Cross Breeds

Why are a lot of large African animals not extinct?

How did animals like African Elephants, Black and White Rhinos, Hippos, African Buffalo, most Zebras, Giraffes, Lions, Leopards, Gorillas, and Chimpanzees not go extinct even after the humans evolved in Africa and occupied the continent for all those thousands of years? Did those animals live further inland than the humans? Did they all live a fairly balanced existence? Why wasn't it until relatively recently that some of them became endangered? Why didn't the Quagga go extinct until after Whitey showed up?

Public Comments

1. It turns out that larger animals, like larger people, are simply less active than the smaller ones, and consequently, the larger African animals have simply not gotten around to going extinct yet. I am assured that they will, any day now, and I should quit nagging. Hope this helps!
2. Actually, the quagga likely isn't extinct. You can google this one. The last two (so to speak) were stuffed, one ending up in Germany. Not all the tissue was scraped fromt he inside of the hide, and the DNA was tested. The quagga appears to be a color variant of the onager, a simple color variant. Same as for the King Cheetah. (google that one too) An animal will not go extinct unless its environment changes so fast that it cannot adapt. A nice example is the smilodon (sp) or saber toothed cat, or the stabbing cat. (google it. My spelling is likely off.) The teeth are such that it can hunt only large prey. They evolved to use them as a strangle hold at the neck for larger mammals. When those larger animals went extinct in its area, that cat as well went extinct. The evolution of man from a common ancestor would not necessarily mean that other animals would become extinct... although there are theories that the mammoth did indeed become extinct because of population pressure by early humans. That one is still up for grabs. The climate was changing at the same time as well.
3. They are not extinct because we humans have not done a lot to it. They all survived because of their uber adaptations. It turns out that they balanced their existence with people.