The little things...

...can be just as amazing as the big ones. I should know, I´m 1.59 m.   In South Africa I loved these velvet mites, belonging to the Trombidiidae, which turned up in Goegap after some rain as much as the gemsbock and other big stuff.
In Goegap you don´t go out on a safari in a car and expect to see Lions, Elephants or the occasional rhino. You just head out and keep your eyes open and something interesting always turns up - and if it´s "only" a weird fluffy mite. It takes patience but at least for me it was very rewarding and I felt so much closer to nature than packed in a safari car with lots of other tourists.
These are not insects, they´re arachnids, related to spiders - remember, always count the legs ;).

There´s a nice website called "real monstrosities" with something about these weird creatures, at least their indian relatives.

It does also have an entry on the Black and Rufous Elephant Shrew (Rhynchocyon petersi) which I´d love to see one day - but we had elephant shrews (Macroscelididae) too, just not as colorful. They´re the nicest thing to watch, some of the pairs lived close to "our" mice which we did observations on.  This one kept on entering one of "my" traps and I grew quite fond of it :). Don´t worry, it came to no harm and stayed in the trap for a maximum of 30 minutes.

While I´m at weird creatures, this lizard with a forked tail lived lose mto our colony of captive mice. Forked tails are not that unusual in reptiles. This one wasn´t kept in a tenk as it might lkook, it juzst entered one of the glass tanks which were stored outside by accident.