Savanna's Unique Wildlife

The African Savanna provides some of the most unique and rare animals such as:

wildebeest, warthogs, elephants, zebras, rhinos, gazelles, hyenas, cheetahs, lions, leopards, ostrich, mousebirds, starlings, and weavers

With resources running low for these animals they don't have much of a future and will die out if we don't do anything about it.

The African Savanna is a tropical grassland. Temperatures are quiet warm throughout the year and the most rainfall occurs in the summer. The African Savanna also has a unique and wide range of diverse organisms.

The African Savanna played a big role in the human evolution. Our ancestors went from living in woodlands to the Savanna's grassland. Human ancestors and ape relative have evolved over the past six million in East Africa.

The African Savanna has a unique wildlife and an example of a specialist species would be the Koala Bear. An example of a generalist species would be a Black Mamba Snake.

An example of inter specific competition would be the lions and lepards. The predators in the savanna are lions, cheetah's, lepards, and wild hogs. Parasitism that takes place in the African Savanna would be a tick on an elephant. Some mutualism in the savanna are termites and Jackal Berry Tree's. Commensalism in the ecosystem is birds eating bugs. Resource partitioning takes place in the savanna when there are dry grass and trees.

An r-selected species in the African Savanna are insects. An example of a k-selected species would be elephants.

The African savanna has a wide population of animals but animals are currently endanger such as elephants, leopards, white lion, giraffe, lion, and tiger. As far as the human population is it quiet low but has the chance of increasing in the future.

Primary succession is when animals inhabit an area that has been empty which causes change. An example of this in the African Savanna would be ticks which are eaten by birds. Now if there was an increased amount of crocodile's in an area and they eat the birds then the bird population will decrease there won't be anyone to eat the ticks.

Secondary succession is normally caused by a natural disturbance. An example of this in the African Savanna can be a fire. This would be a big problem especially for plant eaters since most plants have been burned in the fire. The plant eaters not eating will cause the meat eaters to not eat as well. However the few plants that survived the fire will produce more offspring and provide for the animals again.

The African Savanna is part of the tropical grassland biome. The savanna has shrubs and isolated trees found all around it. There are warm temperature year round and little rain.

The African Savanna doesn't have bodies of water but they do have water holes. This is when water is collected into a hole/pond and animals can drink from it.

The African Savanna's structure is surrounded by trees and volcanic sand. This is great for the mammals that are plant eaters. There are also many shrubs in the savanna but there isn't enough rainfall for the savanna to support a forest.

For many years humans have endangered animals of the African Savanna to go extinct. They did this by hunting animals and also pollution. Pollution is one of the biggest threats to the African Savanna. The air is polluted with smoke and exhaust fumes. With polluted air it will make it difficult for the animals to breath and over time this will kill the animals. Another problem in the African savanna is the water since it has chemicals in it due to pollution from factories. If the water contains chemicals in it once the animals drink from it it will pollute their body and eventually die from it.

An organization that is working towards saving the savanna is the African Wildlife Foundation. People can donate to this foundation where they use all donations for programs and ways to provide to the wildlife of the African Savanna. http://www.awf.org

As citizens we should respect and conserve grasslands where we live, learn about savannas and teach others about them, or volunteer for a savanna restoration projects. http://www.amnh.org/ology/features/askascientist/question19.php

Resources

• http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/african_savanna.htm
• http://www.planetpatrol.info/savannah.html
• http://education.nationalgeographic.org/media/african-savanna-illustration/
• http://www.livescience.com/15377-savannas-human-ancestors-evolution.html
• http://whatsupson.weebly.com/key-terms.html