The document recounts an expedition through an African safari, detailing encounters with various animals and their interactions within the ecosystem. Key observations include food chain dynamics, such as predation, scavenging, and mutualism, as well as the role of specific organisms like lions, hyenas, elephants, and plants in the food web. Additionally, it highlights the need for tables and diagrams to represent these relationships and asks questions about ecological concepts.

1. African Safari Project
Read the African Safari story
Draw the food web that is described: you must
include the names of the organisms and ALL
appropriate arrows (pictures of the organisms
can be included for bonus)
Create the tables and answer the questions that
follow.

2. African Safari
We arrived in Nairobi in December and it was
blistering hot. We gathered our crew
together, gassed up the Land Rovers and
began our search for the source of the Nile.
We had only enough money for a week
expedition and we had to cross the tropical
savanna, which seemed to stretch endlessly
before us. Beyond the savanna was the jungle
and finally the Nile River.

3. The savanna was like an ocean of grass that
stretched forever and only by watching closely we
could see the white-tailed deer grazing on a kind of
grass our native guide called the ‘short grass.’ This
grass seemed to be the major type around during
the first day we were out and Jim noticed an Impala
also grazing on this short variety of grass.

4. As we approached the campsite for the night we heard a terrible
commotion and could see that some sort of a mad scramble was taking
place in the concealed stretches of ‘tall grass’ that we had been driving
through the last few hours. We decided to let well enough alone
temporarily and check it out in the morning. When we returned to the
area the next day, we found the remains of a wildebeest that had at one
time been peacefully feeding on the ‘tall grass.’ As we approached, a
cloud of vultures begrudgingly went into the air.

5. On close inspection of the
battlefield, we found lion (he must
of eaten the wildebeest) tracks
everywhere. I was a bit frightened,
to say the least, when I heard a
rustling in the ‘tall grass’ behind
me. However, our guide said that
he had seen a hyena run from the
wildebeest remains as we
approached.

6. A few meters further into the grass one of the
natives found a freshly killed hyena. It appeared as
if the hyena pack had become a bit carried away in
the process of feasting on the wildebeest remains
and the fight had ensued. Our guide said that the
vultures had already found the hyena as well as the
wildebeest remains.

7. Being rather curious, we slit open the dead hyena
and found the partial remains of some sort of
rodent. Our helpful native guide told us that hyenas
only eat animals that are already dead; they don’t
eat animals they themselves kill. We thought we
would carry the process one step further and found
only partially digested ‘tall grass’ in the stomach of
the rodent. We were lucky that our unfortunate
hyena had managed to get the entire rodent all to
himself.

8. During the second day, we began
approaching an area where there were a
few Acacia trees and some giraffes
feasting on the trees. It was nice to
begin seeing a slightly different
landscape. Unfortunately, we came
across an injured lion that started after
us and we had to shoot him. Having
found the results of our previous days
investigation into the interior of a hyena
and rodent interesting, we decided to
see what action this lion had been up to.
He had been rather active for we found
remains of an impala and a giraffe in the
stomach of the lion.

9. The rest of the day we noticed that giraffes were
becoming numerous and observed them
struggling to reach the most gender leaves of the
Acacia trees. At camp that night, one of the crew
was bitten by the Anopheles mosquito and came
down with malaria, which the mosquito peacefully
carries around in their salivary glands. Once more
our “know-it-all” guide informed us that the
mosquito also sucks the blood of wildebeests,
which also suffer from malaria.

10. The third day we noticed some rather crumbled looking
Acacia trees and on closer inspection found them
crawling with termites. Our specialist in ‘small things’
had brought along a microscope and discovered
numerous small flagellates in the order Protomastigida.
This time I explained to our guide that the termites
chew up dead wood and take it to their intestines, but
they are incapable of digesting the cellulose that makes
up the wood. Those tiny flagellates, which can digest
the cellulose, do so in the gut of the termite, and the
termite benefits because it will use the digested
cellulose for food also.

11. After a short lunch break we came across a herd
of elephants feeding on the increasingly more
abundant Acacia trees. Once more our helpful
guide told us that there is a type of louse that
lives in the ears of the elephants and seems to
cause a great deal of worry to the elephants
because the louse sucks the elephants body
fluids. Maybe that is one of the reasons that
elephants are always flapping their ears!

