While Africa is best known to be home to some of the world's most famous animals, there are a bunch of other elusive, funny-looking creatures that are rarely heard of.
The top 10 strangest animals in Africa that you've probably never heard of
Here are some of Africa's elusive, funny-looking creatures that are rarely heard of.
There are hardly any documentaries or articles regarding these bizarre animals since they often hide in the forests.
Business Insider SSA takes a look at some of them:
10. Bush Vipers
Atheris, commonly known as bush vipers, are venomous snakes found in tropical sub-Saharan Africa. Many species have isolated and fragmented distributions due to their confinement to rain forests.
Bush vipers feed on lizards, rodents, bird, amphibians and other snakes.
9. Honey badger
The honey badger, also known as the ratel, is native to Africa, Southwest Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It is primarily a carnivorous species and has few natural predators because of its thick skin and ferocious defensive abilities.
They feed on insects, frogs, tortoises, rodents, turtles, lizards, snakes, eggs, and birds.
The shoebill, also known as whalehead or shoe-billed stork, is a very large stork-like bird that lives around the large swamps of the tropical East Africa.
Standing at 115 cm tall, its grey feathers, long legs, broad wings and severe demeanor serve to distinguish it from other birds. The shoebill feeds on a diet of lungfish, its favorite, young crocodiles, fish and turtles.
The aye-aye is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger.
They live in rain forests and move around during the night. Aye-ayes hunt for food by tapping with its long middle on tree barks then listen for insect larvae underneath.
6. Colobus monkey
The black and white Colobus monkeys spend its days and nights in the tree tops of Africa’s closed forest.
Their diet is mainly made up of leaves and unlike other monkeys, they are able to eat poisonous leaves.
5. Dik Dik
Dik-diks inhabit the savannas and bush lands of eastern and southern Africa. They have a dust-colored coat which makes them undetectable in the bush lands.
The okapi, also known as the forest giraffe or zebra giraffe, is an artiodactyl mammal native to the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa.
They do not produce much sound other than occasional chuffs and infants bleat when they are under stress. Their main predators are leopards and humans.
3. Lowland Streaked Tenrec
These small small ternecs are found in the lowland rain forests of Madagascar. with black coat with yellow stripes. When threatened, the streaked ternrec drives the barbed quills found on its back and on the crest around its head into its attacker.
The aardvark is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa.
It has a long pig-like snout, which is used to sniff out food. It roams over most of the southern two-thirds of the African continent, avoiding areas that are mainly rocky.
Pangolins can be found in woodlands and savannas of Southern, Central, and East Africa. They are covered in scales made from keratin.
When threatened, they roll themselves into balls. The scales are extremely sharp and are able to cut their attackers.
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