Will the little pronghorn cut its mother's belly when it is born?

Most people will feel quite strange to the protagonist of today's calendar, Addax nasomaculatus, which is undoubtedly somewhat unknown compared to African antelopes such as wide-angle wildebeest, Tang's gazelle and wildebeest, which often appear on TV. This kind of common antelope with a little unique, hovering back and forth on the edge of people's field of vision, makes people have an impression but does not understand it very well.

Do you remember these long horns? Picture: Haytem93 / Wikipedia

Long horns, unique face, but ordinary.

As mentioned earlier, the common pronghorn is slightly unique. Its uniqueness lies in its unique appearance among antelopes-its veritable spiral horns. Both sexes have long spiral horns, and the horns of males are slightly longer than those of females, and the length of the horns is at 55~85cm, forming 1.5-2.5 spirals with a circular cross-section, with dense rings on the surface and a twisted rebar as a whole.

There are dense rings on the corner of the antelope. Picture: MathKnight & Dr. Zachi Evenor / Wikipedia

The spiral antelope is shaped like a donkey, but it is stout, and the color matching is easy to distinguish among antelopes. The overall color is very pale pale in summer, and most of the fur turns to grayish brown in winter, only the limbs and buttocks remain light. In front of the wrist joint of the foreleg, there is a dark brown patch. Its head is dark brown, there is an obvious white patch between the eyes, and extends to the front of the eyes, the positive view is H-shaped, which is the most eye-catching symbol of the pronghorn. Although the pronghorn has many unique features that will not be mistaken, it is also difficult to impress people.

The disaster of extinction begins with mankind.

Africa is home to most antelope species, and pronghorn is no exception. In ancient times, pronghorn was once distributed in the Arab region outside Africa and the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert in North Africa. But now their distribution has shrunk dramatically, and wild pronghorns are found only in tiny areas of Nepal and Chad.

As early as 2500 BC in ancient Egyptian paintings, there are wildebeest tied to posts by a rope, which shows that humans began to try to domesticate them at that time. However, with the collapse of ancient Egypt, the pronghorn eventually failed to become a domestic animal, but went to a more miserable situation. After 1800, the wildebeest population declined sharply, not only withdrawing from the Arabian Peninsula, but also completely disappeared from Egypt in the 1960s.

There is no doubt that human activity is one of the reasons for the sharp decline in the number of pronghorn. Because the wildebeest has a relatively fixed range of activities, easy to track and catch, it has been hunted by humans for a long time and has become a source of meat and leather for human beings.

A group of antelopes. Picture: Mike Hill / gettyimages.com

In addition, human activities have also caused serious damage to its habitat, which not only destroyed the pronghorn, but also affected other animals distributed in the same region, such as gazelle, Doka gazelle, gazelle, Arabian gazelle, and even affected lions and cheetahs in North Africa.

It's hard to live in the desert. You have a plan.

As a typical desert animal, pronghorn has a series of characteristics to adapt to the harsh desert environment. Its pale body color is integrated with the surrounding environment, which is a good protective color. In addition, light colors can reflect some of the strong sunlight, helping to maintain body temperature in the unsheltered desert and avoid overheating.

The four hooves of the pronghorn are relatively larger than those of other antelopes, and the larger contact surface makes it difficult to sink when walking in loose sand.

The hooves of the wildebeest enlarge. Picture: Wikipedia

In the desert, water is extremely rare, and the pronghorn can only rely on a small amount of water in its food to maintain its life. It feeds on a wide variety of plants, from low grasses to taller shrubs and trees. However, these desert plants do not contain much water, and they must reduce the loss of water in their bodies as much as possible.

The inside of the wildebeest's stomach has a bag-shaped structure that stores water, which can help them survive a long drought. In order to better absorb the water in the food and reduce the loss, they take longer to digest than other antelopes and their urine is quite concentrated.

The pronghorn is usually nocturnal, especially in the hot summer, where they dig and hide in shady places during the day to protect themselves from the sun.

