The dro­me­dary belongs to the camel family and is dis­tri­bu­ted throug­hout North Africa, the Horn of Africa and in Sou­thwest Asia as a pet. Even in Aus­tra­lia, dro­me­da­ries were intro­du­ced as farm ani­mals more than a hund­red years ago. There is now a large feral popu­la­tion of about 300,000 ani­mals from the off­spring of relea­sed or runa­way ani­mals.

Dybow­ski deer or Sika deer were ori­gi­nally dis­tri­bu­ted only in Japan, Tai­wan, China and the Amur area. Howe­ver, they have now been natu­ra­li­zed in many other coun­tries. You can find them in Euro­pean forests, Texas and even in Aus­tra­lia, New Zea­land and Mada­gas­car.

The East Afri­can Bongo inha­b­its tro­pi­cal moun­tain rain­fo­rests in which it is well camou­fla­ged with its brown fur with white stri­pes from pre­da­tors. Fema­les live toge­ther with their off­spring in small groups. Males are loners. In the East Afri­can bongo, both sexes carry spi­ral horns. These do not serve as a defense against pre­da­tors but are used only in intra­s­pe­cies batt­les. The East Afri­can Bongo is clas­si­fied as an end­an­ge­red spe­cies on the IUCN Red List of End­an­ge­red Spe­cies (Inter­na­tio­nal Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature and Natu­ral Resour­ces).

The Eland ante­lope is the lar­gest and hea­viest ante­lope spe­cies. The males reach a shoul­der height of 1.5 meters and a weight up to a ton! The fema­les are slightly smal­ler and ligh­ter than the males. What you will notice imme­dia­tely in both sexes are the tightly twis­ted horns. All eland ante­lopes have a tawny fur with 2 to 15 white hori­zon­tal stri­pes. Ano­ther spe­cial fea­ture is the black stripe on their back.

In the family of water­bucks, there is a spe­cies that imme­dia­tely cat­ches the eye of the obser­ver: it’s the Ellipse water­buck. You recog­nize them by their white cir­cu­lar dra­wing on the rump, which also gave these ani­mals their name. The second part of their name reveals where these ani­mals like to be: close to and often in the water! Their coat has a water-repel­lent oil layer that pro­tects them from mois­ture.

The fal­low deer is ori­gi­nally from Europe but has now been intro­du­ced in many other regi­ons of the world. Fal­low deer belong to the deer family (Cer­vi­dae). Howe­ver, he is much lar­ger than a deer and smal­ler than a red deer.

The Gems­bok, also cal­led South Afri­can Oryx or Ibex, is the heral­dic ani­mal of Nami­bia. Maybe you won­der why this parti­cu­lar ani­mal was cho­sen? There are many rea­sons for this choice: The South Afri­can oryx is opti­mally adap­ted to the adverse con­di­ti­ons of the desert and is the­re­fore seen as a sym­bol of ten­a­city and fru­ga­lity. Gems­bok can with­stand tem­pe­ra­tu­res in excess of 45 deg­rees Cel­sius wit­hout any pro­b­lems and will spend a long time with very little water.

Geof­froy spi­der mon­keys or black-han­ded spi­der mon­keys live in moun­tain or rain­fo­rests in Cen­tral Ame­rica. They can reach a weight of up to 9 kilo­grams. As with all spi­der mon­keys, their arms and legs are dis­pro­por­tio­na­tely long in rela­tion to the body. This allows them to climb very well. Geof­froy spi­der mon­keys are clas­si­fied as end­an­ge­red on the Inter­na­tio­nal Union for the Con­ser­va­tion of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The stock num­bers are sin­king, in part due to the defo­re­sta­tion of rain­fo­rests.

Geof­froy’s tuf­ted-ear mar­mo­set or white-fron­ted mar­mo­set live in the eas­tern coa­s­tal forests of Bra­zil and belong to the mar­mo­set family. These little tree dwel­lers weigh only about 200-350 grams with a head-hull length of 20 inches and a 30-inch tail. The diet of these diur­nal ani­mals con­sists mainly of tree juices, as well as fruits and insects.

Mar­vel at the ani­mals with the lon­gest eyelas­hes! These pro­tect the giraf­fes from injury they might get through twigs and thorns. Watch how ele­gant and exal­ted the giraf­fes are when they roam through our spraw­ling com­plex! They can reach up to speeds of 55 km / h! Giraf­fes are up to six meters and are thus the tal­lest ani­mals in the world. They live only in the Afri­can sav­an­nah. There are eight sub­s­pe­cies, which dif­fer in their coat dra­wing. Because of their phy­si­que and their fur pat­tern, it was once belie­ved that the giraffe was a cross bet­ween camel and leo­pard. Hence the giraffe bears the Latin name Giraffa came­lo­par­da­lis.