Antelope that leaps ten metres and combs its own ticks
The impala (Aepyceros melampus)—Afrikaans rooibok, "black-footed high-horn" in Greek—is eastern and southern Africa's sole living Aepyceros. Shoulder height runs about seventy to ninety-two centimetres and mass forty to seventy-six kilograms in males. Two subspecies split grassland common impala from the scarcer, darker black-faced form.
Lichtenstein described the species for Europeans in 1812. Common impala (A. m. melampus) stretch from central Kenya into South Africa and southeastern Angola; black-faced impala (A. m. petersi) hug northwestern Namibia and southwestern Angola. IUCN lists the species Least Concern but called the black-faced subspecies Vulnerable, with fewer than a thousand wild individuals as of 2008. Glossy coats show reddish backs, tan flanks, white bellies, black thigh streaks, and lyre horns forty-five to ninety-two centimetres on males only.
Social life shifts with climate: territorial bucks, bachelor bands, and female herds of six to a hundred. Southern populations may hold territories mainly during a brief May rut; Serengeti work found ninety-four percent of males territorial for under four months. Impala both browse and graze—monocots, dicots, forbs, fruit, acacia pods—and stay near water in woodland–savanna edges. Against cheetahs, lions, and other hunters they bound up to three metres high and ten metres far, or stot in zigzags to confuse pursuit.
A front lower toothcomb, like strepsirrhine primates, lets them groom ticks from head and neck—the only ungulate noted for both self- and allogrooming. Gestation lasts six to seven months; a single calf hides in cover and nurses four to six months before young males join bachelor groups. Fossils suggest the basic form held for at least five million years, including Pliocene A. datoadeni in Ethiopia—an antelope that kept its blueprint while relatives radiated.
Source: Impala
