Lake Malawi National Park
Encyclopedia
Lake Malawi National Park is a national park located in Malawi
at the southern end of Lake Malawi
. It is the only national park in Malawi that was created to protect fish and aquatic habitats. Despite this, Lake Malawi National Park does include a fair amount of land, including several small islands in Lake Malawi, and is home to other animals such as baboons
. A large baobab
tree, purportedly over 800 years old, is said to have been a favourite of Dr. David Livingstone
as a place where he could give sermons and speak with other missionaries. The graves of five early missionaries are also found in the park.
The many endemic fish
species make it a key example of specialized evolution
. For this characteristic, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984
Malawi
The Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size...
at the southern end of Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi , is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the Great Rift Valley system of East Africa. This lake, the third largest in Africa and the eighth largest lake in the world, is located between Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania...
. It is the only national park in Malawi that was created to protect fish and aquatic habitats. Despite this, Lake Malawi National Park does include a fair amount of land, including several small islands in Lake Malawi, and is home to other animals such as baboons
Baboon
Baboons are African and Arabian Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio, part of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. There are five species, which are some of the largest non-hominoid members of the primate order; only the mandrill and the drill are larger...
. A large baobab
Adansonia
Adansonia is a genus of eight species of tree, six native to Madagascar, one native to mainland Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and one to Australia. The mainland African species also occurs on Madagascar, but it is not a native of that island....
tree, purportedly over 800 years old, is said to have been a favourite of Dr. David Livingstone
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr...
as a place where he could give sermons and speak with other missionaries. The graves of five early missionaries are also found in the park.
The many endemic fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
species make it a key example of specialized evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. For this characteristic, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984