12. We had entered the jungle area by now and the
elephants were there too. I could hardly believe it
when I saw a gray monkey riding along perched
on the elephant’s head joyfully helping himself to
a meal of lice. I guess we scared him because he
suddenly jumped from the elephant’s head into a
berry bush and had just reached for a handful of
berries to eat when he was attacked by a boa
constrictor that had been waiting for a meal on a
branch above the berry bush.

13. The snake slowly squeezed the life from the
monkey and proceeded to swallow him whole. In
another berry bush nearby a long-tailed monkey
was peacefully munching on his berry lunch when
a cheetah pounced up into the bush and away with
the unsuspecting creature. Gosh, this is a wild
place.

14. Well, after moving into quieter territory, we settled
down among the lichen covered rocks to enjoy our
lunch, keeping a sharp eye open for more action.
Naturally, our guide had to tell us that the lichen we sat
on was a strange sort of organism(s). It seems that it’s
not really just one organism, but two. One fungus,
which typically can’t make its own food, and the other
is an algae that the fungus slowly consumes. The algae
obtains moisture and minerals from the fungus, but
makes its own food through photosynthesis as green
plants do. The whole mass (the algae and fungus) living
together is a lichen. (you do not need to include lichen
on your food web)

15. The next day we finally reached the Nile and found our
elephant again. They were busy cooling off and eating
some of the water plants around. There were some
hippos just a bit further down stream enjoying a water
plant diet too.

16. One of the crew caught a fish for lunch and found
that it had a belly full of water plants and a leech
was attached to its side as well. The fish was almost
dead because the leech had sucked most of the
fish’s body fluids for its own meal. On the opposite
bank of the Nile a crocodile plunged into the river
after a fish, while another one was feasting on a
shore bird.

17. There were a lot of shore birds around and they
were churning up and eating the light green floating
algae that grew close to shore. Great masses of the
algae floated downstream because of the rooting
around the birds. The hippos were overjoyed
because of this, since algae are their favorite food
and there was plenty of it floating around today.

18. After all this, who cares about the
source of the Nile. There is too much
else going on in the natural world to
think about where the Nile really
starts.

19. Questions
1. Create a table that organizes the following organisms into
the following categories: autotroph, herbivore, carnivore,
omnivore, scavenger
Impala gray monkey
Wildebeest boa constrictor
Vultures hippopotamus
Hyena algae
Tall grass crocodile
Lion elephant
Cheetah berry bush
Long-tailed monkey acacia tree

20. 2. Create a second table the organizes the same organisms
into the following categories: producers, primary consumers,
secondary consumers, tertiary consumers, quaternary
consumers, and scavengers (make sure to include every
trophic level for each organism)
Impala gray monkey
Wildebeest boa constrictor
Vultures hippopotamus
Hyena algae
Tall grass crocodile
Lion elephant
Cheetah berry bush
Long-tailed monkey acacia tree

21. 3. a. Would all of the organisms from
your tables make up an ecosystem
or a community?
Explain your answer.

22. 4. Draw and Energy Pyramid that
includes the following food chain:
acacia tree, elephant, lice, gray
monkey, boa constrictor
a. Which organism gets the most energy from the
acacia tree?
b. On your energy pyramid, show 70,000kCal of energy
in the acacia tree. Label the amount of energy that
the elephant, lice, monkey, and boa constrictor will
get from this food chain
c. If the giraffe also ate off of the acacia tree, how much
energy would it get from the tree?

23. 5. Draw a numbers pyramid that
contains the following food chain: tall
grass, wildebeest, lion
a. Which organism would you expect to find
more of in the tropical savannah: the lion or
the wildebeest?

24. 6. The organisms involved in returning
the nutrients to the soil are missing
from this food web. What do we call
these organisms?

25. Chapter 4 Questions
7. Name two organisms from the African Safari
that would more than likely exhibit
interspecific competition with one another.
What would they be competing over?

26. 8. Identify one example of mutualism. Explain
how BOTH organisms benefit from this
relationship.

27. 9. Identify one example of parasitism. Explain
how each organism is affected by the parasitic
relationship.

28. 10. Identify another example of parasitism.
Explain how each organism is affected by the
parasitic relationship.

29. 11. List three different predator/prey
relationships that are found in the African
Safari. Identify which organism is the predator
and which organism is the prey (do not
include producers as prey)

30. 12. a. Name the biome where the African Safari
takes place.
b. describe 3 abiotic factors that characterize
this biome.
c. describe 3 biotic factors that characterize
this biome.