African antelopes

During an African safari, often walking in the savannah... or better (and safer), drive through the savannah, we see beautiful animals but sometimes we can’t differentiate them.

We think that something like that happens with certain types of antelopes. Some are well characteristic, unmistakable with any other, such as the gerenuc, with big ears and standing on its legs to reach the high branches; or the oryx beisa, with its characteristic coat.

But others may seem each other a bit, like impala, Grant’s gazelle and Thomson's gazelle. Today we want to tell you how to differentiate these three species of medium sized antelope so that when you see them in the savannah (or some documentary) you can say without fear to be mistaken what animal it is.

THOMSON'S GAZELLE

The easiest to identify among these three is Thomson's gazelle. And it's so easy because it has a very distinctive black stripe running along its side. Here it is difficult to differentiate between male or female, since both have horns.

IMPALA

For the impala, only the male carries horns, which can grow up to 90 centimeters. To differentiate it, you just have to look at "the bottom" to see if it has dark vertical lines. If it has, no doubt, it is him. Also it has tufts of black hair on the hind legs, but if there is tall grass, it is more difficult to appreciate (you can see it perfectly at the main picture of this article).

GRANT'S GAZELLE

Finally we have the Grant's gazelle, which we can recognize by discarding the other two. Also because it is a bit larger and because it has a "mask" of very distinctive black hair. Both male and female have antlers.

Now, the next time you talk about antelopes people won’t know if it's you or the doctor Livingstone talking!