There are other great migrations in Africa. In Botswana, thousands of plains zebras travel 1,000km – the longest terrestrial journey of any mammal on the continent – from the floodplains of the Chobe River to the Nxai Pan and back again every year, while in South Sudan, some 1.2m or more antelopes, including 800,000 white-eared kob, form herds 80km long and 50km wide. But still, the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti and Masai Mara is the spectacle with which all others must bear comparison.
![The wildebeest migration, Kenia](https://cdn.animalencyclopedia.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Great-Wildebeest-Migration-in-Kenya.jpg)
While the sheer numbers – often cited at about 1.5m animals in total – are mind-boggling, and the grisly challenge of the Mara and Grumeti river crossings exhilarating, it is perhaps the migration’s never-ending circularity that gives it the greatest resonance. The synchronised calving of the wildebeest on the Serengeti’s Southern Plains in February – attracting the whole gamut of predators from lions to hyenas – is another remarkable facet of this awe-inspiring phenomenon.