Antelopine Antelopes: Antelopes with Trunks

During the 20th century, when we were trying to group animals together into some kind of evolutionary tree, we often found that there were some that were sufficiently strange that they didn't quite fit. This could be at the level of families (e.g. the red panda) or even higher groupings (aardvarks), but often it was apparent what general kind of animal something was, just not exactly where it fit. Such was the case with the saiga (Saiga tatarica). 

Saigas once lived across the steppes of central Asia, in lands stretching from Moldova to China. Hunting, for both meat and horns, caused a dramatic decline in their numbers throughout the 20th century, accelerating after the collapse of the Soviet Union and leaving them virtually extinct by the dawn of the 21st. A mass outbreak of infectious haemorrhagic septicaemia in 2015 threatened to finish the job, but since then there has been a truly remarkable recovery, with what's thought to be an eleven-fold increase in their numbers between 2015 and 2022. This is so great, in fact, that the species was removed from the international endangered species list in April 2023.

Antilopine Antelopes: Dik-diks

Kirk's dik-dik

The "antilopine" antelopes are, as their name might suggest, mostly typical examples of their kind. I suspect that when many people think of antelopes in general, gazelles and springbok are among the first to come to mind (although, to be fair, so might say, impalas). Traditionally, the antilopines have been divided into two main groups: the gazelle-like antelopes and the dwarf antelopes, with the latter surely being the less familiar to those of us living outside of Africa. Both groups have at least some species that don't fit the "typical" image of the subfamily. For the gazelle-like animals, that's probably the gerenuk and its relative, the dibatag.

Among the dwarf antelopes, we have the dik-diks.

While some researchers subdivide them further, four species of dik-dik are widely recognised, at least three of which are reasonably common within their respective homelands. This may partly be because they are too small to be worth hunting for meat - although, inevitably. this still happens from time to time. 

Antilopine Antelopes: Dwarf Antelopes of Eastern and Central Africa

Oribi

The term "dwarf antelope" can reasonably be applied to many different kinds of antelope that are smaller than, say a typical goat. In this common sense, it's not a precise term, and could refer to species that belong to quite different branches of the antelope family tree. When mammalian zoologists used the term in the 20th century, however, it was often more precise, referring to those thought to be most closely related to the gazelles as a branch within the "antilopine" subfamily of "typical" antelopes.

Technically, these dwarf antelopes were collectively referred to as "neotragines" and assumed to be a natural grouping within the antelopes more widely. Genetic analysis over the last couple of decades has muddied these waters considerably, not least because the genus for which the branch was named, Neotragus, turns out not to be closely related to the gazelles, and is something else entirely. Even if we look solely at those dwarf antelopes that we can still say belong to the antilopine subfamily, it turns out that they don't have a single common ancestor. Specifically, one of them is more closely related to gazelles than it is to any of the other members of its purported evolutionary branch. 

Antilopine Antelopes: Dwarf Antelopes of southern Africa

Steenbok

The "antilopine" subfamily of antelopes, so named because it happens to include the first animal scientifically described as an antelope rather than a goat, is itself divided into at least two major branches. There may or may not also be minor ones, depending on what you think is worthy of naming, but the two main ones are quite clear, and perhaps separated from one another around 12 million years ago towards the end of the Middle Miocene.

One of these groups contains the gazelles, along with the springbok, some other gazelle-like animals, and that "first" antelope mentioned above, the blackbuck. These are, for the most part, smallish slender, fast-running antelopes living in arid or semi-arid habitats in both Africa and Asia. The second group are the dwarf antelopes, found only in Africa and quite visibly different from gazelles. 

Antilopine Antelopes: Almost-Gazelles of Tibet

Tibetan gazelle

It's often the case that the common name of a type of animal in English does not map directly to a scientific understanding, especially once we add modern genetic discoveries into the mix. So it is with the word "gazelle", which derives from an Arabic word that literally means something like "graceful" or "slender" and is used to refer to a range of relatively slim, fast-running antelopes. 

In a stricter, scientific sense, gazelles would really only include those species closely related to the genus Gazella, short-coated animals, often with dark stripes down the side, and that tend to live in hot deserts or semidesert regions. Even this excludes animals such as springboks, since they are less related to the true gazelles than is, say, the blackbuck. Most true gazelles live in Africa, but there are some in Asia, mostly in the Middle East, but with one reaching as far east as northern China. However, a second group of animals commonly called "gazelles" also lives in Asia, and not somewhere that most Westerners would generally associate with such animals.

Antilopine Antelopes: The Giraffe-Gazelles

Gerenuk

Despite appearances, true gazelles are not the closest living relatives of the springbok. That honour is probably tied between two other species, although there have yet to be sufficient genetic studies to absolutely nail that down - one could be closer than the other. They likely diverged from the springbok over 10 million years ago in the late Miocene, earlier than the blackbuck is thought to have diverged from the true gazelles, so it's perhaps unsurprising that they look quite different.

They also look slightly odd, and very distinctive.

The better-known of the two is the gerenuk (Litocranius walleri). The name comes from the Somali word for the animal, but it is more commonly known as the "giraffe-gazelle" in many European languages, and it's easy to see why. It is, of course, much smaller than a giraffe, with males having a shoulder height of around 100 cm (39 inches). The colour is also different, a relatively uniform reddish-brown over the back, with a paler shade in the flanks, neck, and limbs, and stark white underparts. There are also white markings on the face, around the eyes. Only the male has horns, which rise almost vertically out of the skull before curving back in an S-shape.

