Gerenuk
Litocranius walleri
— Where the name comes from
Litocranius is “plain skull”, from the Greek litós and kraníon, for the small smooth head out of all proportion to the neck. Walleri honours the Reverend Horace Waller, missionary and abolitionist, a companion of Livingstone. But the name that counts is the Somali one: garanuug, “giraffe neck”, which says in a word everything one needs to know about this animal.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Even-toed ungulates
- Habitat
- Arid thorn scrub and semi-desert
- Range
- The Horn of Africa and East Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, northern Tanzania
- Size
- 140–160 cm of body, 28–52 kg
- Diet
- Herbivore — leaves and shoots of acacia and other thorny shrubs
- Lifespan
- 8–12 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It rises onto its hind legs alone and stands there at length to browse high up.
- 02
It never drinks: it takes all its water from leaves.
- 03
The vertebrae of its legs and neck are extremely elongated compared with other gazelles.
— What sets it apart
It has invented its own storey of the forest. In bushland where every antelope browses up to a metre and a half and giraffes start at three metres, the gerenuk stands on its hind legs, rests its forelegs on a branch and reaches two and a half — exactly the band nobody else uses. It stays there for minutes at a time, with a steadiness no other ungulate has, thanks to modified lumbar vertebrae and hips. It competes with nobody because it eats in a place nobody else can reach.
