Great Animal Migrations Around the World

From August through September, the game preserves of Kenya and Tanzania (especially Amboseli, Serengeti, and Masai Mara) come alive with vast herds of wildebeest and zebra. Some 1.5 million animals traverse the veldt here kicking up dust clouds on their way north to follow the rains and the life they provide.

All African elephants migrate in search of food, water, and habitat. Elephants in Mali cover than 300 miles. While Mali’s African elephant population is relatively small, the country’s dry climate ensures its elephants must be in a near state of continual migration, in search of new drinking water.

Every year some 200,000 Emperor Penguin follows a long, difficult, migration path to a place in Antarctica away from their normal home by the edge of the sea. Some 200,000 emperor penguins make a punishingly long, arduous trek from the Antarctic coast to inland laying grounds each year.

Thousands of endangered green sea turtles enact an extraordinary annual migration ritual by returning to the same remote stretch of Costa Rica’s northeastern coast where they were born in order to lay eggs of their own.

Monarchs are especially noted for their lengthy annual migration. In North America, some 300 million monarchs make massive southward migrations starting in August until the first frost. A northward migration takes place in the spring.

The Christmas Island red crab is a species of land crab that is endemic to Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean. Although restricted to a relatively small area, it has been estimated that 43.7 million adult red crabs lived on Christmas Island alone.

The whale shark is found in tropical and warm oceans and lives in the open sea with a lifespan of about 70 years. Although whale sharks have very large mouths, as filter feeders they feed mainly, though not exclusively, on plankton, which are microscopic plants and animals.

In the summer, Andean Flamingos live in salt lakes and migrate to the lower wetlands for the winter. The cause of this migration from summer to winter is possibly due to the extreme aridity of salt-flats during the winter. The path of migration is unknown, but it is thought to occur between the Chilean breeding grounds and the wetlands of central and western Argentina.

Every year, from October until December, 8 million Straw-colored Fruit Bats arrive from the Congo to feed on the wild musuku fruits in Zambia’s Kasanka National Park. This is Zambia’s secret bat spectacle and the world’s largest mammal migration.

The Bar-headed Goose is a goose which breeds in Central Asia in colonies of thousands near mountain lakes and winters in South Asia, as far south as peninsular India.