50 Fun Facts About Antelope

Which antelope stampedes through a gorge in Disney's The Lion King, in the scene where Mufasa is killed?

Wildebeest herds make a believable stampede: they are the most abundant big-game animals in East Africa. Disney's animators built a few of them in 3D and multiplied them into hundreds.

Which antelope, the national animal of South Africa, appears on the reverse of every Krugerrand gold coin?

Springbok comes from the Afrikaans words for jump and buck, and the coin shows the animal in mid-leap. South Africa's national rugby team plays under the same name.

Which graceful African antelope, able to leap three metres into the air, gave its name to a classic Chevrolet?

Impala became a Chevrolet model for 1958, with the leaping antelope as the car's logo. The real animal can cover 10 metres in a single bound.

Antelope horns have a bony core covered by a sheath of which protein, also found in human fingernails?

Keratin keeps growing over the bone and is never shed. That is the big difference from a deer's antlers, which are bare bone and fall off to be regrown every year.

Which North American animal is nicknamed the American antelope, although it belongs to a separate family of its own?

Pronghorn only look like antelopes because they evolved to fill the same role on open plains. Their closest living relatives are the giraffe and the okapi.

Which sportswear brand, founded in England, takes its name from the Afrikaans word for a South African antelope?

Reebok is the Afrikaans name of the grey rhebok. The company's founders, two brothers from Bolton, found the word in a dictionary that one of them had won in a boyhood sprint race.

Which mythical rabbit, popularised by a Wyoming taxidermist in the 1930s, is said to wear the horns of an antelope?

Jackalope is a blend of the words jackrabbit and antelope. Douglas Herrick and his brother made the first one by grafting deer antlers onto a jackrabbit, then sold it to a hotel for ten dollars.

Which tiny African antelope, barely knee-high to a human, is named after the alarm call its females make?

Dik-dik pairs are monogamous and may share one territory for life. Staying put may be the safer choice for an animal that small, since wandering off to find a new partner means meeting predators.

Home on the Range, the cowboy song that mentions antelope, is the official state song of which US state?

Kansas adopted the song in 1947. Its words began as a poem written in the early 1870s by Brewster Higley, a homesteader living in a cabin in Smith County.

In the South African sport of bokdrol spoeg, contestants spit pellets of which antelope's dung as far as possible?

Kudu droppings are small, hard pellets, which makes them the ammunition of choice. The pastime became a formal sport in 1994 and now has an annual world championship.

Which huge, ox-like African antelope did Dutch settlers at the Cape name after the moose of northern Europe?

Eland is simply the Dutch word for elk, the European name for the moose. The giant eland is the largest antelope species in the world, yet elands can jump 2.5 metres from a standing start.

The royal antelope, a shy forest dweller of West Africa, holds which record among the world's antelopes?

Smallest species by some distance: a royal antelope stands only about 25 cm at the shoulder. Its grand name comes from a Dutch merchant's report that locals called it the king of the harts.

Which long-necked East African antelope stands upright on its hind legs to browse leaves over two metres up?

Gerenuk is taken from the animal's Somali name. Its stretched neck earned it a second name, the giraffe gazelle, and lets it reach food that other antelopes of its size cannot.

Which antelope of the Central Asian steppe has a swollen, drooping nose and ranged as far as Britain in the Ice Age?

Saiga once roamed the mammoth steppe from the British Isles to Beringia. Today the vast majority of the world's saigas live in Kazakhstan.

Which white desert antelope was extinct in the wild by the early 1970s, then successfully returned from zoo-bred herds?

Arabian oryx were released back into the wild from 1980. In 2011 the species became the first ever to climb from Extinct in the Wild to Vulnerable on the Red List.

Which animal, the largest antelope in Asia, has a Hindi name that translates as blue cow?

Nilgai joins the Hindi words nil, blue, and gai, cow, though only the adult bulls turn bluish grey. Animals released on a Texas ranch in the 1920s founded feral herds that still roam there.

Which Indian antelope with long corkscrew horns is the only living member of the genus Antilope?

