By Josie February 22nd, 2023
The Wildebeest migration is one of the fascinating natural phenomena of our time.
It is bound to take your breath away.
Wildebeests eat almost exclusively grass, and when a grazing ground is eaten, they move on.
400,000 antelopes and 200,000 zebras join them on a journey of almost 2,000 miles.
In February/March the wildebeest find rest and give birth to roughly 500,000 calves.
In April the animals follow the rain and move to the west of the Serengeti and then they migrate step by step northwards
The route of the animals varies every year and is therefore impossible to predict.
So seeing the Great Migration is partly a matter of luck. A good safari guide is also essential.
– Serengeti, Tanzania
– Maasai Mara, Kenya
Wildebeests, also called Gnus, are large members of the antilope family.
Wildebeests form large herds in which several thousand to one hundred thousand animals live.
The influence of changing rainy and dry seasons sometimes change the cycle by several weeks.
The route also changes a little bit each year.
Every year many thousands wildebeest and zebras die during the strenuous and dangerous migration because of hunger, thirst, weakness or predators like lions, cheetahs or hyenas
Wildebeests and zebras need each other: wildebeests are good at finding water sources and zebras know the way of the migration.
They can travel together peacefully because they both eat a different part of the same grass.