During the cooler winter days, they rest in light shade in the open. During the spring and summer months, they spend the hottest hours in deep cover, typically standing motionless and almost invisible beside trees. Much like the bushbuck, nyalas spend the day in or near cover, emerging at night to feed in grassland. Adapting to seasonal changes, they graze on fresh green grass during the rains and browse leaves, various fruits, and herbs during the dry season, drinking daily. They are closely tied to thickets and densely wooded lowlands generally near water, with access to high quality grassland. They have less stripes than the females, or occasionally no stripes at all.įound only in south-eastern Africa, the nyala’s range has been great reduced. Their upper bodies and limbs are dark, charcoal grey, with tan-colored lower legs. The males boast longer, shaggy coats, including a dark fringe from their throats to their hindquarters, and the longest spinal crest in the tribe. The horns range from 24 to 33 in (60 – 83 cm) with 1.5 to 2.5 twists. Bulls average at a weight of between 216 – 275 lbs (98 – 125 kg) and a height of 42 in (106 cm). The nyala (Tragelaphus angasii) is also part of the forest-antelope model and carries a bushbuck ‘body plan’, but with more extreme gender differences. As bushbucks from the same neighborhood are all acquainted and often greet one another in a friendly manner, it would be more accurate to call this animal loosely and casually sociable, kept separate by feeding and anti-predator strategies that favor separation of individuals. Although bushbucks do not herd together, up to a dozen may feed peacefully in the same clearing in the late afternoon. However, each adult’s home thicket is an exclusive core area where it retires to rest and ruminate between bouts of foraging. The bushbuck is the only solitary, non-territorial African antelope neither sex defends any part of its home range, and ranges may largely or completely overlap. Fond of fruits and flowers, it often forages under trees where monkeys and hornbills are feeding. Both grazer and browser, the bushbuck eats tender green grass but mainly browses herbs and foliage of shrubby legumes. You will almost always find the bushbuck near water, since the dense cover where its spends its days is most abundant along water courses. Hyenas and lions have been seen passing within 10 yd of bushbucks plainly visible through a starlight scope. A bushbuck is not only effectively camouflaged while standing in cover, but also while lying down in the open at night. They depend on this concealment to avoid predators, and tend to only venture into the open at night to feed. Their coats are individually and geographically variable, with eastern and southern forms (as you would encounter in South Africa) being yellower with fewer markings.įrom sea level to mountain moors at 10,000 ft (3000 m) and the edges of rain forests to patches of gallery forest and bush near water in the sub-desert regions, bushbucks inhabit any wild areas of sub-Saharan Africa where there is cover to conceal them. The horns are nearly straight, with only one twist, and typically range between 10 to 22 in (26 – 57 cm). With a rounded back and powerful hindquarters, the bushbuck ram averages at a weight of 88 – 176 lbs (40 – 80 kg) and a height of 28 – 40 in (70 – 100 cm). The bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus), part of the forest-antelope model, is a colorful, sizable antelope that hides in patches of woody vegetation all over the continent. If you are hunting spiral-horned antelope in South Africa, your options are bushbuck, nyala, greater kudu and common eland. Trangelaphine antelopes come in three different models: the forest-antelope model, characterized by a narrow body, deep chest, rounded back, and hindquarters being more developed and higher than forequarters the broken-ground jumping model, which is tall and lean with long, equally developed limbs and a level back and the oversize ox model, a massive animal more like an ox than an antelope, which makes it a slow runner but a great jumper. These antelopes differ from all other African antelopes in having a non-territorial social or mating system and, of course, are distinguished by the spiral shape of their horns. Members of the tribe include the bushbuck, sitatunga, nyala, mountain nyala, lesser kudu, greater kudu, bongo, common eland and derby or giant eland. The spiral-horned antelope of the African continent fall under what is known as ‘the bushbuck tribe’, or tragelaphini.
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