Blackbuck and chinkara are at the centre of the news cycle this whole week given the tragic murder of Nationalist Congress Party leader Baba Siddique in Mumbai. Amid the maelstrom of coverage, one thing has stood out: the tendency of most journalists in India to confuse ‘antelope’ with ‘deer’. The two, however, are different from a taxonomic standpoint.
Taxonomy is the system introduced by the Swede Carl Linnaeus to categorise life forms. Under this system, both deer and antelope are part of the Kingdom Animalia.
Also, both are ‘Artiodactyls’, which means they are hooved animals and put most of the weight of their bodies on two or four of the toes of their foot (which fuse to form the hoof).
But both belong to different ‘families’ under the Artiodactyl order. The deer belong to the family Cervidae, while antelope fall in the ‘Bovidae’ family, which also includes cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats and bison.
Other types of even-toes ungulates besides the members of these two families include pigs, giraffes, camels, llamas and alpacas.
Meanwhile, the Perissodactyla order is the opposite of Artiodactyla, which means the families included in the order—equids (horse family), rhinoceros and tapirs—put the weight of their bodies on one or three toes of their foot. Hence, they are also known as odd-toed ungulates.
The most basic difference between deer and antelope is the keratinous growths growing from their heads. Among deer, these growths are known as ‘antlers’ and grow only in males. They are divided into branches or ‘tines’. On the other hand, antelope have “strong permanent un-branched horns consisting of a chitinous shell with a bony core,” wrote the authors of a 2020 paper Global research output in Antelope species: A case study. Antelope do not shed their horns like deer.
The world’s second-largest continent, Africa, is virtually ‘antelope haven’. Writing in the journal Tropical Stream Ecology in 2008, authors Nic Pacini and David M. Harper noted that, “Ungulates or hoofed mammals (orders Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla) occur in Asia, Africa and the Neotropics, but their diversity varies greatly among these regions. For example, South America has only 21 species of ungulates (and only 16 in tropical latitudes); whereas there are 91 species in Africa most of which are bovids and the majority of which are antelopes.”
Meanwhile, authors Thangavel Rajagopal, Muthuraj Surulinathi, Arulmozhi Manimozhi and Ponnirul Ponmanickam noted in the 2020 paper that true antelopes are found only in African and Asian continents.
“Antelopes have adapted a wide range of habitats, typically woodland, forest, savannah, grassland plain, marshes, etc. and several species are living in the mountain and rocky outcrops. A few species live in desert (both hot and cold), and a couple of species are even semi-aquatic live in swamp,” they added.
Rajagopal, Surulinathi, Manimozhi and Ponmanickam observed that according to the findings of the Species Survival Commission and Antelope Specialized Group, 59 antelope species are recognised as occurring in 9 countries in the East and Northeast African regions, 36 species inhabit in 10 countries of the Southern and South-Central African regions, 44 species in 22 countries in the West and Central African regions, 25 species in 37 countries from North Africa, the Middle East and Asian regions.
There are 91 species of antelope overall in the world, from the Eland, as big as a domestic cow to the royal antelope of West Africa. On the other hand, there are 43 species of deer, from the smallest pudu of South America to the largest Moose of North America (called ‘Elk’ in Eurasia).
India has six species of antelope: Tibetan Antelope, Tibetan Gazelle, Nilgai, Blackbuck, Chinkara and Chausingha. The Nilgai is the largest and the Chausingha the smallest. It has 12 species of deer, from the smallest Indian Mouse Deer to the largest Sambar.
Antelope, though making up an important part of the herbivore biomass and integral to many African and Asian ecosystems, face several threats, as per the authors of the 2020 paper.
Hunting, habitat destruction, competition with livestock and wars and conflict have affected antelope populations in the last five decades.
Rajagopal, Surulinathi, Manimozhi and Ponmanickam also highlighted the paradox in antelope research. While countries that hardly have any antelopes lead the research on these animals, nations home to the biggest antelope populations in Africa and Asia hardly have any high-quality institutions and scientists.
“The largest scientific manpower engaged by the organizations in antelope in habitat countries need to be motivated to do more scientific research on antelope species. At the outset, researchers should be motivated to publish quality papers in journals so that the future of Antelope research can be strengthened,” they concluded.