Raptors and snakes in sub-Saharan area

Front

See below picture for description

From left to bottom :
Crowned Eagle (冠鷹雕) ; Long-crested Eagle (長冠鷹)
African Rock Python (非洲岩蟒) ; Gaboon Viper (加蓬噝蝰)
Mali (1996)

In sub-Saharan area, there have many dangerous animals or raptors. As the poor environment of desert area, those species need powerful weapon or behaviour to find enough food, above sheet issued by Mali shown four of species to be found in this area commonly. Crowned Eagle is a huge and powerful raptor, mostly lives in south of Saharan countries like Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad. It diets monkeys or other middle-sized mammals. Like Crowned Eagle, Long-crested Eagle also inhabits in this district, and the diet nearly same. Gaboon Viper is a large herbivore snake and also the world's heaviest viperid, widely lives in sub-Sahara and tropical rain forest of Africa. It length 120cm to 150cm, and some of them near 2m long, diets plants mainly but sometimes catches small birds and animals. African Rock Python is a non-venomous python species in sub-Saharan area, it has maximum 6m long and it is one of the longest snake in the world. However it is not much danger to human and only had few accident records about the attack.

The stamp sheet be illustrated by colourful background shown the landscape of sub-Saharan in Mail. The rock seems a Mount Hombri inside Mopti region of southern Mali, there is the highest point of this country.

Some stamps on the back side are for the make-up rate of the mail, so pity that they overlapped by French registration label, two of these stamps are issued on 2009.

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7th September, 2009. Bamako Darsalam
via France
18th September, 2009. Hongkong