African buffalo facts
A very dangerous member of the Big Five…
Horn of Africa
The African buffalo is so dangerous that it’s been called ‘Black Death’, and it’s responsible for killing around 200 people a year in Africa.
The fact that it’s so dangerous is one of the reasons why trophy hunters added it to the list of the Big Five, alongside the lion, leopard, elephant and rhino.
Basic facts
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Bovidae
Species: African buffalo (nicknamed the Black Death or the widowmaker)
Scientific name: Syncerus caffer
Subspecies: Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer); forest buffalo, dwarf buffalo or Congo buffalo (Syncerus caffer nanus); Sudan buffalo (Syncerus caffer brachyceros); Nile buffalo (Syncerus caffer aequinoctialis); Nile buffalo (Syncerus caffer mathewsi)
Mass: 425 to 870 kg (937 to 1,918 lb), with males being larger than females and the Cape buffalo being larger than other subspecies
Shoulder height: 1.0 to 1.7 m (3.3 to 5.6 ft)
Head-and-body length: 1.7 to 3.4 m (5.6 to 11.2 ft)
Appearance: Large, black or dark brown bovid (or ox-like animal) with big horns joined in the middle of the forehead in males. Calves and females tend to have more reddish coats and individual horns on either side of their heads.
Top speed: 57 km/h (35 mph)
Gestation period: 11.5 months
Lifespan: 18 years in the wild (up to a maximum of 33 years in captivity)
IUCN Red List Status: Near Threatened
Population: 398,000-401,000 mature individuals, decreasing
Habitat: Forest, Savanna, Shrubland, Grassland, Wetlands (inland).
Distribution: Central and southern Africa including Angola; Benin; Botswana; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cameroon; Central African Republic; Chad; Congo; Congo; Côte d'Ivoire; Equatorial Guinea; Ethiopia; Gabon; Ghana; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Kenya; Liberia; Malawi; Mali; Mozambique; Namibia; Niger; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; Sierra Leone; Somalia; South Africa; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania; Togo; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.
Black Head
Behaviour
The Cape buffalo is a common sight on the plains of Africa, and herds can consist of hundreds of individuals.
It lives in savannahs, swamps, floodplains and grasslands and also in the forests of mountainous regions.
It grazes on grass and requires water on a daily basis so can’t stray far from rivers or water holes.
Once an area has been trampled and stripped of most of the grass, the herd will move on in search of pastures new.
Herd size and composition is variable and complex, with the basic herd being made up of related females and their offspring, surrounded by subherds of subordinate males, high-ranking males and females, and old or weak animals.
In the dry season, males form two types of separate ‘bachelor herds’:
males aged four to seven
males 12 or over
In the wet season, the younger males rejoin the herd in order to mate with the females and then stay to protect the calves.
Both males and females have a dominance hierarchy (or ‘pecking order’), and the dominant bull is usually recognisable by the thickness of his horns.
Between males, dominance is established by ‘sparring’ and occasionally actual fighting.
A bull will walk towards another holding its horns down and making a lowing sound.
If the other bull mimics this behaviour, both bulls will spar by twisting their horns from side to side.
Calves also play fight, but females rarely confront others physically.
Female buffaloes make decisions about where to go by a kind of consensus.
They stand up, walk around for up to an hour and then sit back down facing in the direction they want to move.
Eventually, the whole herd will move off in the direction they’ve ‘voted for’.
Breeding
Stand and Deliver
Buffaloes mate and give birth during the rainy seasons.
Bulls jealously guard females they’re mating with, but this is difficult, and the dominant bull eventually wins.
Cows are able to give birth when they’re five years old.
The gestation period is 11.5 months, and when the calves are born, they remain in thick vegetation for the first few weeks for protection.
During this time, they suckle milk from their mothers from between their hind legs, and the bond between cow and calf lasts even when they rejoin the herd.
It is only broken when a new calf is born, and the mother will keep her previous offspring at bay by jabbing it with her horns.
A yearling might still follow its mother for a another year or so, but then young males will join bachelor herds.
Misty Morning
Communication
Buffaloes have a number of different calls for different situations:
low-pitched, two- to four-second calls intermittently at three- to six-second intervals to get the herd to move off
"gritty", "creaking gate" sounds to signal the herd to change direction
long "maaa" calls up to 20 times a minute when heading for a water source
croaking calls when cows are looking for their calves
high-pitched croaking calls when cows are in distress
drawn-out "waaaa" calls when threatened by predators
calls by dominant males to announce their presence
more intense calls by dominant males to warn off a subordinate
brief bellows, grunts, honks, and croaks while grazing
Threats
Three's A Crowd
Aside from the threat of man, buffaloes have few predators, but individual lions or groups of lions can kill adult males, as can crocodiles and hyenas - although they prefer the old or young.
Other predators such as the cheetah and leopard only really attack newborn calves.
Buffaloes do their best to protect themselves, sheltering calves in the centre of the herd, responding to distress calls and actively resisting any attack from predators.
Buffaloes occasionally manage to kill lions using their horns or by trampling their cubs to death, and they’ve even been known to chase them up a tree and keep them there for a couple of hours!
Buffaloes are also susceptible to various diseases, including bovine tuberculosis, corridor disease, and foot and mouth disease, but these often remain dormant for years.
In the 1890s, however, an epidemic of rinderpest and pleural pneumonia wiped out a large number of buffalo, with mortality rates as high as 95% in some herds.
The IUCN deems the African buffalo to be in its ‘Near Threatened’ category, and it faces many future threats to its existence:
Residential & commercial development
Housing & urban areas
Agriculture & aquaculture
Livestock farming & ranching
Biological resource use
Hunting & trapping terrestrial animals
Human intrusions & disturbance
War, civil unrest & military exercises
Climate change & severe weather
Droughts
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