Most dry climates you have small mammals and reptiles but in Africa you have buffalo, rhinos and elephants. Why?
In: Earth Science
Africa isn’t a dry climate. It actually has a lot of different climates, and plenty of rainforest.
The reason big animals are more common there probably has to do with human evolution. There’s good evidence that megafauna (very big animals) were once far more common in Europe, Asia, and the Americas and that they died out at roughly the same time humans arrived. This may be because the humans found them to be big tempting prey full of delicious meat, and the animals considered humans too small to be a threat. Animals in Africa however have had a much longer time to become wary of people, and get used to treating humans as a potential predator.
All of the typical “large animals” you’re thinking of live in the savanna or in the rainforest. The Sahara and Namib deserts have far fewer diverse species, and those tend to look like the small mammals and reptiles you’d find in any other desert.
However, elephants and giraffes and stuff live in grasslands where there is plenty of food and water. Most of central africa is jungle and quite mountainous, then moving north/south you reach zones of slightly drier climate which is where the grasslands are, and further north/south you start reaching deserts.
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