South Africa’s Kruger Park Beats Masai Mara as World’s Best Park for Wildlife Spotting

A new study has found that the Masai Mara National Reserve is the world’s second-best national park for wildlife spotting.

South Africa-based travel firm Go2Africa reported that Maasai Mara came second after the Kruger National Park.

To conduct the study, Go2Africa initially compiled a seed list of all countries, U.S. states, and popular national parks worldwide. Subsequently, they analyzed nearly 70 million images on the photo-sharing website Flickr by searching for each location along with the keyword ‘wildlife’.

Utilizing this data, they calculated the proportion of wildlife photos relative to all photos of each location to ascertain destinations where people visited specifically to photograph animals.

The data revealed that almost half of the photographs taken in South Africa’s Kruger Park (42.54%) feature its wildlife, amounting to over 40,965 unique images.

Kenya’s Maasai Mara claims the second spot with 33.53%, followed by Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park in third place, where 23.37% of its images showcase the park’s unique wildlife.

“All the top three national parks on our list are based in Africa…The Serengeti, along with the Masai Mara, are both renowned for The Great Wildebeest Migration which sees more than 2 million animals traverse through both national parks throughout the year,” Go2Africa reported.

Top 10 Countries For Wildlife Spotting

While South Africa may have beaten Kenya in that category, the East African nation was ranked the World’s Best Country For Wildlife Spotting.

“Our study found that Kenya(20.69%) is the best country to spot wildlife, closely followed by Canada(20.42%) and Singapore(19.19%) based on the number of photos taken on animals in each country,” Go2Africa noted.

The top 10 list includes Australia(17.43%), Botswana(16.53%), Tanzania(15.98%), Lithuania (15.68%), Namibia (14.32%), India (13.27%), with South Africa completing the list (12.16%).

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