Colours of Wildlife : Blesbok
Created | Updated Mar 23, 2014
Blesbok
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
With the Blesbok I bring you a new kind of phenomenon for this column: where not a species, but a subspecies, gets its own common name! The blesbok is Damaliscus dorcas phillipsi, while the Bontebok is Damaliscus dorcas dorcas. There is no common name to call the species Damaliscus dorcas that both belong to! As it is, the species is entirely restricted to South Africa.
The Two Forms
Blesbok antelopes are well known in South Africa. They prefer open grassland such as is found in the Highveld region. They are medium-sized antelopes, reaching a bit over 90 cm/3' at the shoulder, and a bodyweight of about 80 kg/175 lbs. Males as well as females have horns, which are lyre-shaped and ridged, reaching 40 cm/16" in length. The horns of the female are more slender than those of the male. In my illustration, the male is on the right. The most striking feature of this antelope is the white blaze over its nose and forehead. Indeed the name 'blesbok' means 'blaze buck'. In this subspecies the white patch on the forehead is usually divided from the blaze on the nose by a thin brown band. The ears and belly are white as well, and there are white patches on the legs and buttocks. The body is warm brown. The shape of the blesbok is reminiscent of its relatives such as the Wildebeests and Hartebeests: it has a long face, thick neck, and a body that slopes down from the shoulders to the rump. Together these antelopes constitute the Alcelaphini tribe, or long-faced antelopes, of the family Bovidae which contains antelopes, cattle and oxen, sheep and goats.
The other form of the species, the Bontebok, was always much rarer and almost went extinct. It occurred in the far south of South Africa in a region with a different vegetation, fybos, which is predominantly hard-leaved shrubs. This form became isolated from the high grassland Blesbok and over thousands of years evolved to look visibly different. It still is a grass eater, and has to seek out patches of grass amidst the scrubby fynbos. The bontebok has more of a black-and-white appearance. The white blaze on its nose is continuous with the white on its forehead. It has very vivid white patches on its rump and legs as well. It has a pale back and shoulders contrasting with glossy black sides, hips and thighs. In good light, the gloss on its body shows bluish to purplish. The Afrikaans name means 'many-coloured buck'. It is indeed a very striking subspecies and I will hopefully devote an entire upcoming article to it. For now, just note that this species almost went extinct but for the efforts of farmers to conserve it on their farms, and there is now a national park dedicated to these beautiful antelopes.
Extinct but Flourishing?
The blesbok itself was abundant on the high plains when the Europeans first moved into the South African hinterland. These settlers hunted them mercilessly. They were easy targets on the open grassland. They were almost eradicated, too, but again were saved by deliberate conservation efforts. But the blesbok doesn't exist anymore the way it once did. Today they are confined to game farms and small reserves, where they cannot any longer build up to vast herds or go on long migrations. In this sense the species is extinct 'in the wild', as a totally wild and free animal. But even so, it now exists on so many farms and in so many reserves that it is indeed flourishing, and not in any danger of absolute extinction. Still, I wish it could be possible to establish a large game reserve in the region where this antelope once roamed, a large enough reserve to enable them to again trek for hundreds of kilometers over the unbounded plains. There are currently about 50 000 blesbok in South Africa, but there might originally have been a lot more.
Blesbok antelopes have indeed today been introduced to areas where they didn't occur naturally. The photos I show here were taken by me in a small reserve in the Waterberg region, which is quite far away from their native grounds. These blesbok as you can see are tame and graze on the lawns where the visitors' huts are. As always these tame antelopes present wonderful opportunities to get close and get photos. There are also blesbok in our municipal game reserve, again far to the north of where they naturally occur. But there are ample expanses of open grassland amidst the savannah and woodland of the reserve, and the blesbok seem to do quite well. My uncle Kerneels who lives in the Free State also had blesbok on his farm, but that is indeed in the region where they always lived; he had quite a large number of them. His farm now belongs to one of his children. I haven't been there in a long time but I'm sure the blesbok are still there!
Childish Colour Reversals
A very strange phenomenon is found in how blesbok and bontebok grow up! The lambs are born with fuzzy, creamy fur all over their bodies. First their faces darken, developing black blazes over their noses and foreheads. But as they grow up, their colours change, the light body becoming dark, and the dark facial blaze becoming white!
This colour change is very interesting, when compared to the close relatives of the blesbok, the topi/tsessebe/tiang/korrigum complex (another group where subspecies have individual common names and no single name exists for the entire species/complex). In these antelopes, the lambs look almost identical to blesbok lambs, with light cream fur. They too develop black facial patches as well as black patches on the legs and body. But in them the patches remain dark as the animals mature. Except that in a very small number of individuals, the facial blaze turns white instead, so that they end up looking very similar to blesbok or bontebok! For some reason, there seems to be a genetic black-to-white-face switch that became fixed in the blesbok and bontebok.
Life on the Southern Plains
Settlers of European heritage didn't at first distinguish between blesbok and bontebok, but it is clear that the blesbok occurred from what is now the Eastern Cape province up to the Magaliesberg which is now in Gauteng and the Northwest Province, and as far east as what is today western Kwazulu-Natal. They formed huge herds especially in the dry autumn and winter. These herds migrated to find fresh forage. Grass fires were frequent in the dry season but then fresh new grass sprouted in the spring, which blesbok are very fond of. Blesbok are sensitive to heat and will seek out trees and shrubs in the shade of which they rest during the hottest times of day. On the grassy plains, this shelter can usually be found only on rocky hills, thickets that grow on or around large termite mounds, or along the banks of rivers and streams. Blesbok can sometimes be seen on sunny days standing together facing the sun but with their heads lowered. We still don't know why they do this. On rainy days, they will stand with their heads lowered and facing away from the direction of the rain.
In the wet spring and summer the blesbok started rutting, the rams competing for ewes. This takes the form of a ritualized display between competitors, incorporating many moves: standing sideways to show the horns and thickness of the neck; swinging the head; smelling each other's butts; digging in the soil with the horns; grunting; stamping with the hooves; jumping in the air. If the contest is decided by these moves, the competitors will move apart and start grazing or simulating grazing. But if one of them at that point lifts his head, it will be seen as a challenge and the two will engage in physical combat! This consists of the two rams facing each other while 'kneeling' (actually going down on the wrists of their front legs) and trying to stab each other in the sides. This is sometimes fatal.
Rams who win these contests gather up females to form 'harem' herds numbering up to 25. They will circle the ewes to keep them in these herds. They court their ewes by stretching their necks forward with their horns angled back, and their tails curled over their backs.
The ram marks his territory in a variety of ways. Blesbok have facial glands that exude a sticky, smelly secretion, which they rub against tall, stiff grass stalks. They then rub their horns against the grass stalks to transfer some of the smell to their horns. They also have scent glands between their hooves. They defecate and urinate on big dung heaps; the territorial ram often stands or even lies on this heap and transfers his scent to it by way of his hoof glands. His presence on the dung heap also signals his ownership of the territory. Non-dominant rams don't form territories, but group together in bachelor herds that can attain very large numbers, and stay away from the territories of the dominant, breeding rams. Blesbok ewes attain maturity at about two and a half years' age. Once impregnated, after a gestation of about eight months they give birth to a single lamb that can run within half an hour of birth. Blesbok can live for 17 years.