A pronghorn resting in the sand. Picture: Cyril Ruoso / Biosphoto

Pronghorn is a gregarious animal and is considered to be a highly social species. They wander around in small groups of 5 to 20, led by the oldest females, while males guard and guard the territory. They can follow the rainfall and migrate, constantly looking for areas with more abundant vegetation.

The pronghorn can reproduce all year round, but it is the peak of reproduction at the turn of winter and spring, giving birth to one litter and the cubs are born without horns. It takes only 2 to 3 years for the pronghorn to reach sexual maturity, when the individual already has perfectly spiral horns. Captive pronghorn live for up to 20 years, but wild individuals rarely live to 10 years.

The newborn cub has not yet grown horns. Picture: Ingrid van den Berg / Animals Animals

A member of the family Bovidae is of moderate stature.

In 1816, the pronghorn was named by Blainville. It was originally named Antilope nasomaculatus and included in the genus Antilope. It was not until 1842 that Laurillard established the genus Addax and made the pronghorn the only member of the genus.

The generic name of the pronghorn comes from Arabic and refers to an animal with curved horns, probably the pronghorn, while the species name nasomaculatus comes from the Latin nasus (nose) and maculatus spots, which refers to white patches across the bridge of the nose on its cheeks. As for its English name addax, it uses the generic name directly.

The spiral antelope belongs to the largest family of Artiodactyla. Kone has more than 140species. Kone species have significant differences in shape, habit and shape, from the gigantic Indian bison to the Japanese gazelle as small as a rabbit.

The adult weight of the Japanese gazelle is only 2.2kg. It is the smallest antelope in the world. Picture: Brent Huffman / UltimateUngulate

In the bovine family, the pronghorn belongs to medium body type, with male shoulder height 105~115cm, body weight 100~125kg, female smaller, high 95~110cm, heavy 60~90kg.

The pronghorn belongs to the horse antelope subfamily of the bovine family. Unlike the small antelopes of the gazelle subfamily, the antelopes of the gazelle subfamily do not have the ability to run fast, so they are often unable to cope with larger predators. As one of the smaller species, pronghorn has many natural enemies, such as lions, leopards and hyenas. In addition, their young individuals have to face the threat of hideous cats, serval cats and so on.

Although the rotation angle is rare, it is not unique.

The pronghorn is named for its horns, but it is not the only one of the bovidae, but also the impala (gazelle subfamily), goat (sheep subfamily), gazelle and small wildebeest (boviinae). Because of the word difference, the two kinds of antelope are often mistakenly called pronghorn, but there is no resemblance between the twisted antelope and the pronghorn except that they both have spiral horns. Even the same spiral horn, the twisted wildebeest is also different, it is not as clear as the spiral wildebeest, but it has obvious longitudinal ridges, the cross section is never circular, in addition, the female of the twisted wildebeest has no horns.

Although several species of Bovidae have spiral horns, they are quite distant and belong to different subfamilies. This is also a very interesting phenomenon of the bovine family. Species with similar shapes may not have much to do with each other, while those species with great differences in appearance may be close relatives, such as musk oxen and antelope, which are similar in appearance and size. Although they both belong to the sheep subfamily, they are very estranged.

Musk Bull is famous for its peculiar smell of urine. I know Musk Bull. Photo: Wild Wonders of Europe / Munier / naturepl.com

It is the relationship between cattle and sheep that makes the concept of cattle, sheep and antelope a muddle account. As for the question of what kind of animal is called antelope, it can only be said that with the exception of a single family pronghorn Antilocapra americana, cattle that are not called cattle and sheep are called antelopes.

The present situation is critical and fortunately saved.

As a pronghorn that was once widely distributed in West Asia and North Africa, today's situation can be said to be in danger of tired eggs. The once vast distribution area has shrunk to a few small spots on the map. The wild population is less than 500, which is rated as CR by the IUCN.

Fortunately, the pronghorn is easy to raise and breed, with as many as 1700 individuals in captivity, scattered in zoos around the world, and scattered in Morocco and Tunis. Countries with existing wild populations have also taken measures to protect them, and the future of this species is still promising.

The captive pronghorn is released into the wild. Picture: Oliver Bern / Biosphoto

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New Japanese wildebeest of the family Bovidae