Mammals

Abstract

Mammals of Egypt have been treated in a volume of the ‘Zoology of Egypt’ which appeared at the beginning of this century (Anderson, rev. by de Winton, 1902). Flower (1932) reexamined the mammalian fauna critically. Discounting 12 domesticated species, 3 ‘pests’, and 4 marine species, there remain 76 species known at present. The largest group are the rodents, the bats and smaller carnivores. Human pressure has allowed mainly small species to survive, most of the larger ones have become extinct or are extremely rare. A leopard was shot at Mogharra in 1913, a cheetah on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road in 1967; the wild boar became extinct in the Delta about 1890; no records exist for the wild ass from the late 29th century onwards; rare are the gazelles in the desert, where motorised hunting parties operate; similarly with the ibex whose existence is doubtful. The hippopotamus, once almost a symbol of the Egyptian Nile valley, was by the 17th century so rare that the shooting of two near Damietta was recorded by the great Buffon in 1769 and described by Sonnini de Manoncourt (1799). The Arab chronicler Abdel Rahman ibn Hassan (known as El Jabarti) described the appearance of a hippo near Damietta in A.H. 1233 of the Muslim calendar, equivalent to 1815, if the story is true. By that time all memories of the animal had vanished in the population. Further upstream, Bruce saw one at Syene (Aswan) in 1786, but later only hearsay existed in Egypt. In Sudanese Nubia records exist for 1820 at Argo island, the latest record for Dongola is 1852; Baker found them frequently at the mouth of the Atbara river in the sixties of the last century. But gone are the times when Bruce reported an abundance at the confluence of the two Niles in 1771. At present the hippo is still present in the White Nile upstream from the Gebel Aulia dam and along the river up to the headwaters. In the Blue Nile it was never abundant, at present the two dams at Sennar and Roseires have closed the river; some survive in the Blue Nile Gorge, Lake Tana has none any more.