How to Identify African Antelope on Safari

Cow-like bulk is the first clue: this and the rarer giant eland are the two largest antelope on Earth, close enough in size that accounts differ, though the giant eland is usually ranked first, and bulls can top 2,000 pounds. Both sexes carry nearly straight horns with tight spiral twists, a female's longer and thinner than a male's. A loose dewlap hangs from the throat, tufted with black hair in males, and the tan coat may show thin white stripes on the flanks. Coats gray with age, so old bulls can look almost blue-black. Eland live in grassland, acacia savanna, mountain and miombo woodland across eastern and southern Africa, avoiding desert, forest and swamp. For all that weight, they clear a 5-foot barrier with ease.

A kudu bull is the antelope people photograph twice: his horns open into long spirals of up to three full turns and can reach about 6 feet. Cows have no horns, so look instead for the huge, rounded ears, six to ten thin white stripes down the flanks and a white chevron between the eyes, all of which the bull shares. Kudu are browsers of woodland, scrub and open forest across eastern and southern Africa, so scan thicket edges rather than open grassland. A large hornless antelope with big round ears and thin white stripes, standing half-hidden in bush, is very likely a kudu cow.

Both sexes carry long, ridged horns that arc back in a near semicircle, up to about 5 feet in a big bull, so the coat is what tells them apart: mature bulls are chestnut to jet black, while cows and young are bright chestnut to dark brown. Against that dark body the white face with a broad black stripe down the nose stands out at a distance. Calves start out reddish-brown and almost unmarked, gaining the white markings and darker coat as they age. Sable keep to light wooded savanna and miombo woodland in southeastern Africa and usually avoid open grassy plains, so they are a woodland-edge sighting rather than a plains one.

The sable's paler cousin and the antelope most often mistaken for it. A roan's upper body is a grizzled gray to roan color with darker legs and white underparts, and its face carries a black-brown and white mask, lighter in females. The two clinchers are the long tufts of dark hair on the tips of the ears and the horns: ringed and arched in both sexes like a sable's, but much shorter, at 2 to 3.3 feet. Roan live in lightly wooded country and grassland across much of central Africa and never move more than about 2.5 miles from water, so a waterhole in open woodland is the place to wait.

Long, nearly straight, ringed horns of up to about 5 feet, carried by bulls and cows alike, make the gemsbok readable even in silhouette. Closer up, the white face is crossed by bold black markings that run down from the horn bases toward the muzzle, a black stripe runs along the spine to a short black mane, and black and white patterns mark the legs. This is the oryx of the Kalahari plains and the Namib dunes, a dry-country specialist that can draw the moisture it needs from roots, tubers and wild tsamma melons, so it turns up far from any waterhole. In East Africa, the similar beisa and fringe-eared oryx take its place.

A large, box-like head, a black mane and a flowing beard in both sexes give the wildebeest a shape no other plains antelope shares, apart from its South African cousin, the black wildebeest; a blue wildebeest's long tail is black, not white. Look for dark vertical bands on the neck and forequarters, which can pass for wrinkles in the skin from a distance, and for horns that curve out and up much like a female buffalo's. Wildebeest graze open and brush-covered savanna in eastern and southern Africa. In the Serengeti they are the animals of the great migration, a circuit of roughly 500 to 1,000 miles a year that brings the herds back to the Serengeti plains as the rains begin.

The tail settles it: a black wildebeest has a long, horse-like tail that is bright white, where a blue wildebeest's is black. The coat is chocolate brown to black, short and glossy in summer and shaggier in winter, with brush-like tufts of dark hair on the face, a beard running down the neck to the chest, and a pale patch on the nape under a dark-tipped mane. Both sexes carry hook-like horns that curve down, forward and then up. This is a South African animal of grassland and arid shrubland, and today it lives on reserves and game farms rather than truly wild, so expect it on South African trips, not in East Africa.

