Home Country Guides: Books, links and trip reports whale and dolphin watchingFocus on Australia Mammal watching: Some tipsWorldwide Mammal Info: Books and links with a global coverage Mammal Watching Blog: Read and Subscribeme and my mammal watching

Africa. Home to Bushbabies and Bushmen, River River Hogs and Red Rock Rabbits, and some truly nasty diseases.

Information - sometimes detailed, sometimes less so - on mammal watching in many African countries can be found in the pages linked to the right.

Resources - books
There are plenty of field guides for eastern and southern Africa. Many however cover only the large mammals. If you are interested in the small stuff too then the following are pretty good.

Africa
Kingdon, Jonathan, The Kingdon Field Guid to African Mammals, A&C Black. The most comprehensive field guide-sized book I've seen. All sub-saharan mammals get a mention, many are beautifully illustrated.

East Africa
The Lonely Planet's Watching Wildlife East Africa book was not a lot of use for Rwanda at least. It was out of date and most of the information for Rwanda seemed to me to have been lifted from other publications, rather than based on original work. Perhaps it is better for some of the other countries it covers including Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. The LP guide to Southern Africa (see below) was much better.

Kingdon, Jonathan. East African Mammals. The University of Chicago Press. Printed in the 1970s, this set of books covers all of East Africa's mammals. I have just volumes IIA and IIB which cover bats, shrews and hares and rodents (which covers the most diffficult genera to identify). I have not used it a lot but it is beautifully illustrated.

Madagascar
Garbutt, N. Mammals of Madagascar A Complete Guide . 2007. A & C Black (London). This is a fabulous book that covers all of the species on Madagascar in some details and includes, for the majority, quite detailed information on the best places to see them which as of 2011 was still working well.

Mittermeier et al. Lemurs of Madagascar. 2010. Conservation International. An excellent guide to all the lemurs with notes on where to see each species (the book has been designed deliberately to promote primate-watching - good on 'em!)

Southern Africa
Apps, Peter (Ed.), Smithers' Mammals of Southern Africa: A Field Guide, Struik. Includes illustrations and information about southern Africa's (Zimbabwe and south) larger mammals and many of the small ones too.

Smithers, Reay H.N. 1983. The Mammals of the Southern African Subregion, University of Pretoria, South Africa. This was recommended to me as follows "not exactly a field guide (it's bulky and has more b&w illustrations than colour plates), but it's full of information about each species, including lists of colloquial names, taxonomic notes, descriptions of live animals, descriptions of skulls, and notes on distribution & habitat, behaviour, food & reproduction.  It covers everything from shrews to elephants. "

Mills, G. and Hes, L. 1997. The Complete Book of Southern African Mammals. Struik Winchester. More of a coffee table book than a field guide, but wonderful pictures and detailed information on every species in the region.

Stuart, Chris and Tilde, Field Guide to the Mammals of Southern Africa, New Holland. Comprehensive photo guide to the mammals of Zimbabwe southwards.

Taylor, Peter John. 2000. Bats of Southern Africa. University of Natal Press. A small but very useful guide to all of Southern Africa's bats.

The Lonely Planet's Watching Wildlife Southern Africa book was an invaluable source of information when I visited South Africa. I have no reason to doubt the information it has for Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia is any less accurate.

resources - Websites
Africa
African Bats aims to collate and disseminate information, resources and tools to assist with the conservation of Africa's bat diversity. Their African Chiroptera Report looks a comprehensive synthesis of published data on African bats including distribution maps. The appendices include transcripts of several published bat keys and echolocation information.

Rwanda
The Wildlife Conservation's Societies report on their 1999 biodiversity survey of Nyungwe is a useful read if you are heading there.

South Africa
The South African National Parks website is a useful read and you can book accommodation online.

Tanzania
An online key to the mammals of Tanzania.

Zanzibar
Here's a useful - if somewhat out of date - annotated list of the mammals of Zanzibar and Pemba.

Email groups
I posted requests for South African mammal information to the SA BirdNet. Several people responded with a good deal of useful information.