We will be at Destinations this week, the largest travel show in the UK, and have been busy getting things ready for our stand. Rather than just handing out copies of our new (and excellent) brochure, we’ve been thinking of ways to make it a bit more fun.
If you are coming along, we’d love to see you at our stand – AF 85 – in the Africa and Indian Ocean section. Why not have a go at our trivia quiz? We have a small African basket that will be stuffed with questions and facts about Africa and its wildlife. We also have a selection of unusual African objects and foodstuffs for you to identify.
We asked our guides in Africa for some of the facts that they thought were the most amazing/strange/bizarre and which always surprised our clients. Here is a small preview selection of some of their replies.
– Hyenas are more related to a cat than a dog – hyenas’ grooming, scent marking, defecating habits, mating, and parental behaviour are consistent with the behaviour of other feliforms.
– Many characteristics of the Cheetah are more dog like than Cat like. Claws can only partly retracted. The pads are more dog like. The canine teeth are also more dog like.
– A lion’s roar can be heard 5 miles away
– Elephants can communicate over many miles via sub-sonic rumble that can travel over the ground faster than sound through air. Other elephants receive the messages through the sensitive skin on their feet and trunks.
– A cheetah can go 0-60mph in 3 seconds.
– Great Snipes when migrating fly from Europe to Africa in 2 days (4200 miles of non-stop flying).
And how about a few collective nouns.
A dazzle of zebras
A journey of giraffe
A crash of rhinos
A float of crocs
A flamboyance of flamingos
A pod of hippos.
We’ve learnt quite a lot and know which round we’ll be playing our joker on in the next pub quiz we enter. We hope to see you at Destinations and see if you know the answer to the question you pull from the pot.
