Chad: Zakouma NP – Night Drives

A night drive in Zakouma is like entering a completely different world. Once the sun sets, the scavengers and small cats take over the landscape. Because the park is a mix of open savanna and dense acacia thickets, it’s huge easy to spot the eyes of the animals. Because the park has such a healthy population of small mammals and birds (like those millions of queleas), these carnivores are thriving. We saw a lot of spotted predators – servals, genets, civets, spotted hyenas, and finally leopards. Servals were particularly abundant, many hunting – these look like miniature cheetahs with oversized ears. Servals are very illusory and it’s quite rare to see them in other parts of Africa on a safari. Adrian civets and large-spotted genets also come out at night, and look like small cats (while they are not). We also saw several large hyenas in a prowl, and even a far honey badger (who didn’t give a shit about us taking pictures of him and ran into the bush).