Fauna - Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro's Higher Slopes
High Slop Fauna > More in this Category > Geography > Historical Geology > Volcanic Centres > National Park Fauna > Low Slope Fauna > Summit Fauna
Kilimanjaro FaunaFauna as one nears the summit of Kilimanjaro seems to become less and less. At an Altitude of 4000 to 5000 metres, the alpine desert exists as the ultimate climatic antithesis of Weather Conditions. In this icy furnace, temperatures reach a scorching heat of between 35 to 40 degrees during the daytime, and then plummet to well below freezing point at night.
The only living creatures able to withstand the temperature extremes on this part of the mountain are the insects and spiders able to find shelter in the nooks and crannies of soil fissures. Birds of prey occasionally visit the area in search of a titbit or two but very quickly return to the Lowlands in the evenings, unable to survive for lengthily periods at the incredibly high altitude.
The final layer making up the expanse of Kili, and indeed the icing on the Great White Mountain is the summit point. Few if any creatures are able to survive in these hostile surroundings, where precious commodities like oxygen and liquid are almost impossible to come by.
One of the many tales told about Kilimanjaro is that of the frozen leopard found in the summit zone in 1926. Immortalized by Hemingway in his book The Snows of Kilimanjaro, it is unknown what the creature was doing at such a high altitude. To this day the answer remains one of Kili's great mysteries, the answer lying frozen beneath thousands of years of snow and ice.
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The Kilimanjaro Experience
