Serengeti Plains, Tanzania

This scene is an original illustration set in Serengeti Plains, Tanzania. It lies in equatorial latitudes, where the climate is tropical savanna — a pronounced dry season.

A large flat-topped acacia spreads in the foreground. Two giraffes reach up into a smaller crown further off, clean in silhouette. Dry gold grass runs unbroken to a level horizon, and low morning sun rakes across it from one side.

Why are acacia crowns flat on top?

The flat top is browsing pressure made visible: giraffes crop the crown to exactly the height they can reach, so trees across the whole plain grow to the same ceiling. Scattered trees over continuous grass is savanna — too dry for closed forest, too wet for desert — and the gold means the dry half of a strongly seasonal year, close to the equator but high enough to be cool at dawn.

Terpano is a free daily geography puzzle. You study one original illustration, place a pin on a borderless terrain map, and see how close you were. There is no account and no sign-up; progress stays in your own browser. It plays in 11 languages.