Big cats are one of the strongest animals on earth. They might appear like extra-large kitties, however they are ferocious predators. The majority are “stalk and ambush” hunters, coming up on prey and pouncing to give a crushing bite into the neck and head. When big cats live, they’re on top of the food chain.

Smart camouflage, stealth, speed, split-second reactions: there’s nothing comparable to viewing a wild cat in action. Specifically when you’re not watching the tv and it’s all for real, with associated smells and sounds.

Coming from the African golden cat to the Eurasian lynx as well as the ocelot of the Amazon Basin, you can find 36 species of wild cat distributed all over the world – none really easy to view, even if it comes to the biggest of such predators.

Somewhat which qualify as “big cats” is really a good issue. A few sticklers maintain that just 4 members of the genus Panthera are actual big cats. On descending order of height, they are tiger, lion, leopard and jaguar. Perversely, the determining attribute has less related to size compared to vocal skill. They are the only felines capable to roar (it is known that the lion’s roar could be heard as much as 8km away). However some other spectacular animals are frequently included as big cats: specifically cougar, that are actually often taller than jaguar; cheetah, that are somewhat smaller; and also the slightly shorter snow leopard.

Primary locations?

Out of all the big cats, lion are usually the least hard to observe and view. It is somewhat due to the fact that they are slightly sociable and are in big groups – and somewhat because a lot of prides are becoming inured to being observed.

Only a few Asiatic lion exist, living in India’s Gir Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat, however for truly great lion watching, visit southern or eastern Africa. Quite high lion populations live within the national parks and reserves of Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya as well as South Africa. It was in Kenya’s stunning Masai Mara reserve that you can view a lot.

African Big Cats

 

A few of the most rare and most elusive animals on the wild are big cats. Tanzania boasts a number of different species, such as:

Lion

The undeniable king of the animals, the lion’s huge mane, natural power, and loud roar (a lion’s roar could be about 25 times more louder compared to a gas-powered mower) make it the perfect safari view.

Fortunately, Tanzania hosts more than 15,000 lions, greater than some other single African country, and around 50 % the remaining wild population on earth. Only the Serengeti lion population-estimated about 3,000-is bigger than the whole lion population of nearby Kenya.

If Simba is in your list of safari must-sees, there’s no better spot to go than Tanzania.

Leopard

Possibly the most trendy of all of the big cats (at least when you pass by runway trends), the leopard stalks its prey using extreme stealth, usually getting as close to as 10 feet from the target, undiscovered, just before pouncing.

Better known for their arboreal lifestyle, leopards usually drag their kills up to the trees in which they rest and sleep. Leopards have been found dragging animals as large as 3 times their size almost 20 feet up trees.

Cheetah

Across the turn of the twentieth century, approximately 100,000 cheetahs ranged all over Africa as well as the Middle East, however nowadays, it’s believed that less than 2,500 stay in the wild, in specific, restricted regions.

Tanzania is among those rare cheetah strongholds, most likely due to its long-term persistence to conservation. It’s among the few places left on this planet where you could see this amazing creature- the fastest land mammal on the world-racing across the plains.

“Medium” Cats

The word “big cat” is pretty exclusive (even cheetah are often excluded from “official” lists), however Tanzania hosts lots of creatures that, while not as huge and dangerous like a lion, are incredibly a step up from the typical house cat.

Among the more remarkable of these mid-sized cats is the serval, a graceful, long-legged animal which is as elusive as it’s lovely.