Some cool african animals images:
African Buffalo
Image by Marjorie Lipan
Syncerus Caffer. Tinga-Tinga Kubwa, Kenya. Diorama in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals in the American Museum of Natural History, NYC.
According to the book, Windows on Nature that I purchased the same day as I took the photograph, Carl Akeley and Robert Rockwell traveled to Africa to the tinga-tinga kubwa which was the perfect habitat for the African buffalo. The tinga-tinga kubwa was created many thousands of years ago after Mount Kenya erupted lava that dammed the Tana River creating a two-foot deep marsh with vegetation eight feet high. Akeley chose this site for the diorama. Rockwell tells in his 1955 autobiography, My Way of Becoming a Hunter how he risked his life to obtain the diorama's central large and dangerous bull. He and one assistant located the bull which Rockwell shot. The assistant went for help several miles away. Rockwell was left alone to protect the carcass from hungry lions and hyenas. He built a fire and shot into the air to keep the animals at bay. Later Rockwell used the skeleton covering it in clay to produce a life-sized sculpture of the bull. The clay model was then cast and covered with the animal's skin.
William R. Leigh (also on the expedition) made the background sketches and painted the background diorama. Kikuya tribe's settlements are in the background. Eventually, the growth of the surrounding villages encroached on the marsh developing it for agriculture. Today neither the marsh nor the vast herds of African Buffalo remain. Information is taken from page 38 of the book.