Blackbuck horns can spiral to 75 cm on a male, and females occasionally grow a pair too. The species now also thrives on ranches in Texas and Argentina, where it was introduced for hunting.

Which swamp-dwelling African antelope has long, splayed hooves and a shaggy, water-repellent coat for life in marshes?

Sitatunga are so tied to wetlands that their other common name is marshbuck. Only the males grow horns, and the body and legs are specially adapted to boggy ground.

Which chestnut-red forest antelope with thin white stripes shares its name with a pair of small hand drums?

Bongo are among the largest of the forest antelopes and are mostly active at night. Males and females alike carry the heavy, spiralled horns.

Which South African antelope, hunted out by about 1800, was the first large African mammal recorded to go extinct?

Bluebuck skins survive as just four mounted specimens, in museums in Leiden, Stockholm, Vienna and Paris. So few accounts were written while it lived that even early drawings seem to be copied from stuffed specimens.

Antelopes belong to which family of cloven-hoofed mammals, the same one that includes cattle, sheep and goats?

Bovidae holds them all, and 'antelope' is just the label for any member that is not a sheep, a goat or one of the cattle. Some antelopes are therefore closer kin to cows than to other antelopes.

What name is given to the partly digested food that antelopes, like cows, bring back up to chew a second time?

Cud comes back up as soft balls of stored food, which an antelope's well-developed molars grind to a pulp before it is swallowed again for further digestion.

Antelopes have no upper front teeth, so their lower incisors bite grass against which structure instead?

A gum pad, hard and toothless, lines the front of the upper jaw. The lower incisors press against it to tear off grass stems and leaves.

Antelope eyes sit on the sides of the head and have pupils of which shape, widening the view of approaching danger?

Horizontal bars of pupil give an antelope a broad sweep of vision with very little overlap between the two eyes. Sharp hearing and smell take over at night, when most predators are on the prowl.

Africa is home to dozens of antelope species but only one native deer, known by which name?

Barbary stag, a red deer of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, is the lone exception. Deer and antelopes fill much the same niche, the likely reason that where one group thrives the other is scarce.

Which African birds ride on antelopes and other large mammals, feeding on the ticks in their hides?

Oxpeckers are not purely helpful passengers. They also feed on blood and flesh from their hosts' wounds, so a partnership once thought to suit both sides can tip into parasitism.

Which term describes the stiff-legged leaps, with all four feet off the ground, that gazelles make near predators?

Stotting is most likely an honest signal: the leaping animal shows a predator that it would be hard to catch. Both sides gain, because neither wastes energy on a chase that would fail.

The chousingha of India and Nepal is unique among antelopes for having which feature?

Four horns is exactly what chousingha means in Hindi. The longer pair sits between the ears and a shorter pair grows on the forehead, sometimes as little more than fur-covered studs.

The giant sable antelope, feared lost during a long civil war, is the national symbol of which African country?

Angola prints the animal on its banknotes, stamps and passports. It is also the emblem of the national airline, and the national football team is nicknamed the Palancas Negras after it.

The gemsbok, a desert antelope with long, straight horns, supports the shield on the coat of arms of which country?

Namibia based the shield on its national flag, then added an African fish eagle as the crest and two gemsbok as supporters, one standing on either side.

The addax, a critically endangered antelope with spiral horns, is native to which desert?

Sahara summers turn the addax's coat almost completely white, and the animal is also known as the white antelope. It can also live for long periods without drinking water.

The word gazelle reached English through French, but it began in which language?

Arabic ghazal is the root of the word. In Arabic literature the gazelle became a symbol of human beauty, admired for the animal's grace.

Which large African antelope wears a white ring on its rump and gives off a musky smell said to repel predators?

Waterbuck skin secretes a greasy, musk-scented substance, which earned the animal the nickname greasy kob. The name fits because it cannot tolerate dehydration in hot weather, so it stays close to water.

Which small African antelope walks on the tips of its blunt, cylindrical hooves and lives among rocky outcrops?

