SHARPE’S STEINBOK 
RHAPHICEROS SHARPEI 
T HIS species, which was only discovered by Sir Alfred Sharpe 
in Angoniland, British Central Africa, in 1896, is considered by 
the eminent zoologist, Mr R. Lydekker, “ to link the grysbok 
and steinbok so closely together that a generic separation 
between them seems uncalled for. Sharpe’s steinbok has, in 
fact, the stippled coat of a grysbok, coupled with the absence 
of the lateral hoofs distinctive of the steinbok.” Except, however, that 
lateral hoofs are wanting both in Sharpe’s steinbok and the true steinbok, 
there is no affinity whatever in general appearance, habits and mode of 
life between those two little animals. On the other hand, although the true 
grysbok has small lateral hoofs, and Sharpe’s steinbok is without them, 
these two species are indistinguishable one from another, unless submitted 
to a close inspection; their habits are identical in every particular, though 
differing entirely from those of the steinbok, and they both frequent 
exactly the same sort of ground, where, however, the steinbok is never 
found. I make these assertions on the assumption that the small, squat, 
dark-red, grizzled antelopes of which I saw so many amongst the rocky, 
bush -covered ground along the northern bank of the Central Zambesi in 
1877 and 1878, were Sharpe’s steinboks, and not grysboks, and that 
probably many of the precisely similar -looking little antelopes which I 
constantly saw in rocky, bush -covered ridges and hills in the northern 
districts of Southern Rhodesia between 1872 and 1892, and which I always 
thought were grysboks, were really Sharpe’s steinboks. The only difference 
between the females of Sharpe’s steinbok and the grysbok, which are 
both hornless, is that in the former lateral hoofs are entirely absent, whilst 
in the latter they are present, though very small. In the males, however, 
the horns are very different in the two species. In the grysbok they are 
always over three inches in length, and sometimes reach a length of five 
inches, and in general appearance are very similar to the horns of the 
steinbok; whilst in the male Sharpe’s steinbok the horns are never 
anything more than little stumpy cones of an inch to an inch and a half 
or two inches in length. 
As Sharpe’s steinbok is an inhabitant of British Central Africa and 
North-West and North-East Rhodesia, and has also been met with in the 
184 
