Creature Feature: Bongo.

Actually, those antelope in the trailer were kind of cool-looking. What were they, anyways?

Source: Allposters.com

Well, you're going to laugh. It's called a "bongo." Yes, like the drums. If you can't look at that without cracking up, its scientific name is Tragelaphus eurycerus. It is a nocturnal browser native to many parts of Africa, including Congo, Ghana, and Kenya. Kenya has a very small, unique subspecies of bongo that will come up again later.


Two things stand out about the bongo immediately: that coat and those horns. As in most animals with attractive pelts, the stripes are camouflage. The red pigment rubs off easily - so easily, it is said, that rain running off a bongo's back is stained red. Certainly a neat image, even if it is not true.

The horns are perhaps the bongo's most outstanding feature. Although looking somewhat similar to those of the eland, bongo horns twist only once and take on a sort of lyre shape. The bongo is actually one of the few species of antelope in which both sexes have rather decorative, spiraling horns. They are still larger in the male, but awesome nonetheless. Better yet, they are both functional and fashionable; a bongo's horns keep it from being caught in vegetation while running.

Oddly, there seems to be a lot of convergent evolution with the okapi going on. Both the okapi and bongo love salt licks. They also have long tongues to handle those licks. On a visual level, they are both red-brown with stripes. There was even an odd delay in discovery by Westerners. They aren't related - okapi are the only extant relatives of the giraffe while antelope are closer to cattle - but they sure evolved a lot of things in common.

As one might expect, some populations of bongo are endangered. The more common, western/lowland bongo is listed as near-threatened. Only the Eastern/mountain bongo from Kenya is in critical condition, with possibly fewer than 100 left in the wild. The usual suspects - poaching and eating - are at work. As if to put salt on the wound, bongo also have a high risk of goitre, i.e. they die from malfunctioning thyroid. Habitat destruction is another big factor in almost every endangered species. This one is no exception. Although  an interesting species of antelope,bonoshould probably be avoided in post-apocalyptic scenarios.

Freak Week II: Mongolian Horse.

Of all the mammals in the world, the horse gets the least amount of love on this blog. It's not that I don't like horses; like all females, I went through a horse/pony phase, got a lot of horse books, and even took riding lessons.

This blog has nothing against horses. They just aren't very weird.

Sure, they're beautiful, graceful, powerful, and whatever else have you, but horses are only really weird if you have never seen a domesticated horse before in your life. A real horse person may talk on and on about the differences between an Arabian and a Palomino, but that's still not particularly weird. Cool, but not strange unless you want to get into subtleties.


Racehorses have a lot of inbreeding going on, though.

To make horses weird, one has to go way back. The horse was probably first domesticated in Mongolia. Let's try there.

 

The Mongolians love their horses. The horse population in Mongolia is around three million - more than the entire human population. The national drink, airag, is made of mare's milk. Each family member has his or her own horse. Young men are traditionally given a horse upon their third birthday. Even the nomadic tribes have horses. An old Mongolian proverb says that "a Mongol without a horse is like a bird without wings." Horse lovers, start packing; Mongolia is horse country.



The Mongolian breed of horse is a right bitch to find pictures of, if only because Mongolia also has wild horses. The two are hard to tell apart; not very much has changed in Mongolia since the horse became domesticated. This similarity plus genetic diversity makes them a strong candidate for the first horse breed ever.

Mongolian horses are sturdy. Very few of them need to wear shoes. Even so, they tread cautiously. Once they get used to having a rider, they are calm horses and can run up to 35km/h. Racing horses is the second most popular sport in Mongolia; given the creature's popularity, it is very easy to see why.

 

The horse was the primary weapon of the Mongolian Empire. Fighters with horses had a substantial advantage over people without: horsemen were faster, could trample opposition, and could shoot arrows on horseback. It was thanks to the horse that Genghis Khan was able to take over much of the known world. As the great Khan himself said, "It is easy to conquer the world from the back of a horse."



KHAAAN!

Tomorrow: These are some VERY horny cattle.

Creature Feature: Scimitar-Horned Oryx

Some of you probably think I'm a bitch for advocating exotic pets. Snakes, springhaas, fennecs and mutant turtles from the Amazon are wild and should stay in the wild in some people's minds.


This picture would not exist if such people had their way.

There are several things wrong with that way of thinking. There are a few examples of animals being completely extinct in the wild but surviving quite well in private collections. I do not mean zoos; I mean ranches. Privately-owned ranches that serve no educational purpose whatsoever and are managed by people in Texas for kicks.


The Scimitar-Horned Oryx (Oryx dammah) is one such creature. As soon as you see one of these animals, those HUGE horns - around a meter and a quarter long for either sex - jump right out at you. As one of my friends put it, they could skewer "you and your 5 best friends." The Oryx prefer to turn 180 degrees and kill predators with them; close enough.



These antelopes were native to the African Sahara before being completely wiped out in the wild. They were excellent game animals that just so happened to resemble unicorns from a side-view. What, you don't want horns that can get over a meter long as a trophy?


Ya rly.

Scimitar Oryxes do, however, exist in Texas. Zoos have a few, but by and large, they live in Texas on hunting ranches. There are currently more Scimitar Oryx on these ranches than in zoos.

Wait. What? Why?! How does that work?

Look at it this way: On hunting ranches there necessarily needs to be a surplus. Your goal is to not only have a breeding herd of animals, but a breeding herd with a high fertility rate. That way, you can easily spare a few offspring.

Texas is also pretty close to the environment of the Sahara Desert. Barring the similarities in the natural environment, these were desert animals. Desert animals tend to be very easy to take care of. This is especially true if one lives in Texas, which is full of hot air and bad politics (plus no animal laws).

If the point that privately keeping exotic animals can be a very good thing still hasn't sunk in, consider the Tasmanian tiger/thylacine. The thylacine was also hunted, albeit for different reasons. This animal is now extinct not just in the wild, but in captivity as well.


Not an actual tiger.

Had, perhaps, someone taken in the thylacine onto a game reserve instead of outright eradicating it, we might still have them around. They would be game specimens, but they would still be around.

Scimitar-horned oryx: +2,145 as game specimens and another thousand or so in zoos. Tasmanian tiger: 0.

On that note...