Every year, the
wildebeests migrate across Africa's Serengeti plains. In doing so, they eat
a lot of grass, drown in the rivers, die of thirst, give birth to about a half
a million baby wildebeests in the space of about three weeks, and provide dinner
for pretty much all the African carnivores.
The
wildebeest kind of looks like it was put together out of an incomplete kit,
but its odd body actually suits its ecosystem well. The only problem the large
herds face is that the animals quickly exhaust the food supply, so they have
to keep moving. They make a yearly round trip of over 800 kilometers, going
north in the dry summer months, then south when the rains come. The wildebeest
is the dominant herbivore of the Serengeti, and ranges over the park, the Igorongoro
Conservation Authority Area and the Kenya Maasai Mara Reserve. More wildebeests
live in the adjacent regions of Arusha and Shinyanga.
Along
the way, they stock the larders of lions, cheetahs, crocodiles, tigers, jackals,
and vultures. Wildebeests have no defenses against predators, nor can they outrun
anything. They survive as a species by having all their young within a three-week
breeding period. Calves can stand within seven minutes on average, and those
which cannot stand within that brief time are left to die.
While wildebeests live in many African locales, the most impressive and reliable migration is that off the Serengeti plains, initiated at the beginning of the long dry season, typically May or June. Lines and columns of wildebeests up to fifty kilometers long have been observed from the air, heading to green fields.
