The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
The most successful results, however, in breeding the White-tailed
Gnu have been obtained by Mr. F. E. Blaauw, Secretary to the Royal
Zoological Society of Amsterdam, in his park at Westerveld, near
Hilversum, in North Holland, on which he has been kind enough to
furnish us with the following information:--Mr. Blaauw purchased
his first pair of Gnus in 1886 from the Jardin d’Acclimatation at
Paris. They arrived in winter and were kept in a covered shed without
artificial warmth until the following spring, when they were turned
out to a grass enclosure of about eight acres, well sheltered by
plantations, and with a shed divided into compartments in one corner.
The Gnus and their descendants have been kept in this enclosure ever
since. In winter they are usually confined inside the house and fed on
hay and oats, because the young ones are frequently born in winter and
require a certain amount of protection. In the summer the Gnus never
enter the shed, and subsist entirely by grazing.
Treated in this fashion the Gnus in Mr. Blaauw’s possession have
succeeded in a wonderful way. From the single pair originally purchased
and the two young females first born, no less than fourteen young Gnus
have been successfully reared, and only two have been lost, having been
born in the open field during severe frost.
Mr. Blaauw’s present herd consists of the original pair purchased in
1886, two adult females (the offspring of this pair born in 1886 and
1887), and two young ones born in May and June of the present year.
Mr. Blaauw has ascertained by frequent observation that the period of
gestation in the White-tailed Gnu varies from 8¼ to 8½ months. Only a
single young one has ever been produced at a birth. The female suckles
her young for seven or eight months, but it commences to eat grass when
about a week old.
In the ‘Proceedings’ of the Zoological Society of London, Mr. Blaauw
has published an article on the development of the horns of the young
Gnu, two of the figures of which we are enabled to reproduce here by
the kind permission of that Society. The first figure (15 _b_)
represents the first stage of the horns, in which they are perfectly
straight and more or less divergent; the second figure (15 _c_)
represents the horns when the animal is about 19 months old. The former
straight portion has now become the terminal half, and the basal
portion, though not yet quite fully developed, inclines downwards and
outwards. The bases of the horns are still far apart, and there is a
wide piece of hairy scalp between them. In the adult stage (as shown
in Plate XII.) the basal ends of the horns become enormously swollen
(especially in the male) and nearly meet together in the middle line.
It should be further remarked that these swollen basal portions, which
are smooth at first, become excessively corrugated and more highly
developed when the animals get old.
[Illustration: Fig. 15 _b_.
Horns of young Gnu (11 weeks old).
(P. Z. S. 1889, p. 2.)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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