As you enter the Park you will find yourself surrounded by the tall trees of the ground water forest. In many ways this type of forest is reminiscent of tropical rain forest, with its lush green vegetation lit by shafts of sunlight and the chorus of bird and other animal sounds echoing from the trees. However, as its name suggests, the forest is in fact supported by ground water, not high rainfall. The high water table is fed by seepage from the volcanic rock of the rift wall.
As you begin to look around, you will notice that there are different types of vegetation growing at three separate levels. These are the tall trees, the intermediate level shrubs, and the grasses, reeds and other flowering plants at the lower level.
Among the trees, only one, the wild fig, has a common name. Look at the trees' shapes, leaves and bark colors to help tell them apart. The wild fig has a pale bark and the fruit is smaller with more seeds than the edible fig. The fruits ripen in December and are eaten by a variety of animals and birds. Baboons will feed up in the trees, while below, elephants will carefully pick up the fallen fruits with their trunks.
At the intermediate level grow a variety of flowering plants such as species of hibiscus, abutilons, and wild ginger. The reed Cyperus alternifolius is very common on drier ground beneath the trees.
In some places the water table is too high for the successful growth of forest trees: In such areas the forest gives way to swampy glades in which tall reeds of Typha and Cyperus immensus predominate, and on the fringes of these glades a star grass is found. In much drier areas there is less vegetation and you will see both the strange "sausage" tree and the tamarind tree. The sausage tree is largely pollinated by fruit bats.
Elephants are frequently seen in the deep forest or in the marshy glades, but the most common animal is the baboon.
A baboon troop consists of between 30 and 100 individuals, and is made up of females and their young, adolescent animals of both sexes and a number of adult males. At adolescence males leave the troops into which they were born and transfer into another troop.
Males can be distinguished from females by their larger size, thick mane and large canine teeth. At first, females carry their young on their stomachs, but after a month the young infant rides jockey style on the mother's back near the tail. Female baboons form dominance hierarchies, in which the members of the same family assume similar ranks. High-ranking females have greater opportunity to get the best food and sometimes have more offspring. The hierarchies of males are not so clear cut and depend less on maternal rank than on such factors as fighting ability and age. Females in oestrus develop large pink swellings on their rears that signal receptivity.
Much of their diet consists of grass, roots, fruit and insects but they can and do hunt and kill the young of impala and other antelopes. A single baboon troop can range in an area as large as 10 square kilometers, but the ranges in Manyara are likely to be much smaller. Park rangers ask visitors not to feed baboons. They can bite, inflicting very serious wounds.
Another monkey seen in the forest, from which they rarely stray, is the blue monkey. When seen at a distance, especially in the shade, they appear black but are in fact a dark bluish grey. The fur on the face is longer and slightly lighter colored. Blue monkeys live in family troops of about four to six members, but sometimes up to a dozen animals are found together. They feed in the morning and late afternoon in the higher tiers of the forest, descending lower during the heat of the day. Their diet consists mostly of the leaves and fruits of the forest trees. A troop may have a territory of up to 2 square kilometers (about three-quarters of a square mile), which they mark with a sharp cry ("nyah") at sunrise and sunset.
Although bird life is comparatively scarce in the forest, possibly as a result of predation on eggs and fledglings by the monkeys, you are likely to see and hear the silvery-cheeked hornbill. This large bird, with its conspicuous casqued bill, flies with creaking wing beats and often sits at the top of trees making a raucous noise.
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