448 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



The measurements in the flesh of an adult female were: 

 head and body, 59 inches; tail, 14 inches; hind foot, i8>^ 

 inches; ear, 8 inches. Length of skull, 12 inches. Fully 

 grown horns usually measure 30 inches on the curve. The 

 record length recorded by Ward for British East Africa is 33 

 inches. This specimen was shot by A. H. Neumann, the ele- 

 phant hunter. Ward records a considerable number from 

 Somaliland exceeding Neumann's head by an inch or two, 

 the average horn length in Somaliland being about equal to 

 the record of British East Africa. 



Greater Koodoo 



Strepsiceros 



Strepsiceros Hamilton Smith, 1827, Griffith's Anim. Kingd., V, p. 365; type 

 species S. strepsiceros. 



The koodoo is best characterized by its immense spiral 

 horns and long throat mane, both of which are found in the 

 male sex only. The horns are a wide, open spiral in shape 

 which make two or three complete turns. In section the 

 horns are circular, with a rounded keel, not flattened or fur- 

 nished with a sharp keel as in the bushbuck. They more 

 closely resemble the open spiral horns of the nyala, which 

 is also a bearded or throat-maned antelope with transverse 

 white body stripes. The lesser koodoo has horns very similar 

 in shape, and on this account has been associated genetically 

 with the greater koodoo, but it differs by having the spiral 

 much closer and lacking the throat mane. The female 

 koodoo is hornless and without the throat mane, but in 

 coloration is identical with the male. The tail is bushy 

 throughout, the hair at the tip slightly longer than at the 

 base and rather short in length, being intermediate in length 

 between that of a bushbuck and an eland. The greater 

 koodoo ranges from the Cape Colony northward to Angola on 

 the West Coast, and on the east through the Zambesi Valley 

 to Abyssinia. It is absent from the Congo basin and the re- 

 gion north and west to the Sahara. Owing to the bushy char- 

 acter of its haunts and its extreme alertness and shyness, the 

 koodoo has persisted throughout most of its original range, 

 even in Cape Colony. It is very local, the areas which it 

 inhabits being widely scattered. A single living species is 



