Adopt a cheetah, meerkat, or another African animal.
The National Zoo Store Online offers an array of books, educational games, and more related to the African Savanna.
Visit
the Smithsonian's African Art Museum.
The East African savanna, a dry tropical grassland, is home to a rich array of spectacular animals. Predators like lions and cheetahs prey on grazing and browsing animals like zebras and gazelles. Stately birds like kori bustards stalk smaller prey while rarely seen naked mole-rats inhabit burrows on the savanna. You can see these species and more without traveling to Africa. Just come to the Zoo or take a virtual visit. 
African species at the Zoo
Animals from many parts of Africa make their home at the Zoo. The Zoo's Cheetah Conservation Station is home to Grevy's zebras, scimitar-horned oryx, dama gazelles, a cheetah, and other animals.
Oryx Breeding Program Kicks Off With Birth of Female Calf
A scimitar-horned oryx has joined the ranks of endangered animals born this year at the National Zoo’s conservation center in Front Royal, Virginia.
The birth of the scimitar-horned oryx on April 9 marks the first time in more than 13 years that the Front Royal campus has had an oryx birth as the result of a Species Survival Plan recommendation. Oryx are extinct in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The oryx, a female, weighed 20 pounds at birth. Adult oryx are known for their curved horns that can be up to several feet long, but newborns have small horn buds from which the horns will grow. The calf is the offspring of three-year-old Jena and was sired by 13-year-old Dr. Bob, and is part of the Zoo’s renewed efforts to breed scimitar-horned oryx. There are now 16 scimitar-horned oryx at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and one at the Zoo’s campus in Washington, D.C.
The Zoo has partnered with the Sahara Conservation Fund, an independent nonprofit organization, and other zoos to establish a master plan for the re-introduction of oryx across the Saharan range, their native home. Poaching and human conflict primarily contributed to the species’ extinction in the 1980s.
Dama Gazelle Birth
The Zoo welcomed a dama gazelle calf on October 1. For this critically endangered animal, each birth is a victory. She is now occasionally on exhibit. See photos of the calf and learn more.
Can’t see any animals?
Spotting cheetahs:
One female cheetah lives at the Zoo's Cheetah Conservation Station. Cheetahs are the world's fastest land mammal, able to run as fast as 60 miles per hour.
Naked Mole-rat Lions: Lions | Lion Cubs  |
Cheetah Chat
Tune into the Zoo's podcast, Cheetah Chat, to learn about cheetah spots and speed, and the history and future of the Zoo's cheetah conservation efforts.
Animal Enigma
This striped carnivore lives in many regions of Africa and is now on exhibit at the Small Mammal House. What is it?
Grasslands in Africa and Beyond
Africa's
Sahel grassland, home to endangered scimitar-horned oryx and
many other rare species, merges into the Sahara desert to
the north and the savanna to the south. Mostly dry grasslands
also cover southern Africa, home to cheetahs, Cape buffalo,
black rhinos, and kori bustards also found in East Africa.
Zoo scientists are working in all of these areas to help conserve
the incredible biodiversity of Africa's grasslands.
Moist tropical forests blanket parts of central and West Africa, home to great apes, including western lowland gorillas, which you can see at the Zoo.
North America's grasslands were once home to abundant black-footed ferrets, bison, and prairie
dogs. On South
America's plains, seriemas and maned wolves stalk prey. Parts
of Asia, such
as Mongolia, home of Bactrian camels, Mongolian gazelles,
and Przewalski's horses, are covered with grasslands.