Klipspringer is Afrikaans for rock leaper. Unlike most antelopes it has a thick, coarse coat of hollow, brittle hairs, coloured to work as camouflage against the stone.

Yingying, a mascot of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, was modelled on which swift, protected animal of western China?

Tibetan antelope, known for their swiftness, inspired Yingying, and his headgear borrows from Tibetan and Xinjiang costumes. He was one of five mascots and stood for the yellow Olympic ring.

Bambara dancers in which West African country wear carved antelope masks honouring Chi Wara, a mythical farming hero?

Mali's Bambara credit the discovery of farming to Chi Wara, a hero who was half antelope and half human. The carved figures always appear as a male and female pair.

Gemsbok from southern Africa, first released in 1969, now run wild around White Sands Missile Range in which US state?

New Mexico's game department released just 93 animals in the Tularosa Basin. The herd has since grown into the thousands and is now considered a problem for the local desert ecosystem.

The mountain nyala, an antelope pictured on a national ten-cent coin, lives wild only in the highlands of which country?

Ethiopia's Bale Mountains National Park shelters up to half of all mountain nyala. Scientists did not formally describe the species until 1910.

The dama gazelle, a critically endangered desert antelope, appears on the badge of which nation's football team?

Niger's footballers are popularly called the Ménas, the Hausa name for the animal. The dama is the largest of all the gazelles, with long legs that help it shed heat.

Antelopes are even-toed hoofed mammals, an order that also includes which of these African animals?

Hippopotamus, pig, camel, deer and giraffe all share the order with antelopes. DNA and fossils show that whales belong on the same branch too, with hippos as their closest relatives.

The chiru, an antelope of Asia's highest plateau, is poached for shahtoosh underfur, woven into which luxury items?

Shawls of shahtoosh were traditional wedding gifts in India. Each one takes the underfur of three to five animals, which have to be killed because the fur cannot be taken from a living one.

Hindu art often shows Vayu, the god of which natural force, riding a swift antelope?

Wind was the natural match for an animal famed for its speed. Vayu is pictured riding an antelope or gazelle, though the oldest hymns give him a chariot drawn by horses.

Which ancient people kept herds of gazelles and addax, both antelopes, for meat and occasionally as pets?

Egyptians probably never truly domesticated them, since no domesticated gazelle exists today. Antelopes panic at anything that looks like a predator, which makes them very hard to herd or handle.

The duikers, small forest antelopes of Africa, take their name from an Afrikaans word with which meaning?

To dive is what a startled duiker does, plunging into thick vegetation for cover. Unusually for antelopes, duikers also eat meat now and then, from insects and carrion to the odd small bird.

Gazelles may let a visible lion walk within 200 metres, yet bolt at 800 metres from which other cat?

Cheetah attacks depend on a sprint, so gazelles keep them at a distance. A lion in plain view is less of a threat, because lions usually hunt as a pride or by stalking unseen.

Male lechwe gather on a small display ground where females choose a mate; what is such a ground called?

A lek puts rival males side by side, each defending a small territory, so the females can appraise them all and choose one to mate with.

The word antelope is first attested in a fourth-century Greek text, as a saw-horned beast haunting which river's banks?

Euphrates was the home Eustathius of Antioch gave it around 336: a savage creature, hard to catch, with horns that could cut down trees. Only in 1607 was the word first used for living animals.

The great antelope migration of East Africa loops clockwise between Kenya's Maasai Mara and which Tanzanian ecosystem?

Serengeti herds begin the circuit in the south, near Ngorongoro, then swing north towards Kenya. By total body weight it is one of the largest land animal migrations in the world.

Which critically endangered antelope of the Kenya–Somalia border is nicknamed four-eyed for its large facial glands?

Hirola are the only living members of their genus. Conservationists warn that losing them would be the first extinction of a whole mammal genus on mainland Africa in modern human history.

Across most of the world's antelope species, horns are carried by which members of the herd?

Both sexes are horned in most species, though the males' horns tend to be larger. Red lechwe and suni are among the exceptions, with hornless females.