Facts About the Blue Wildebeest : The blue wildebeest, also known as the common wildebeest or the brindled gnu, is a majestic and the iconic antelope species that roams the grasslands and savannahs of the eastern and the southern Africa. The blue wildebeest is known by its distinctive blue-gray coat with dark stripes, the blue wildebeest is a large and the powerful animal, with the males weighing up to 500 pounds and sporting impressive curved horns.

One of the most notable features of the blue wildebeest is its incredible migratory journey, which takes place every year in search of the food and water, with the hundreds of thousands of the individuals traveling in the vast herds across the Serengeti National Park Tanzania and Maasai Mara national reserve Kenya.

This spectacular phenomenon, known as the Great Migration, is considered one of the greatest wildlife shows on the earth, and the blue wildebeest is the star of the show, with its dramatic movements and unpredictable behavior captivating the hearts of the wildlife enthusiasts and the photographers alike. On an African safari, watching the blue wildebeests is the best safari experience in your entire life that offers your everlasting safari memories.

The Blue Wildebeest, a grazing herd animal has achieved fame as the key player in the Serengeti’s ‘Great Migration’, which is routinely described as the greatest animal show on earth.

The safari novice may mistake it for the much larger buffalo because to its dark colouring, cow-like horns, and front-heavy profile. Nonetheless, the wildebeest is an antelope and is a member of the Alcelaphinae subfamily, which also includes blesbok, topi, and hartebeest.

There are five separate subspecies of the blue wildebeest, and they differ somewhat in size and colour. For example, the larger common wildebeest (C. t. taurinus) in southern Africa has a black beard, whereas the western white-bearded wildebeest (C. t. mearnsi) in the Serengeti has a white beard.

Approximately 80 to 90 percent of blue wildebeest calves are born during a synchronised birthing window of two to three weeks, typically at the beginning of the rainy season when there is an abundance of fresh vegetation for the females to make milk.

Facts About the Blue Wildebeest
Facts About the Blue Wildebeest

Predators are overpowered by the huge numbers and have minimal effect on the total number of wildebeest.
Wildebeest do not all migrate. Some establish tiny resident herds that stay in the same region all year round, often consisting of up to ten mothers and their young. These herds’ females have a tendency to create hierarchies of dominance and eject intruders who try to join.

Blue wildebeests consume different portions of the grass to avoid competing with plains zebra, which frequently graze beside them. Wildebeest prefer the shorter grasses down low, where their wider nose maximizes their grazing efficiency, whereas zebra prefer the longer grasses, processing this rougher food with their harder digestive systems and shearing front teeth.
When veterinary cordon barriers impeded their migration paths during the drought in the mid-1980s, some 50,000 blue wildebeest died in Botswana’s Kalahari.

book a gorilla trip