The rump names a waterbuck from behind at a glance and also tells the two forms apart. The defassa waterbuck has broad white patches on either side of the rump, while the common waterbuck has a clean white ring circling a dark rump. Both occur in East Africa and often interbreed where their ranges meet, so an in-between pattern is possible. The coat is shaggy and brown-gray and gives off an oily, smelly secretion thought to help with waterproofing. Only males carry horns, widely spaced, heavily ringed and curving back and up to as much as 40 inches. Waterbuck depend on water more than cattle do and stay near rivers, gallery forest and riverine woodland south of the Sahara, so a drive along a watercourse is the best place to find them.

Hartebeest have one of the oddest silhouettes on the savanna, and shape is the way to know them. The head is extremely long and narrow, with the eyes set high, and the strongly ridged horns, found in both sexes, rise from a tall bony base on top of the skull. The back slopes down from high shoulders to low hindquarters and ends in a black-tasseled tail. Coat color varies widely between the regional forms, from light tan through bright rufous to deep maroon, but that long face and sloping back stay the same, so trust the outline over the color. Expect hartebeest in open grassland and bush across sub-Saharan Africa.

Also known as tsessebe, sassaby and tiang, the topi has a coat so glossy it can look almost iridescent in low sun, ranging from tan to deep reddish or purple-brown. The quick check is the legs: black on the upper half, light tan below, as if the animal had pulled on pale stockings, with more black patches on the face, hips and thighs. Both sexes carry ridged, lyre-shaped horns. Topi favor floodplains and open savanna, and the largest numbers live in South Sudan and Tanzania's Serengeti. A single antelope standing on a termite mound for hours as a lookout is a classic topi sight and often the easiest way to spot one.

Males and females look like two different species, which is why the nyala causes so much confusion. Females and young males are short-haired and rufous-chestnut with ten or more vertical white stripes and no horns. Adult males are larger, with a shaggy dark brown to charcoal coat, often with a bluish tinge, that hides most of the stripes, a bold white crest along the back, tawny lower legs and yellow-tipped horns with one to one and a half twists. Nyala keep to dense lowland woodland and thicket near water in southern Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and eastern South Africa, and most wild sightings come at waterholes.

If an antelope is grazing in water up to its shoulders, it is probably a lechwe. The body is long, with hindquarters that stand higher than the shoulders, giving it a rump-high outline, and a black stripe marks each foreleg. Only males carry horns, long and elegantly swept back, at 18 to 37 inches. Lechwe live on floodplains bordering swamps, rivers and marshes in south-central Africa and are thoroughly at ease in water, so look for them on wetland and delta trips rather than on dry savanna drives.

A medium-sized, fawn or buff antelope rising out of tall grass is often a reedbuck, and the horns are the surest check: only males carry them, and they sweep in a distinctive forward-curving arc from ridged bases to smooth tips, the opposite of the backswept horns on a lechwe or waterbuck. Look too for a dark stripe down the lower front of all four legs and, when active, a round black patch of bare skin at the base of each pointed ear. Southern reedbuck prefer savanna with tall grasses and occur through much of southern Africa. Whistling calls are a big part of how they communicate, so listen as well as look.

Learn this one first, because on many drives it is the antelope against which everything else is compared. The glossy coat has a reddish saddle over a lighter tan body, and from behind three black stripes mark the rump: one down each thigh and one down the tail. Tufts of black hair just above the rear hooves, which give the impala its scientific name, settle any doubt. Only males carry the slender, S-shaped, lyre-like horns, about 16 to 35 inches long. Impala live at grassland and woodland edges, usually close to water, and female herds run from 15 to 100 animals. When alarmed they flee into cover rather than open ground, with leaps that can span 30 feet.

The paler of the two common East African gazelles, best told from a Thomson's gazelle by its horns and the amount of white behind. Grant's has a distinct rectangular white patch on the hindquarters, edged by a black stripe down each thigh, and carries more white there than a Thomson's does. Males have long, thick horns of 20 to 31 inches; females' are thin, symmetrical and roughly half that length. Grant's gazelles occur only in eastern Africa, on semi-desert, open savanna and treeless plains, up to about 6,500 feet.

