If you were asked to think of a large mammal of the American prairie you might well say the bison, coyote or wolf, a measure of how much these species have settled in to our general consciousness. Yet there is one unique American animal which is less known but is perhaps the most charismatic of the Great Plains.
Many refer to it as an antelope but that is far from the truth. A true American native, the Pronghorn has sojourned across the deserts and plains of North America for at least a million years: but the Pronghorn is not an antelope. Its closest relative is the giraffe.
(thanks Robert-John)
5 comment(s):
What a nice article. Informative and with excellent pictures.
Hmmm? I was always taught that the giraffe is part of the same "family" as antelope. So how can this thing have a giraffe as it's closest genetic relative without also being closely related to antelope?
I live in a state where the pronghorn outnumber the humans, and we always just call them antelope. When the meat is wrapped, it's referred to as goat. The hunting licenses issued by the state also classify them as antelope.
The dictionary says
The Pronghorn of North America, though sometimes known colloquially as Pronghorn Antelope, is not a member of the family Bovidae, but the family Antilocapridae and not a true antelope.
No antelope species are native to the Americas. True antelope have horns which are unbranched and never shed. Pronghorns have branching horns, of which they shed the outer horny sheaths annually.
Pronghorns are also one of the fastest hooved animals in the world. Was there at one time a cheetah-like animal in North America's past that is now extinct. Cougars are good jumpers, and have more paw-punch power than similar sized leopards, though less climbing ability, but cougars aren't that fast on the straightaway. Is this a defense against wolves? Whole herd takes a sprint and the wolves give up? Pronghorns used to overlap with jaguars. While jaguars are immensely strong, they're not very fast.
Maybe the ranges will overlap again. Jaguars seem to have returned to the Rio Grande valley, and there have been recent photos of ocelots in Arizona. Until recently, the only known ocelot populations in the US were on the lower Texas Gulf Coast. Oughta movto wipe out those ocelots to Louisiana to wipe out the invasive Nutria.
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