Specie List of Mammals in Tanzania

With respect to mammals, Tanzania stands out as a megadiversity country. The country lies within the tropics thus exhibiting warm temperatures which favour existence of this taxon of warm blooded biota. The country has a wide range of habitat and geomorphological types including lowlands, highlands, undulating landscapes, dry lands, wetlands, forests, bush lands, open grasslands, inland wetlands and a long stretch of an oceanic environment. Each of these characteristics favours a unique guild of mammalian populations. Many studies have been conducted on these mammals relating to their distribution, population sizes, behavior and taxonomy. Although a lot more studies are needed to unravel the tremendous knowledge that is potentially contained in this high assemblage of mammals in the country, the present study was undertaken as an initial attempt to collate what is already known about the mammals in terms of taxonomy, distribution, major sources of information and common names. The starting point for this compilation was the list prepared by the TanBIF Country node which was then updated mostly during a three days retread organized by the node. The book by Wilson and Reader (Wilson and Reader 2005) was our main reference in making the updates in corroboration with data bases available at the department of Zoology and Wildlife Conservation (University of Dar es Salaam), Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, Serengeti Wildlife Research Centre (nee Serengeti Research Institute), Kingdon (2005) and Stanley (2005). The present compilation contains 454 species distributed into 12 Orders, 50 Families, and 180 genera. 97 species still need further verifications.