SANParks.org Forums

I always love reading interesting facts about animals If you have any, please post them.
NOTE: Post facts not stories or assumptions. Stick to ANIMALS.

 The name 'leopard' came from the mistaken belief that they were a hybrid between a lion and a panther. A recessive gene causes melanism in some leopards, which people call panthers, but they are really just black leopards.
 An impala can leap up to 3 meters high and 11 meters in length.
 A giraffe can get by on only 5 minutes of sleep a day.
 Each turn in a set of male Kudu’s horns represents roughly 2 years of life.
 Hippos will eat elephant dung in times of drought and food deprivation.
 The Springhare buries itself alive during the day to protect itself by blocking the entrance to its burrow with sand.
 You can tell the difference in a male and female giraffe by looking at their horns – Males are bald, except for young males, who have hair, and old females, who don’t.

Very interesting WAC.

You can also tell the difference between a male giraffe and female by the way they drink. The male spreads his legs while the female bends her legs.

You sure about that?

# The only animal with 4 knees is the elephant.
# All porcupines float in water.
# Bats always turn left when they exit a cave.
# The elephant is the only mammal that cannot jump.
# Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
# The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint, no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
# Impala are never furthur than 10kms from water.
# When nearing a waterhole, gamepaths will merge.
# In 1975, a horse gave birth to a zebra for the very first time.
# Elephant trunks can hold 4 gallons of water.
# Man is the only animal that sleeps on its back.

My source: here

i never knew that

here is one...............

# the hildebrands horseshoe bat has the lowest echolocation call of all the horseshoe bats.

I saw this on a program yesterday. A banded mongoose hunts rats and will use the black shoulder kite as a way of finding them. They watch and see when a kite is hunting and then run to locate the rat and catch it before the kite does.

The porcupine is the second largest rodent next to the capibara of south-america !

lions will defenatly ly on their backs and sleep.
have seen it yesterday, and on other occasions...
Quite funny to watch. Lot of the guests want to step out of the vehicle and lay next to them in the shade and the slight breeze

Just a question about the hippo feeding on elephant dung in times of drought..
I read it on internet, but i am not convinced yet.
Does anyone knows more about this???
Maybe some more websites who state this??

regards,
Jaap

Jaap,

I saw a DVD about this particular event. It is true.

The fact is it was in extreme droughts and that hippo was the only surviving hippo. The elephants came to that waterhole and after one of them died, the lions tear it open and eat on it. The hippo went out of the water, chase the lions away, and started feeding on the inside's of the elephant. It was not dung dropped by the elephant, it was more its stumachs interior.

I will look up the name of the DVD and let you know.

Lions definitely sleep on their backs!!!

Easy in their sleep so to speak...they can jump the width of a Kruger road with ease and small /Medium Thorn trees...no problem.

@ WAC the Kudu Bull only ever has 2 and a half turns when fully grown and they can age to 10-12 which means they should have 5 turns which is not like that at all

... distances of up to 12m .... Stevenson-Hamilton (1947)

Bet you didn't know that the top predator of West Coast NP is the caracal.

Bet you didn't know that another name for the Senegal Kassina frog is the running frog.

Why

It differs from most other frogs in that it runs on all four legs when hunting prey, while other frogs are content simply to hop along using both hindfeet at once.