342 BRITISH MAMMALS 



Saiga tatarica. The Saiga, or Swollen-nosed Gazelle 



This antelope, though grouped with the gazelles, which it 

 resembles in its horns, is yet a very peculiar creature of puzzling 

 affinities. The females are hornless ; but in males and females 

 there are short nasal bones and a high, bloated nose, terminating 

 in a snout that is almost pig-like. The ears are so strangely 

 truncated as to look as though they had been cropped. 

 The general appearance of the body is not unlike that of a 

 sheep. The hoofs are somewhat heavy and broad. False hoofs 

 are present, and the feet are rather sheep-like. The tail is short. 

 The coloration is yellowish-gray, with a whitish throat and chest, 

 and a touch of white on the edge of the rump. The fact that 

 this antelope has only two premolar teeth in the lower jaw 

 instead of the three which are almost universal among ruminants, 

 shows specialisation. This loss of premolars, however, also 

 occurs in another aberrant gazelline, the springbok of South 

 Africa. But a fossil saiga has been discovered in Moravia and 

 Germany which had the full number of three premolars. The 

 British specimens are too imperfect to decide as yet to which 

 type — the ancient or the modern — the British Saiga belonged. 

 On the other hand, the existing saiga retains the more primitive 

 feature of four teats, while all the other known gazelles are only 

 provided with two mammae. 



The nearest living relation of the saiga is the interesting 

 chiru antelope of Tibet. In this the horns are very long, and 

 the form of the animal is more graceful than in the saiga, while 

 it retains the full number of premolar teeth in both jaws, yet, on 

 the other hand, has only two teats. The sides of the muzzle 

 and nose in the male are much swollen, suggesting an approxima- 

 tion to the saiga in their external nasal protuberance. The 

 outward resemblance of the saiga to a sheep is, no doubt, simply 

 a case of parallelism, and it must be regarded as an aberrant 

 gazelle which has retained a more primitive number of mammas. 

 It is at present so characteristic of the treeless steppes of Eastern 

 Europe and Central Asia that its presence in England is somewhat 



