Comoros

The Comoros are a volcanic archipelago in the Mozambique Channel, between Africa and Madagascar, and their position explains a fauna that mixes African and Malagasy influences with a high degree of endemism. Grande Comore is dominated by Karthala, one of the largest active volcanoes in the world, with an enormous crater and cloud forest on its slopes. Mohéli, the smallest and least populated island, keeps the best native forest and a marine park that protects green turtle nesting beaches, seagrass meadows with dugongs and waters through which humpback whales pass to breed. Anjouan and Mohéli are home to an enormous fruit bat that lives nowhere else and that ranks among the largest in the world, with a wingspan of almost a metre and a half.