Abstract The concept of fractional derivative has been demonstrated to be successful when applied to model a range of physical and real life phenomena, be it in engineering and science related fields. It is a known fact that reaction-diffusion equation permits the use of different numerical methods in space and time. As a result, we introduce the Fourier spectral method for the discretization of space fractional derivative and adapt the modified version of the exponential time-integrator to advance in time in attempt to explore the dynamic richness of fractional reaction-diffusion equations in two and three dimensions. This approach gives a full diagonal representation of the fractional derivative operator and yields a better spectral convergence irrespective of the value of fractional order chosen in the experiment. Recommendations are made based on some amazing results which arise from the computational experiments. We intend to answer the question ’why is wildlife animals going into extinction in Africa?’ to a reasonable extent. We believe that the spatial patterns obtained in the simulation framework to mimic the ones found in wildlife would provide a measure and serves as a good alternative to an act of killing of wildlife animals for ornamental and decorative purposes, also would serve as a guild to textile industries on pattern formations.