Not Endangered

Since my son has decided to memorize the name of every animal in the world ever, I'm reading up on African creatures. Not a pretty picture, with poaching, encroaching civilization, and the occasional human war messing up the habitat.

But there is one African animal that has done extremely well these past 50 years or so, and no, I'm not talking about the vulture. The wildebeest (aka the gnu) is outbreeding everything in sight. There are around 1.5 mm of them in the Serengheti region today, up from 250,000 in 1960.

According to this article, the wildebeest population had been depleted by rinderpest, a viral disease introduced from Asia. Somehow they've gotten that under control, and the animals have rebounded.

In A Primate's Memoir, the author points out that gnu dung is a palindrome...