I did a month long study abroad wildlife management program in Tanzania where we spent a week on safaris in different national parks. Didn't really see much in most of the parks other than herbivores like elephants and giraffes sometimes but mostly a whole lot of gazelles and antelope, but I to got see a lot of lions and spotted hyenas in the Serengeti and Ngorogoro National Park very up close, one serval very up close, and banded mongooses right in our campsite in the Serengeti and from a distance (couldn't see clearly without binoculars or camera that could zoom more than my iphone ) one side-striped jackal, a pair of African Golden Wolves, a leopard on a tree, and a cheetah hiding in the grass. In Manyara Ranch, we saw several black-backed jackals fairly close-up, but they were too quick to get photos, so I only got a blurry pic of one at a distance. No luck seeing any carnivores in Manyara National Park itself and in Tarangire National Park we only saw lions extremely far away, even hard to see in binoculars and no other carnivores.
Serval
2 extremely far away African Golden Woves (one laying next to antelope, other's location is obvious) taken with a blurry 10x zoomed with my iphone.)
Same wolves in previous pic.
African Golden Wolves again
Spotted Hyena
Baby Spotted Hyenas
Banded Mongoose (one of many that was with a full mob of them that lived at our camp site)
Blurry iphone pic of leopard in tree
Lionness
Blurry iphone pic of cheetah hiding in grass right under that tree
Male lion
Extremely blurry black-backed jackal pic taken with iphone
Not pictured: Side-striped jackal. Moved too quickly away and was too far away to get a pic with my iphone. Unfortunately my camera had broken shortly before this trip, so I only had my iphone to use for photos on the entire trip. This also means that animals that look close were really that close to are vehicle which was super amazing.
I didn't see any African Wild Dogs in Tanzania because they're like critically endangered there and were even extinct in the country at one point until re-introduced, but I did also do a week long internship a year before in Botswana and I saw African Wild Dogs there. It was really cool because they jumped in front of our safari jeep chasing an antelope, so I saw them really up-close. The encounter only lasted seconds though and then both they and the antelope disappeared (there were only 2 dogs in the pack) into the bushes and we couldn't find them again, so I got no photos unfortunately.
Now my wishlist to go back to Africa is to go to Ethiopia because the only African canid (besides foxes) that I haven't seen in the wild is the Ethiopian Wolf. I would also love to have a longer and/or close encounter with African Golden Wolves, Side-striped Jackal, Black-backed Jackals, and African Wild Dogs as well. Fortunately, all those species are also found in Ethiopia although my best chance of seeing African Wild Dogs again is probably going back to Botswana as they are also very rare in Ethiopia. I'm also very happy I saw Spotted Hyena but would love to see Striped Hyena, Aardwolf, and Brown Hyena as well, however even though Ethiopia has them, Aardwolf are nocturnal and shy and Striped Hyenas are also nocturnal, not sure if shy. Ethiopia doesn't have brown hyenas, but Botswana does and I'm not sure how hard it is to see them, but that may be another good reason to go back to Botswana besides having another chance at seeing African Painted Dogs.
