If you are anything like me, you enjoy traveling and being in nature. An African safari is something that almost all travel buffs look forward to doing at some point in their lifetimes and luckily for me, I live in Kenya, where the Masai Mara is located. This has given me the opportunity to travel to the Masai Mara and several of Kenya’s National parks.
In this post, I will talk about the Top 10 animals you expect to find at the Masai Mara and how easy it is to spot them when on a game drive. While I am no travel expert, my limited experience and the tons of research I have done around the topic are a good place for you to start as you plan your African Safari.
One of the reasons why the Masai Mara is so popular as a tourist destination is the diversity of the animals and birds you will find in the park. As I was doing research for this post, I found out that the Masai Mara has 100 Species of animals and over 500 species of birds. This is the largest concentration of species in Africa.
So this list is only the most popular animals you expect to find and is by no means an exhaustive list.
Top Ten Animals you expect to See in Masai Mara
1. Lion
One of the big 5 animals, the African lion is one of the most popular animals on an African Safari and would easily fit as the icon of Africa. Lions are easy to spot if you are accompanied by a guide in the Masai Mara since they are abundant. At the time of writing this post, I found that there are 825 lions in the Masai Mara National Reserve.
2. Rhino
Rhinos (another one of the Big 5 animals) are a bit more difficult to spot in the Masai Mara since they are critically endangered
You will definitely need a guide to help you spot this majestic animal.
Rhinos usually live solitary lives and you are unlikely to see many of them together. This makes them more difficult to spot especially if the grass is tall.
If you are really interested in seeing the black and white rhino, you will have a better viewing experience in the Lake Nakuru National Park. Many organized safaris like this one by intrepid travel will bundle the Masai Mara with Lake Nakuru to maximize the number of rare animals you will get to see when visiting Kenya.
3. Elephant
The elephants are abundant in the Masai Mara. There are large populations of elephants and spotting them will be easy even if you will be doing a self-drive tour.
This Big 5 Animal usually grazes in herds and this makes them easier to spot than some of the other members of the Big 5.
4. Leopard
The more elusive members of the Big 5 Animals, the African leopard is one of the other animals you expect to find in the park but it will be slightly more difficult to spot it without a guide. They usually live in the trees and are mainly nocturnal. This means that you will need to know exactly where to go to spot them. However, with a good guide, you are likely to find the leopards perched up a tree and, if you are lucky, it will have a freshly caught meal with it up there. I personally didn’t get to see leopards when I visited the Mara.
5. Buffalo
The last of the Big five on my list, the African Bufallo is very abundant and easy to spot in the Masai Mara. They graze in the open savannah and live in big herds that are difficult to miss. The buffalo is likely to be one of the first Big 5 animals you expect to find in the park.
6. Wildebeest
Some of the most abundant species of animals in the Masai Mara are the Wildebeest and Zebra. While these are different animals, I have classified them together since they usually live and migrate together between the Mara and the Serengeti.
They are the easiest to spot in the Masai Mara and form part of the spectacle of the Great Wildebeest migration between the Masai Mara and the Serengeti National Parks.
7. Giraffes
The tallest animals on earth, the giraffe is common in the Masai Mara and will be very easy to spot. Although they do not live in big herds together, their height makes them very easy to spot even from a great distance.
8. Hippo
One of the animal characters in the movie Madagascar, the Hippo is also quite common in the Masai Mara. Although they are only located in the rivers, they have very large populations and will be difficult to miss when in the Masai Mara.
You may need a guide to direct you on how to get to the rivers but if you are on a guided tour, your driver would already know where to go to give you a view of the hippos in the Mara.
9. Hyenas
One of the more opportunistic animals in the Mara, the Hyena thrives in this park since there are many opportunities to find an easy meal by stealing from other predators or hunting down the young of the thousands of herbivores in the park. The hyena will be relatively easy to spot and will be an interesting predator to encounter in the park.
10. Antelopes
I will end my list of animals with some of the most abundant types of animals in the Masai Mara. There are many different types of antelopes in the Mara and will be one of the animals you constantly see in the park. Their sheer numbers make them almost impossible to miss you will get many opportunities to interact with the different species of antelopes located in the Mara.
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