Blue wildebeest

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.