What's a wildebeest?

When considering wildebeests, perhaps more defining than their appearance is their unparalleled nomadic trek, which takes them on an endless journey looping through the ever-changing plains east of Lake Victoria in Africa.

The Great Migration

Urged forward by the distant splatter of raindrops, the vast herd is always on the move, journeying to territory where fresh storms have slaked the thirst of sparse grasses and brought life to otherwise dry and untenable lands. Nothing lasts forever, and the wildebeests must continually follow the rains, circling around the Serengeti and surrounding territory.

It's not a journey they make alone, however. Among the estimated 1.5 million wildebeests that participate in the Great Migration are hundreds of thousands of zebra and gazelle, all forming a loose band of travelers forever seeking greener pastures.

The Herd

Ungainly members of the antelope family, wildebeests aren't the most attractive animals. But seeing them in such spectacular numbers makes up for what they lack in beauty, as so many animals flow across the land like a brown undulating river.

Common wildebeests, also called gnus, look like spindly-legged cattle toting smallish, upward-pointing horns. Black and brown and gray, with smooth bodies and swishing manes, wildebeests are barrel-chested and fast &mdash they can attain speeds of about 40 miles per hour over short spans.

Wildebeests are also noisy animals, snorting and moaning in a constant cacophony, painting an image across the landscape of disgruntled groups of grousing bovine, chatting back and forth over fields as far as the eye can see. Mating season occurs during May and June, and as many as 80 percent of the female wildebeests in the herd will calf the following year.

The majority of each generation of sprightly new calves tend to be born over a span of just a few weeks, and within minutes they're frolicking around in the grass — all half a million of them. It might seem like a dreadful case of sibling rivalry just waiting to happen, but the vast number of newborns arriving within such a short time enables more of them to survive -- predators can only eat so much at one time. Wildebeest calves are born a yellowish-brown color, but after a few months their coats begin to darken into adult hues.

The Route

The Great Migration is not clearly delineated or set in stone; the timing and the path fluctuate from year to year. But the route generally encompasses a thousand thankless miles through lands dotted with hungry predators and other dangers of the natural world. Continually renewing pastures welcome the wildebeests along these ancestral avenues, and in some places, volcano eruptions fuel the soil to produce nutrient-rich grasses. From the fertile plains of the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in the Kenyan countryside, the wildebeest migration is a unique and momentous sight, plowing mightily across the land.