Overview
A beautiful animal with very long, scimitar-shaped horns. A large, heavily built antelope, very pale in color except for its reddish brown neck and chest. The face is white with brownish markings. The tail is long and tufted. The hoofs are large for walking on sandy soil. Both sexes grow horns, which are ringed and nearly parallel. Females are similar to males, but have slimmer horns.
Taxonomy
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Mammal
- Order
- Artiodactyla
- Family
- Bovidae
- Genus
- Oryx
Habitat
Semi-desert, seldom entering the desert proper. Distribution- Originally ranged over 1,500,000 square miles (4 million square kilometers) from Morocco to Egypt and from Mauritania to Sudan along the edges of the Sahara Desert. Now extinct in the wild because of uncontrolled hunting by soldiers, tribesmen and oil explorers, and from competition with domestic livestock for the limited vegetation available.
Diet
Feed mainly on grasses, legumes, succulent plants, acacia pods and fruits.
Behavior
Gregarious, usually found in herds of 10-40, sometimes more. Seldom solitary. At times old bulls would join herds of dama gazelles. At certain times of year, after rains had fallen, they formerly gathered in enormous herds of 1,000 or more. Very nomadic, traveling long distances in search of grazing. Migrations were east and west, contrasting with those of addax which are north and south.
Hunting
Hunting occurs in introduced populations by a variety of methods including spot and stalk and over water holes and feeding areas.
Conservation Status
Listed as Extinct in the Wild by IUCN in the year 2000, but a successful reintroduction took place in Chad, and they have flourished on private ranches across the world where they have been introduced. There have been two releases of them back into their native habitat in Chad. One took place in 2016 with 23 individuals and another in 2017. They were released into the the remote Ouadi Rime-Ouadi Achim Game Reserve.