Serengeti: a kingdom of predators Book

The life of the five great African predators - Lion, Leopard, Cheetah, Wild Dog, Hyena - and the species on which they prey, observed close up in their natural habitat during three and a half years in Africa, by the author of The Year of The Gorilla. This is George Schaller's most beautiful and fascinating book. It is illustrated with his own spectacular photographs - 100 of them, all in full color. It offers a unique view - at once impeccably scientific, personal and adventurous - of East Africa's most primeval Serengeti kingdom of predators. There, on the African plains, for three and a half years, by Land Rover and afoot, Schaller entered the world of predators as no one else had before him. For until that time, although numerous books about them had been published, none of the greta predator cats had been the subject of profound study in its own habitat, and there had been little research on interrelationships between the predators and their prey. Schaller broke new ground as he stalked, lived with, photographed, and studied not only the lion - whom he shows us in courtship, giving birth, mothering, hunting, and at ease, always at close range - but also the cheetah and the leopard. In addition, his close observation added importantly to the new concept of the hyena, long considered to be simply a scavenger and now seen as a powerful hunter in its own right. his study of the wild dog revealed an elaborate social system that includes cooperative hunting, division of labor, and an equal sharing of the spoils. He made new discoveries about the predators' main quarries: the wildebeest, the zebra, and Thomson's gazelle among others - the "prey species" that are an integral part of the natural community, prey and predator paradoxically depending on each other for survival. Marking individual animals with the aid of the harmless tranquilizer gun, Schaller discovered more about their individual and group lives than has ever before been recorded. In his superb narrative and remarkable photographs, he now brilliantly shares his new-found knowledge.