How to pronounce “wildebeest” in English

The great wildebeest migration.

They counted 99,481 wildebeest-- not 482 and not 480.

It hit buffalo and wildebeest.

So the wildebeest were also booming.

What do wildebeest do?

through the wildebeest, through the grasslands, through the fire cycle, to the trees, to the giraffes.

It's a million wildebeest chewing grass.

So the wildebeest are central.

very few pictures of wildebeest, because they're everywhere.

What regulates the wildebeest?

What regulates the wildebeest?

So where's the wildebeest on this scale?

Today the wildebeest on the Serengeti, the cape buffalo in Botswana.

and then suddenly a herd of wildebeest.

- The idea of having to put a wildebeest stampede on the stage, yes, I'd love to try that.

And you're seeing largely wildebeest on the run here.

So he started paying attention to wildebeest.

And so what was happening with the wildebeest at this time?

So Tony got blood samples from wildebeest and age-matched them, and found the same pattern with wildebeest as in buffalo-- that in fact, in wildebeest,

And the two affected species-- buffalo and wildebeest-- were booming.

That virus was somehow suppressing wildebeest and buffalo populations.

They leveled off at about a million wildebeest.

When food per capita-- per individual wildebeest-- is plentiful, growth is maximal.

As the density of the wildebeest increases, there is less food per individual.

We don't have to domesticate wildebeest into something that will live in a barn and get milked.

So we know how to survive from sabertooths and wildebeest and the Dark Ages.

And the cattle were not infecting buffalo and wildebeest.

The wildebeests and the zebras follow the rain around so they have something to eat so the carnivores follow them, so they always have something to eat.

There's wildebeest.

It is a place where unlike-- and I've never witnessed the Great Wildebeest Migration, but I would imagine that to be an incredible event, surreal event

Another minute we'd be 500 feet above the ground circling over herds of wildebeest or Cape buffalo in this case.

Well, it wasn't just wildebeest and buffalo that were booming.

So with more wildebeest, you have less and shorter grass.

So I've not seen that nice half-hour long shot of just wildebeest munching grass.

I said, I really need wildebeest, because I didn't find a lot in my own camera.

And before I tell you exactly what's going on with the wildebeest, let me tell you what's going on with other animals in the Serengeti.

Well, it turns out that the wildebeest are largely food regulated.

So you they estimated that year, 180,000 wildebeests had been poached in the Serengeti Mara ecosystem.

For those of you who don't know, the wildebeest migration is the largest remaining overland sort of migration of animals left.

And the vultures here, they had just-- this is a dead wildebeest in Serengeti in Tanzania.

So they had reached, by 1977, 1.4 million wildebeest.

So when the virus was eradicated, you got more wildebeest.

And flying around in an ultralight in Africa just above flocks of flamingos or herds of wildebeests or Cape buffalo, it was a great project.

And every documentary, you gotta have lions taking down a wildebeest or even a buffalo.

And I didn't understand why, for example, there were so many wildebeest and so few topi, which is about the same sized creature.

But Tony also knew there was one other species that was affected by rinderpest, and that was the wildebeest.

At least one question might've popped into your mind, which is, all right, so the wildebeest do this lawn mowing.

No, because if they kept growing at that rate, essentially Africa would be shoulder to shoulder with wildebeest right now.

A little while after he took this picture, he was flying in a plane over the, near the Serengeti and he was taking pictures of the thundering herds of the wildebeest and zebra.