Addo Elephant National Park, the third largest game reserve in South Africa, covers 180,000 hectares in the Eastern Cape Province. It is home to the Big 7: the Big 5 (elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion, & leopard) plus the humpback whale and great white shark.  We visited the popular inland portions of the park in June and November. On a future adventure we may explore the coastal and island areas. 

The park is home to over 500 elephants, a vast improvement over the 11 pachyderms when Addo was established in 1931 to protect the dwindling herd. The numbers were so low 90 years ago because of hunting, habitat loss, and a large-scale elephant cull at the request of local farmers. Babies are born all throughout the year, so we were able to watch plenty of playful little ones. So fun! Twin elephants have been born three times in park’s history. 

We didn’t have any problem finding flightless dung beetles in the large amounts of elephant poo beside and on the park roads. These insects, endangered and protected by South African law, roll dung into balls for food and reproduction. A female beetle lays an egg in the ball and then larvae eat the dung for nourishment.

One spring morning we saw two adult black-backed jackals on the left side of the road and thought it was odd that they remained out in the open after we stopped quite near. And they seemed very interested something on the right side of the road. Soon we saw 3 adorable, rambunctious puppies emerge from the brush and they entertained us for about 15 minutes. We took many, many photos of the little ones, but included just two pictures in this post.  The three pups were never close enough to each other to capture in one frame.

At first we couldn’t figure out what the hairy critter was on the roadside just a bit ahead of us. It looked like a brown bear, but we knew that couldn’t be. When we stopped along side it we realized the shaggy creature was a brown hyena noisily crunching on animal bones.  Our first sighting of this elusive species is a favorite memory from our June Addo adventure!

We found a few of the young and rather shy Burchell’s (plains) zebras in the park.

Fortunately we didn’t run over this earthworm making circular tracks as it crossed the road. The longest earthworm found in the world was in South Africa in 1967. It measured almost 7 meters. The average length is 1.8 meters.

Beautiful blue cranes enjoy the morning sunshine.

Additional Addo animals

Just a few of the 400 bird species that live in Addo Elephant National Park

This post does not include any lion photos, but we learned a bit of info about the park’s big cats. In 2020 13 lions were moved out of Addo because the buffalo population became very low. Our November game drive guide told us that there are now two adult males and 3 adult females in the park. The females are on birth control until buffalo numbers increase. The following day we saw the two adult males napping in the sunshine very near the east/west road that divides the park in half. Unfortunately the lions were too far away to adequately photograph, but we could see their beautiful black manes with our binoculars.