The antelope of the dry southwest, and a sharply marked one: a white face with dark stripes running from the mouth to the eyes, a reddish-brown back, and a dark band along each flank where the brown meets white underparts. Both sexes carry black, curved, lyre-shaped horns. A fold of skin runs from the middle of the back to the rump and opens when the animal is excited to flash a crest of white hair. Watch for it during pronking, a series of stiff-legged vertical leaps up to about 11 feet high, head down and back arched. Springbok live mainly in Namibia, Botswana, Angola and South Africa, in open, treeless country.

The neat gazelle of the East African short-grass plains. The giveaway is a bold black stripe running along each flank, with a white rump and a black tail behind. Males carry ringed horns that curve back and then forward at the tips; some females have horns too. Thomson's gazelles live in dry, short grassland and shrubby savanna in Kenya, Tanzania and southern Sudan, with large populations in the Serengeti and Masai Mara. Next to a Grant's gazelle it has less white on the hindquarters and smaller horns, which is the quickest way to separate the two when they graze together.

Standing up on its hind legs to reach the leaves of taller bushes is the gerenuk's trademark, so a slim antelope browsing with its front feet off the ground is the giveaway. The neck is long and slender, which explains its nickname, giraffe-gazelle. Only males carry horns, which are comparatively massive for such a delicate animal. Gerenuk live in brushy steppe and scrub in eastern Africa, so look for them in dry bush country rather than on open grassland.

A medium-small antelope alone at the edge of thick bush, dappled with white, is usually a bushbuck. The coat runs from chestnut to dark brown with a scatter of white spots and faint stripes, and the face has one or two white cheek spots, small white marks at the corners of the eyes and a white muzzle. Only males carry horns, which are short at 10 to 22 inches. Bushbuck are usually solitary, sometimes in pairs, rather than in herds, and keep to forest edges, bush and dense woodland. The Cape bushbuck is the form of southern and eastern Africa, ranging from the Cape west to Angola and Zambia and north up the eastern side of the continent to Ethiopia and Somalia.

Most sightings last a second or two: a small antelope bounding away and plunging into the undergrowth, the habit that gives the duiker its name, which means diver. If it pauses, look for long, pointed ears with a tuft of hair between them, a black muzzle and nose bridge, black forelegs and whitish underparts. Males usually carry short, sharply pointed horns of 3 to 7 inches. The common duiker lives in sparse forest, brushy steppe, savanna and mountain country across sub-Saharan Africa, so it can turn up almost anywhere with some cover.

Any small antelope balanced on a boulder is worth a second look, because the klipspringer is a specialist of steep rock. It stands on the very tips of its cylinder-shaped hooves, which lets it land on a rock projection not much bigger than a coin with all four feet. The coat is short and grizzled, in shades from gray, brown and yellow to olive green, which blends well against rock. Males carry short, spiky horns of up to about 6 inches, and in East Africa some females do too. Klipspringers live as monogamous pairs on small territories they rarely leave, on steep rocky hills and kopjes in the savannas of eastern and southern Africa, so if you see one, its partner is usually close by.

A small, light golden-brown antelope with enormous ears is a steenbok. Males carry straight, sharp horns that point almost vertically, quite unlike the short horns a dik-dik hides under its forehead tuft. Steenbok live in open grassland with light tree cover across most of southern Africa, with a second population in the stonier acacia grasslands of East Africa. They are mostly active by day, which helps, but when threatened they lie flat and freeze rather than run, so one may be closer to the track than you think.

Among the smallest antelope on any safari, at 12 to 16 inches at the shoulder and 6 to 13 pounds. The elongated snout is its most distinctive feature, and a black spot below the inner corner of each eye marks the gland it uses to scent-mark territory. Males have short, ringed horns, often half-hidden by a tuft of hair on the forehead. Dik-diks pair for life and are rarely seen apart, so where there is one, look for the second. Kirk's dik-dik lives in two separate areas, East Africa from southern Somalia to central Tanzania, and northern Namibia with parts of southwestern Angola, in bush with good cover but no tall herbage.