Welcome To "SP Safari Tours Co." Online!

There are many incredible places in Africa to take the students. They are bound to experience a on hand learning experience of a lifetime especially for those studying geology, biology, zoology, foreign languages, architecture, or development studies.

 

 An adult male savannah elephant is the largest land mammal in the world and it weighs about 12,000 pounds and stands roughly 10 feet tall at the shoulder. The smaller forest elephant weighs 10,000 pounds at most. Unlike savannah elephants’ curved tusks, forest dwellers’ are small and straight, designed for negotiating routes through dense foliage. Elephants possess the same tough hide (the Latin name for elephant is “pachyderm,” or “thick-skinned”). While their skin may be durable, elephants still need protection from insects and the hot African sun. Wallowing in a mud bath cools down an elephant as well as provides an extra layer of cover.

 

An elephant calf is usually born into an extended family, headed by an older female elephant who serves as matriarch. Families are cohesive groups of females and their young. Adult males leave the herd at 14 years of age, and either range alone or join other bull elephants in “bachelor herds,” rejoining females only at breeding times. The mother is responsible for providing the 250-pound newborn with milk. But when it comes to caretaking and protecting babies from predators, the whole herd pitches in.

The mother receives help from aunts, sisters, and cousins who serve as nannies. Known as “allomothers,” these baby-sitters are young female elephants learning how to care for babies. Teaching a potential mother how to rear her child is an important task, since the calves’ survival depends on it. And since elephants bear young only once every few years, each baby is essential to the herd’s ultimate survival.

After five years of rearing this young elephant, the mother gives birth to a new infant, weaning the now adolescent calf at the same time. By then, the young elephant weighs nearly a ton and has learned how to forage on available vegetation. Males tend to leave their mothers earlier than females, with young bulls beginning to wander beyond the protective family circle at the early age of six.

As a young elephant grows, it learns how to become independent by watching and mimicking others. A calf will begin to experiment with its trunk, using it to grasp grass and other solid food, at about four months of age. But it takes a lot of practice to master the more than 40,000 muscles that give an elephant’s long snout so much dexterity.

There are two species of hippos — the large/common hippo and the smaller relative, the pygmy hippo. Hippos are the third-largest living land mammal, after elephants and white rhinos. Despite their large and bulky appearance, they have adaptations to their semi-aquatic environments allowing them to move swiftly on both water and land. Their feet have four-webbed toes that splay out to distribute weight evenly and therefore adequately support them on land, and their short legs provide powerful propulsion through the water. The pygmy hippos digits are more spread out and have less webbing and, proportionally, their legs are longer relative to its body size. They both have skin tones of purple-gray or slate color, with brownish pink coloring around their eyes and ears. They have very thick skin that is virtually hairless except for the thick bristle-like hair on their heads and tails. The outer layers of skin are quite thin, making them prone to wounds from fighting. Hippos' flat, paddle-like tail is used to spread excrement, which marks territory borders and indicates status of an individual. Their powerful jaws are capable of opening up to 150 degrees revealing their enormous incisors.

The surprisingly agile hippo climbs steep banks each night to graze on grass.

They leave the water pool at night to graze for four to five hours, covering up to eight kilometers (five miles) of territory. They will eat about 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of food during this time. Their modest appetite is due to its sedentary life, which does not require high outputs of energy. When returning from grazing before dawn, they will enter their water pool at the same spot they exited.

Unlike us, the hippopotamus does not have sweat or sebaceous glands.

Both species rely on water or mud to keep cool — this accounts for the amount of time they spend in the water. Instead of sweating, they secrete a viscous red fluid, which protects the animal’s skin against the sun and possibly acts as healing agents.

Their social structures are dependent on food and water conditions.

These animals have a flexible social system. Common hippos are usually found in mixed groups of anywhere from 20 to 100 individuals held by a territorial bull, but in periods of drought large numbers are forced to congregate near limited pools of water. This overcrowding disrupts the hierarchical system, resulting in even higher levels of aggression, with the oldest and strongest males asserting dominance. Old scars and fresh, deep wounds are signs of daily fights. Unlike their social cousins, pygmy hippos are solitary and aren’t territorial. If they encounter each other outside of mating, then they simply ignore each other.

Hand feeding giraffes is an education in itself. You will see, close at hand, how they use their long, prehensile tongues to remove leaves from prickly acacia branches.

 

1. Giraffes are the tallest mammals on Earth. Their legs alone are taller than many humans—about 6 feet.
2. They can run as fast as 35 miles an hour over short distances, or cruise at 10 mph over longer distances.
3. Due to giraffe's height, it has to awkwardly spread its front legs or kneel to reach the ground for a drink of water.
4. Giraffes only need to drink once every few days. Most of their water comes from all the plants they eat.
5. Giraffes spend most of their lives standing up; they even sleep and give birth standing up.
6. The giraffe calf can stand up and walk after about an hour and within a week, it starts to sample vegetation.
7. Despite the females’ attempts to stand over their calves during attacks by lions, spotted hyenas, leopards and African wild dogs (4), many calves are killed in their first few months.
8. A giraffe’s spots are much like human fingerprints. No two individual giraffes have exactly the same pattern.
9. Both male and female giraffes have two distinct, hair-covered horns called ossicones. Male giraffes use their horns to sometimes fight with other males
10. Giraffes only need 5 to 30 minutes of sleep in a 24-hour period! They often achieve that in quick naps that may last only a minute or two at a time.
11. Whilst it was thought that giraffes did not make any sounds, this is now known to be untrue, as giraffes bellow, snort, hiss and make flute-like sounds, as well as low pitch noises beyond the range of human hearing.

The Masai people are one of the very few tribes who have retained most of their traditions, lifestyle and lore. In common with the wildlife with which they co-exist, the Maasai need a lot of land. Unlike many other tribes in Kenya, the Maasai are semi-nomadic and pastoral: they live by herding cattle and goats.

 

The mystery of one million or more flamingoes in one place

Lake Nakuru is one of the three inter-linked lakes in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya. These lakes are home to 13 globally threatened bird species and some of the highest bird diversities in the world. An absolutely incredible feature of Lake Nakuru is the large gatherings of long-legged, long-necked greater and lesser flamingos. The lake's abundance of algae attracts these birds that famously line the shore. In fact, Lake Nakuru is the single most important foraging site for the lesser flamingo anywhere, and a major nesting and breeding ground for great white pelicans. It has been described by ornithologists as the greatest bird spectacle in the world.

The Lesser flamingo can be distinguished by its deep red carmine bill and pink plumage unlike the greater, which has a bill with a black tip. The Lesser flamingos are ones that are commonly pictured in documentaries mainly because they are large in number. The flamingos feed on algae, created from their droppings mixing in the warm alkaline waters, and plankton. Scientists reckon that the flamingo population at Lake Nakuru, which is often more than a million - or even two million, consumes about 250,000 kg of algae per hectare of surface area per year.

On the African continent lie plains, mountains, valleys, rivers and desserts. Most of the mountains were formed as a result of volcanic activities. These mountains are rich in wildlife, including animals who migrate to higher altitudes during the hot season in the surrounding savanna. The mountains are also home to a number of endemic bird species such as Hinde's babbler which lives only on Mount Kenya.

 

 School trips to Africa are a great way for the students to explore and experience different cultures as well as study in a different and relaxing environment.

 

Find the cost of airline tickets and book here.. (external link)