Up close and personal with a pair of Cheetahs in the Serengeti! They ended up climbing up onto the car in front of us, but they seemed friendly enough.

Author: Salvador Barraza Delbarco | Major: Biology | Semester: Summer 2025

Learning about animals and how they interact with their environment has fascinated me since I could talk. I’ve studied organisms and seen them first had in the Americas, whether it was on vacation rummaging through foliage in Mexico looking for frogs, or in class flipping over rocks expecting find snakes in the river valley. However, to broaden my perspective and understand how organisms that speciated from our animals millions of years ago are different from their new world counterparts, I chose to join the study abroad class in Tanzania. During the start of this summer, I was not only able to see African ecology firsthand, but I also broadened my understanding of different cultures beyond the Western mindset I have always lived in.

Prior to embarking on my journey to Africa, I took an intensive one-week course covering everything from the geology of Tanzania to how indigenous peoples hunted for food in the past. After our final exams we began the first leg our trek.

Our first stop was the Terengeri National Park, where we saw the vicious cycle of life at work. While observing a small, cute Dikdik, it was startled by a massive pack of baboons. This experience highlighted the cut-throat nature of the African environment. Because of this environment, organisms were forced to evolve radially and quickly, which is one of the reasons us Homo sapiens evolved out of Africa.

After Terengeri we met with the Hadzabe people, who demonstrated their traditional hunting techniques. Being immersed into the Hadza culture was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, and it gave me a new perspective on how indigenous cultures could be preserved through tourism. This idea, although possibly controversial, provided a viable strategy for survival of the culture.

Next, we drove up and into the spectacular caldera at Ngorongoro Crater. There we observed rhinos, hyenas, lions, and my favorite: birds! I was taken aback by the striking difference between the old-world vultures present in Africa compared to our new world Black and Turkey Vultures. Vultures in the African continent were massive compared to our vultures, which once again provided evidence for the more intense lifestyle that organisms in Africa were adapted to, where no energy could be wasted. This idea, which we covered in class, was also seen in the dung beetles we observed that demonstrated how every morsel of available energy, even feces, were used by something to survive.

On our way to the final destination of our program, we drove through the Serengeti. For me, the highlight of this leg of our journey was talking to our guide, Dickson, about life in Tanzania and his family. Even though we were driving through the most pristine wildlife viewing area in the entire world, Dickson’s insights into family life and politics captivated me. Regardless of any language and cultural barriers, we understood each other on a human level, and we could relate about similar issues that we faced halfway across the globe.

Finally, we took a small boat to the crown jewel of the entire program: Gombe National Park. We were able to talk to Antoine, the assistant to Jane Goodhall, who spoke to us about the early days of research in the park. The way he spoke about the chimpanzees and baboons made them seem like not just animals, but friends and family that paraded through the jungle, who were simply being observed by a group of scientists. In this way, primate research seemed almost like a blend of both biology and anthropology, which was super interesting to me.

My experience studying abroad was something I could not recommend enough. Regardless of where you go, whether it’s Rome, Sweden, Argentina or Tanzania, studying abroad forces you to immerse yourself in new cultures. Also, studying abroad gave me the chance to observe things I had only read in my textbooks firsthand. For example, I was able to see chimpanzees’ fish for termites using tools and even got to see a mother teaching her kin how to make tools. As a learning and cultural experience, studying abroad was an adventure like no other.