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Gerenuk — printable fact sheet
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Gerenuk
Litocranius walleri
Litocranius walleri is an antelope that solved the competition problem by growing a neck. In the dry thorn scrub of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, everything eats the browse between ground level and a metre up. The gerenuk simply reaches over it: it rises on its hind legs, props i…
Did you know?
- Unlike most other antelopes, gerenuks can go their entire lives without directly drinking water.
- Females are hornless but have the same long neck, and a browsing female standing bipedal against a thorn tree is one of the strangest silhouettes in African wildlife. Gerenuks mark twigs at the boundary of a territory with a tarry secretion from a gland in front of the eye, pressing the gland against a stripped stem. Because they never drink, they can occupy country too dry for competitors, and they persist in areas where most antelope simply cannot live. When alarmed, they do not bolt into the open but slink away with the neck held horizontal, an unusually cat-like escape for an antelope.
What I learned
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