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Buffalo
One of the most dangerous of Africa's illustrated Big 5... the African Buffalo is a giant horned bovid.
The Kruger National Park is home to the African Buffalo or Cape Buffalo, as it is also known; its unpredictable nature has made it unable to be tamed and therefore it cannot be domesticated as opposed to its counterpart the Domestic Asian Water Buffalo. Because the buffalo needs to graze for 10 hours every day to remain in a good physical condition, visitors will likely locate it feeding on tall grasses with water in close proximity around the park. The grass needs to be at least 80cm tall and the area needs a minimum of 250mm rainfall per annum for the buffalo to feel at home; a cow of 500kg is likely to eat up to 18kg of this feed a day. Incidentally, the heaviest buffalo recorded at the Kruger Park was an 800kg bull.
As efficient grazers, herds of buffalo are able to reduce grass levels to the height they prefer using their tongues and wide incisor teeth, which allow them to cut through grass far quicker than any other African herbivore. Buffalo typically mate during the rainy season, with cows able to give birth at any time of the year after a gestation period of 346 days; usually the females tend to birth from January to April in the Kruger Park with cows usually birthing every second year to single calves. The life expectancy of a buffalo in the park is approximately 15 years. An interesting fact about buffalos are that they are fairly gregarious animals with herds of several hundred members commonly found; the dominant bull is distinguished by his thick set of horns and is usually avoided by the younger males in the herd.
Besides humans, buffalo don’t have many predators and are more than capable of defending themselves and even sometimes killing lions. When being chased and attacked, buffalo herds tend to engage in a type of mobbing behaviour and act as a unit to fend off their attackers. The calves usually stay in the centre of the herd for their safety and the adults make it difficult for predators to catch a single member; if one was caught though, the herd would do its best to rescue them.