Africa (5 galleries)

Think of Africa and conjure an image of grassy plains teeming with herds of game where predators like lions and leopards lurk in ambush. The wildlife of these areas - elephants, zebras, giraffes and wildebeest - are as familiar to us all as pet cats, toast and marmalade and junk mail.

Yet this is only a fraction of what the "Dark Continent", has to offer. It also contains the world's largest desert, the second largest tropical rainforest and the highest free-standing...
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Think of Africa and conjure an image of grassy plains teeming with herds of game where predators like lions and leopards lurk in ambush. The wildlife of these areas - elephants, zebras, giraffes and wildebeest - are as familiar to us all as pet cats, toast and marmalade and junk mail.

Yet this is only a fraction of what the "Dark Continent", has to offer. It also contains the world's largest desert, the second largest tropical rainforest and the highest free-standing mountain. Correspondingly, there are less publicised places that are home to all manner of creatures, some familiar but many virtually unknown but no less interesting or important. Have you heard of an addax, pectinator or dibatag before?

There is irony in that the continent that was the cradle of humanity should be one of the last great areas our own species thoroughly explored. Yet it is heartening in the age of mobile phones and globalisation that there are parts we have yet to reach. Nevertheless, in barely a century and a half of influence the western world has encouraged the plundering of the continent's resources and set in motion the expansion of humanity to a level that now threatens so many of the natural treasures it holds.
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