelea is the most abundant bird species in the world.These different species of birds should be conserved and protected as they bring beauty in African ecosystem. My works is to bring to continue protecting, saving and conserving all the birds.

The reptiles that are found in African are in their thousands and some of the examples are turtles, snakes, lizards and crocodiles. Madagascar is known to home to many types of chameleon. Some of examples of reptiles are African snakes and some of the examples are atractaspidids, elapids, viperines, colubrids, the pythonids, typhlopids and leptotyphlopids.

Some of the examples of the lizards, in Africa which are different many types of species of geckos, Cordylidae, as well as Lacertidae, Agamas, skinks, plated lizards and some monitor lizards are common. There are about a dozen general and more than fifty species of African amphisbaenians. Other examples of the reptiles are several genera of tortoises, and turtles.

Crocodiles are also some of the known crocodiles in Africa, and 5-7 species of crocodiles are also present.

Africa have thousands and thousands of different characteristic to African fauna and some of the examples. All these different types of fish that needs to be protected and conserved and are  Gonorhynchiformes, some lungfishes, many Characiformes, Osteoglossiformes, Siluriformes, Osmeriformes, Cyprinodontiformes and Cypriniformes.

Africa have more than a thousands species that needs to be protected and conserved from the excticion, poaching, killing if these African magnificent mammals.

There are three types of mammals in Africa and are: Tubulidentata (aardvarks), Afrosoricida (tenrecs and golden moles), and Macroscelidea (elephant shrews).

Being more specific East Africa have different types of mammals. The African known big five are all mammals and some of the examples of the big five are lion, leopard, African buffalo, African bush elephant, and black rhinoceros.

African have more than two hundred primates and some of the examples are: Four species of great apes (Hominidae) are endemic to Africa: both species of gorilla (western gorilla, Gorilla gorilla, and eastern gorilla, Gorilla beringei) and both species of the genus Pan (chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, and bonobo, Pan paniscus). Humans and their ancestors originated in Africa.

Other primates include colobuses, baboons, geladas, vervet monkeys, guenons, macaques, mandrills, crested mangabeys, white-eyelid mangabeys, kipunji, Allen’s swamp monkeys, Patas monkeys and talapoins. Lemurs and aye-aye are characteristic of Madagascar. See also Lists of mammals of Africa.

African have a lot of amphibian’s species that have been studied and documented for a long time as is the home of frogs and specifically giant bullfrogs and there are more than eight hundred amphibians in Africa that need to be protected, saved, and conserved.

Endemic to Africa are the families Arthroleptidae, Astylosternidae, Heleophrynidae, Hemisotidae, Hyperoliidae, Petropedetidae, Mantellidae. Also widespread are Bufonidae, Microhylidae, Rhacophoridae, Ranidae and Pipidae.

The characteristic of the African butterflies are they have a total of six legs, are exoskeleton, have two antannae, and they body is divided into three parts which are head, thorax, and abdomen. Genera which are species rich in Africa include Charaxes, Acraea, Colotis and Papilio, most notably Papilio antimachus and Papilio zalmoxis.

African have thousadnds of insects about 100,000. The examples of African insects are Mantophasmatodea,  migratory locust,  desert locust, termite, Anopheles gambiae, Aedes aegypti and Tsetse fly, bees, ants, butterflies, Hymenopterans, caterpillars, and beetles.

There are three types of invertbrates in Africa which are  Echinoderms, Bryozoa, and  Cubozoan. These inverterbrates should be protected and conserved as they are importet to our enviroment. The type Of Nematodes, the Onchocerca volvulus, Necator americanus, Wuchereria bancrofti and Dracunculus medinensis are human parasites.

The examples of the plant parasite or the nematodes are Meloidogyne, Pratylenchus, Hirschmanniella, Radopholus, Scutellonema and Helicotylenchus. Of the few Onychophorans, Peripatopsis and Opisthopatus live in Africa.

Reptiles are both terrestrial and aquatic. Some examples include turtles, crocodiles, lizards, and snakes.

Our biggest reptiles are crocodiles (Crocodilians), reticulated pythons (Squamata), Komodo dragons (Squamata), tuataras (Sphenodontia), and leatherback sea turtles (Testudines).

Reptiles are vertebrates, cold blooded, and scaly. Their eggs are internally fertilized, they have a lung, and they produce shelled eggs from which their offspring hatch. There are thousands of reptiles that need to be conserved and protected.

There are about 130 species of sea mammals, including seals, sea cows, baleen whales, sea lions, porpoise, humpback whales, sea otter, orca, fin whale, and polar bears.

Sea mammals give birth in the water, have the ability to live in water and on land, breastfeed their young, and are warm blooded.

Thousands of ocean species, like sharks, whales, manta rays, cuttlefish, and dolphins, need to be protected. Sea vegetation—microalgae, seagrasses, red algae, kelp, barnacles, and sargassum—are very important for survival of marine life.

The conservation and protection of marine life also saves plant producers in seas, oceans, and lakes: phytoplankton, algae, and bacteria.

The main groups of marine life are amphibians, sea mammals, and reptiles.