African buffalo

African buffaloes eat grass.

They eat a lot of it, often at night. Later they chew it again, just like cows.

African buffaloes are grazers. They eat mainly grass and spend much of their time feeding. Like cows, they are ruminants: after eating, they bring the grass back up and chew it again, called chewing the cud, to get more goodness out of it.

The African Wildlife Foundation says buffaloes seem to find it hard to control their body temperature, which is why they feed mostly at night. Without fresh green grass they quickly get weak, so food matters more than predators in deciding how many buffaloes there are.

African buffalo are bulk grazers that devote a large share of their time to feeding and, as ruminants, chew the cud to extract more nutrients. The African Wildlife Foundation notes that food supply, not predation, is the main regulator of their numbers: without fresh green feed they deteriorate rapidly.

AWF also links their mainly nocturnal feeding to difficulty in regulating body temperature, although Animal Diversity Web reports activity throughout the 24 hours, with rest periods in the early morning and late afternoon. Buffalo density follows rainfall, and in the dry season herds favor riverine habitat close to drinking water.

Buffaloes live in big herds.

If a calf is in danger, it calls out. Then the whole herd runs to help it! Old males often like to be alone.

African buffaloes live in herds of a few hundred, and in the Serengeti thousands may gather in the rainy season. Living in a big herd makes it harder for lions to pick out one buffalo. Most of the herd are females and their young.

Buffaloes are mostly quiet, but they grunt and bellow. If a calf is in danger, it bellows, and other buffaloes come running to defend it. Males often spend time in bachelor groups, and old bulls may live on their own.

Buffalo form large mixed herds of females, young and some males, and small bachelor herds. Animal Diversity Web reports Cape buffalo herds from about 20 in montane areas to over 1,500 in the Serengeti, while forest buffalo herds average about 12. Large herds often split and merge again. Bachelor groups tend to be of either young males or bulls over 12, and old bulls may live alone.

Group living is an anti-predator defense: a calf's distress call brings herd members galloping to defend it. Lion predation is the second most common cause of death after disease, and males are taken more often than females. Some populations migrate over 80 kilometers between seasonal ranges.

There are still lots of African buffaloes.

But there are fewer than before. People work to keep space for buffaloes and for farms too.

The IUCN lists the African buffalo as Near Threatened. There are still about 400,000 adults, but their numbers are going down. Their homes are being broken into pieces by new development, and outside parks some people see them as dangerous crop raiders.

In the 1890s a cattle disease called rinderpest killed huge numbers of buffaloes. Today conservation groups help plan new building and farming so that people and wildlife can share the land.

The IUCN's 2019 assessment lists the African buffalo as Near Threatened, with 398,000 to 401,000 mature individuals and a decreasing trend. The African Wildlife Foundation names habitat fragmentation from unsustainable development as a threat; outside parks they are seen as crop pests, and in East Africa buffalo raid crops, break fences and can pass bovine diseases to livestock, creating conflict.

The great rinderpest epidemic of the 1890s, with pleuropneumonia, killed up to 95 percent of buffalo and livestock in places, and many local populations were wiped out. Today groups such as AWF work with governments on land-use planning and with farming communities on sustainable agriculture, so that growth and wildlife can be balanced.