Antilopine Antelopes: Blackbuck and Springbok

Blackbuck

The gazelle-like body form has evolved at least three times within the "antilopine" subfamily, and arguably a few more times among antelopes more generally. A fast-running animal, able to outpace many of its predators, is clearly a useful thing to be if you're a herbivore. Only one of these three evolutionary events led to what zoologists would describe as the "true gazelles", although at least one of the others resulted in an animal so strikingly similar to gazelles that it's surprising that molecular evidence tells us it doesn't have an immediate common ancestor.

The blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra), however, does not look much like a gazelle. It is one of the five currently recognised species of antelope whose scientific name dates back to the origins of modern taxonomy in 1758. In 1766, Peter Simon Pallas first distinguished antelopes from goats, creating the genus Antilope to incorporate no fewer than seventeen species - including the Dorcas gazelle, which would later go on to become the defining species of the Gazella genus when that was created in 1816. While every other living species was eventually split off elsewhere, the blackbuck remained, and its genus gives its name to the entire subfamily. (The second part of the name, incidentally, translates as "deer-goat" and remains the name of the animal in French).

Antilopine Antelopes: The Largest Gazelles

Grant's gazelle

The word "gazelle", as used in everyday English is a little vague, referring to a general concept of slim, agile, antelopes but not to anything with a precise scientific definition. Strictly speaking, however, it refers to a specific group of closely related animals, and some species that are commonly called "gazelles" strictly speaking aren't. During the 20th century, all true gazelles were placed in a single genus, Gazella, and it's this that defines the more rigid definition of what does and doesn't count. 

In more recent decades, Gazella has been split in three, with the resurrection of two 19th-century names as "new" genera. The original Gazella is widespread, including animals from both Asia and North Africa, but the other two are exclusively African. Eudorcas (literally "true antelope" in Ancient Greek) includes Thomson's gazelle of the Serengeti and its various relatives, while the remaining genus is Nanger, whose name apparently comes from a local Senegalese word for one of the species.

Antilopine Antelopes: The Gazelles of Asia

Arabian gazelles

I suspect that, on the whole, westerners associate gazelles with Africa. We think of the ones we see in wildlife documentaries, being pursued by cheetahs or leopards across the plains of the Serengeti or similar places. However, the most current theory suggests that they may have originated in Asia and various species survive on both continents today, having split apart around 2 or 3 million years ago at or shortly before, the start of the Ice Ages.

How many species that might be is still a matter of debate, and much of it centres on what's probably the first part of Asia you'd think of to look for desert-dwelling animals: the Middle East. For much of the 20th century, there were generally regarded as being two species living here, not counting one or two then thought to be extinct. And then, well, all that fell apart for reasons I wrote about on this blog back in 2013.

Antilopine Antelopes: Gazelles of North Africa

Dorcas gazelle

(Brief note: My internet connection was down for three days over the weekend, which is why this post is delayed from the usual.)

One of the things that most distinguishes gazelles from other kinds of antelope is that they are adapted to dry environments. They don't come much drier than the Sahara so it should be little surprise that gazelles are relatively common here. In fact, the dorcas gazelle (Gazella dorcas) is one of the most widespread of all gazelle species, being found right across the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, as well as further south along the Red Sea coast in Eritrea and Djibouti and across the Sinai into extreme southern Israel. In the north, it's largely restricted to the eastern parts of the Mediterranean coast, being absent from northern Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Antilopine Antelopes: Tommy's Gazelle and Relatives

Thomson's gazelle

You probably don't need to live in Africa to be aware that there are a great many different kinds of antelope. (A couple of years ago I came across an online picture quiz of "can you name these African animals?" Over half of them were antelopes.) It's hard to say which of these are the most familiar to the general public, because quite a few of them probably are, at least in general terms. But one subtype of antelope that people will at least recognise are the gazelles.

Gazelles are smallish, fleet-footed animals; the word comes from the Arabic ḡhazāl, which literally means something like "slim/agile creature". Gazelles are widespread, perhaps surprisingly so, and there are many different species. Of these, the one that may be the most familiar to people outside of Africa is Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) for the simple reason that it's the one that lives in the Serengeti and therefore gets into a lot of wildlife documentaries. Mostly getting eaten by big cats, to be sure, but it's a start.

No Such Thing as an Antelope

There is no such thing as an antelope.

Or at least that's true in the same sense that there's "no such thing as a fish". Which is to say that, obviously, antelopes exist but they aren't a scientifically definable group of animals. Or that, if they were, that group wouldn't map closely to what the regular English word "antelope" is supposed to mean.

The word entered English during the Rennaissance, and descends, via Latin, from the Greek "ανθολοψ". That first appears in the 4th century (so not old enough to be Ancient Greek, as such) and referred at the time to a mythical beast said to live along the Euphrates that had horns so sharp and serrated that it used them to cut down trees. We don't know why the Byzantine Greeks called it this, but there's not some "lope" that it's "ante" to (nor, to use most other European languages, is it an anti-lope); it's just a coincidence that the word sounds that way. For all we know, they were borrowing a word from some other, older language spoken somewhere out east.