Colours of Wildlife: Saigas
Created | Updated Dec 4, 2016
Saigas
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!"
Well, here you have something unusual enough, I hope! These are Saiga antelopes, Saiga tatarica. This species used to be abundant, occurring on flat, grassy steppes and semi-deserts from Eastern Europe (north of the Carpathian Mountains) into Asia, up to most of Mongolia. These areas are dry, hot in summer, and often extremely cold in winter. Some thousands of years ago they were even more widespread, occurring from England and France to Eastern Siberia. Saigas also used to live in northwestern North America, having come into the continent over the Bering land bridge which formed when the sea levels were very low during the ice ages, but sad to say, the American saigas all died out recently (but before Europeans rediscovered the continent). We almost lost the Asian ones, too! But thankfully, conservation efforts are managing to preserve them. Only just, though. They still need ongoing conservation since they need large territories and are particularly susceptible to diseases.
The Elephant-Faced Gazelle
The first thing that strikes one about the Saiga is its weird face! It has a huge schnozzle almost like a shortened version of an elephant's trunk. That of the male is the biggest, but the females and even the calves have them, too. Like most species that have proboscis-like snouts, it has greatly reduced nasal bones, that end just about above the eyes. Most of the snout is therefore muscle and cartilage. Saiga snouts are used for three purposes: to filter out dust and cool their blood in summer, and to warm the cold air when breathing in the winter. Ancient writers first describing the species thought that it drinks water through its nose – which it doesn't, actually, though it looks that way since their noses dangle into the water while they drink through their mouths.
Apart from their snouts, saigas are typical antelopes. They are indeed closely related to the gazelles, the Springbok of South Africa (which I'll feature here soon) and the gerenuk of northeast Africa. They stand up to 80 cm/32" at the shoulder and weigh up to 69 kg/152 lbs. Only the male has horns, which can grow to a length of 38 cm/15". Two populations of saigas occur: the one in Mongolia, and another in what used to be the Soviet Union, primarily in Kazakhstan. Both kinds of saiga look the same (except that the Russian ones get longer horns). But saigas actually have two 'looks'. The one in the painting is the sleek, summer look, with a very short coat; in the winter, as you can see in the pencil drawing, saigas get much longer, woolly coats to protect them against the extreme cold. They moult to change their coats in spring and in autumn. There is also a colour difference: the summer coloration is sandy to rusty brown, while in winter the coat is greyish-white.
The Herd Life
The natural way of life of saigas is in great herds. These migrate across the steppes to follow good grazing and escape local droughts. They can swim across rivers, but they avoid mountains and broken land, staying on level plains. They're able to eat some plants that are poisonous to other species. Male saigas compete and fight for females, the winner gaining control of a herd of as many as 50 ewes. Mating season is at the start of winter, and babies are born in spring – usually twins, but sometimes only single lambs.
Despite the apparent robustness of these great herds, saigas have always been peculiarly vulnerable. They've always been on the menu of wolves, the lambs also being vulnerable to foxes, eagles and ravens. They've long been hunted by humans – they're even depicted in ancient rock art, and their bones have been found in association with ancient human settlements. As I've said above, they used to be found in Western Europe but have disappeared from there in historic times. But in recent times they suffered from massive overhunting. Their horns are sought after in China for reputed medicinal properties, even as an alternative to rhino horn. For this reason hunting of saigas was once encouraged even by the World Wildlife Fund, since rhinos are much rarer. But now saigas have suffered a catastrophic crash in population. They are conserved today in Kalmykia in Russia, in Kazakhstan, and in Mongolia. There's a very threatened population in the Caspian Sea region.
Perhaps the greatest danger to saigas today is from disease. Mass outbreaks periodically destroy entire herds. We're not yet sure what the exact disease is that affects them, but it typically kills every animal in a herd affected by it. There was a mass outbreak in 2010, and another one in 2015 which killed about a third of all living saigas.
Another problem for saigas is ongoing human development of their steppe habitat. They need open areas over which to migrate, and these migration routes cross the borders of several countries. Saigas trapped by fences often starve for not being able to go where the food is. It is hard to get countries to stop building fences along their borders for the sake of these antelopes. Another human-created problem is climate change, which can lead the steppe country to become hotter and drier, with less food for the saigas. Even disease outbreaks might be due to climate change that alter the growth rate of bacteri and viruses, making what used to be tolerable, suddenly lethal. As it is, we still need to learn much about these fascinating and unique antelopes, and hopefully our ongoing efforts will keep them with us for a while longer.
