So firstly let me explain a little about what the big 5 consists of.

The King of the jungle! The African lion!

The second biggest cat species in the world, just behind the tiger(specifically the Siberian tiger)

The African Elephant

One of my favourite creatures, these gentle giants are very close with their family members and are even known to visit graves of their diseased loved ones many years after.

The Rhino

A heavily endangered species due them being poached for their rhino horn. If you want to read more on this please see my last post which goes in depth about this - https://steemit.com/nature/@warrensteem/rhino-poaching-and-why-it-needs-to-be-stopped-in-its-tracks

The Cape Buffalo

These guys, might not seem like much. But in person these animals are massive, and their horns even bigger. In a herd they are untouchable by all predators. The only way is to single out a weak one from the herd.

Last and certainly not least. The African Leopard

This is one of the most majestic and beautiful animals in the wild (In my opinion of course), And one of the hardest to spot because of their spots and ability to climb trees(where you can find them relaxing most of the day).

Fun fact

If you look at Places such as the Kruger park, they do not know how many leopards they have as they move where they want. They climb trees and scale fences and go to other farms as they wish. They just have an estimate of how many of these animals should be around.

Ok now thats out of the way, Why are they called the BIG 5?

Lets start off where it originated from. It used to be called the Big 5 Game, and this term was coined when

It was originally a hunting term used by the so-called ‘great white hunters’ in the hunting heyday of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when professional hunters bagged as many trophies as possible in as short a time as possible.

They used the term for the most difficult animals to hunt on foot!

lets be grateful that has stopped though

Ok so now what does the big 5 mean in present terms ?

The big 5 in to days term relates to the popularity of the animals according to tourism stats( Which are the most popular animals for tourists). The term has nothing to do with their size, it was originally the difficulty of hunting on foot, then it was coined by safari tour operators after hunting these creatures was outlawed.

I hope you enjoyed my write up, if you did, please follow me @warrensteem

http://big5.southafrica.net/#lion-gallery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_five_game