Cape bushbuck and Limpopo bushbuck

Cape bushbuck and Limpopo bushbuck

Now here's an animal that I believe you CAN have a Cape and Limpopo of! Bushbuck are wily critters and have survived the ravages of mans efforts to shoot everything in sight!
For example, I personally don't believe that there are any true CAPE Eland left! I believe that they were shot out of the Cape hundreds of years ago and those now found there are Livingstone Eland having been reintroduced from the North! SA is a huge shifting plain when it comes to species. They are bought at auction and shipped all over the place to accommodate the small hunting properties.
A couple of species are very secretive and have survived in their home grounds....Bushbuck I think is one of them!
About the actual differences..I really couldn't say!

Ole Bally, you must have seen his post before he deleted it.

What do you think about Cape Kudu? Distribution maps show them as traditionally isolated from S Greater Kudu. Do you think they are still a distinct sub-species or diluted by S Greater genes by now?

Sorry gotta jump in on this one I truly believe that there is still a very healthy population of Eastern cape kudu, especially on non hunting ranches, having hunted there many years ago and still having family in the Kirkwood area I will shout it out fgom the roof tops that the Eatern cape as a whole has one of the highest concentration of Kudu in Africa.

Free ranging Kudu are still very much a reality, as for Cape Eland areas in Lesotho and a couple other stil have healthy populations of Cape Eland on tribla/trust land.

I would agree without a doubt that what you find on game ranches these days are neither Livingston nor Cape it is a diluted version of both on most properties this is very easily visible just by looking at them, Breeding livingston has become the average wealthy mans hobby and 1 was sold a month or two ago for just over a $100 000, that correct $100 000 CRAZY!!!

I would also agree with the ole bally;-) that because of a bushbuck's nature that they are still pure Eastern cape, colouration for the most part and slight body size would be the exterior differences for the mosy part as far as size goes I have hunted many bushbuck with clients and for myself (all during the day), and on average lengths have been very similar.

Thanks for the opportunity thought, I'd jump in.

My best always!

Morning Jaco!!
If one looks at the SCI record book, you see what I feel as a desperate attempt by some people to have their animals classified for the book! Have a look at the Kudu section and you'll see a whole bunch of so called 'sub species' but for the life of me and my 'Smithers' Mammals of the Southern African sub Region' I can't determine the physical differences of them. My personal belief is that they are one and the same animal, but because of geographical (mineral) and vegetative availability they are either bigger or smaller depending! I was lucky enough to Pro hunt a property here in Zim where I could ask the client in advance what shaped horns he wanted his Kudu to have and we'd hunt accordingly! I still maintain that those eland were reintroduced sometime in the 1900's! They may have migrated there by themselves...nature hates a vacuum?! If one looks at the sub species of Zebra for instance, there's a clear skin marking difference!

so tell me guys what do you think of the healthy cape eland population in namibia?

Originally Posted by NamHunter

so tell me guys what do you think of the healthy cape eland population in namibia?

hey Boet those are Healthy Western Desert Eland...catch up man!
The unhealthy ones can be Lost Cape Eland OK?!

new specie you say, western desert eland hahaha, what im trying to say is the cape eland is naturally found in namibia for as long as namibia is old, how can anyone say there are no cape eland left then?

Last time I looked Namibia was not in the Cape! They must be that old breed : Healthy Western Desert Eland !!

so now there are 5 species eland

Ja seriaas! If there are so many species of Kudu why not? It'll be the easiest way to have your own HWD Eland as SCI No 1 !! Just think what a marketing tool it will be for your property to have no's 1 to 50 as the top HWD Eland! Of course you'll be the only entry as no one else will be able to recognise or differentiate the species except yourself!!!

funny

Folks,
I tried to delete the thread because I found the topic had been posted earlier (Is it possible to hunt Limpopo and Cape Bushbuck in the same safari?) I didn't want to take up the space with my double drivel. Interesting, though, how the topic of the thread was sub-species/varieties of bushbuck but the discussion was on eland and kudu. Good reads, those posts, I'm learning a lot.

I am fascinated with bushbuck and yet I did't even see one on my trip to SA, and we hunted hard for them for three and a half days. Now I want one of each sub-species which is either one, five or nine depending on the source of information.

hahahaha good one Upton O Good, jeeez at this rate we gona have a view more trophies to hunt in the future, and those who thought they had it all have to come back for the other ones haha which still no conclusion of how many species. round and round we go

Bushbuck: two species where there was one
Back in the day, the bushbuck was considered a single species, Tragelaphus scriptus, found in various habitats across much of sub-Saharan Africa. Recently however, genetic studies have indicated that T. scriptus is actually a complex of two distinct species, the K駢el (T. scriptus) and the Imbabala (T. sylvaticus). This evidence shows that these two bushbuck species are more closely related to other tragelaphines than to each other; the Imbabala being closest to the Bongo (T. eurycerus) and Sitatunga (T. spekeii), and the K駢el to the Nyala (T. angasii) (Moodley et al. 2009).

The K駢el is found from West Africa, across the Sahel into East Africa, and as far south as Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Meanwhile, the Imbabala is found from the Cape northwards to Angola, Zambia and East Africa, meaning that the two species ranges overlap in parts of Angola, DRC and East Africa.

The K駢el is the smaller of the two, and shows clear stripes and patterning on a reddish to yellowish background; there is little or no sexual dimorphism in this ground colour. In contrast, the Imbabala shows considerable colour variation with geography and habitat, especially in males (yellow to red-brown, through brown and olive to almost black), and only the most genetically ancient of populations (from Angola, Zambia, southern DRC, Botswana and northern Zimbabwe) have any significant striping. Even in these cases the horizontal stripe, where it exists, is formed of a series of spots rather than the solid striping of the K駢el. never occurs. Mountain-dwelling forms of the Imbabala (Gregory Rift Highlands, Mt. Elgon, Imatong Mountains and Ethiopian Highlands) appear larger and are dark with little or no pattern. Until recently, most bushbuck studies focused on the Imbabala, hence little was known about the biology of the K駢el beyond what could be obtained from museum specimens and hunting trophies.


Imbalala bushbuck from Zimbabwe (courtesy of Graeme Guy). For a kewel image from The Gambia see here.
Both species are primarily browsers, but will eat other plant matter too. They can be active at any time of day, although are more likely to be nocturnal near humans; their most active times are however early morning and parts of the night, so may appear nocturnal in any case. Most are solitary, with some living in pairs; all have a 蘇ome range of around 5 hectares in the savannah (larger in forests), although these ranges do overlap.

Although the split into two species is fairly well understood (even if most non-scientific sources still refer to a single 礎ushbuck?, the more detailed taxonomy remains disputed with numerous potential subspecies and ecotypes having been described. For example, analysis of mt-DNA sequences (cytochrome b and control region) by Moodley & Bruford (2007) identified 23 phylogenetically distinct groups (粗cotypes? whose distribution correlated well with the pan-African eco-regions described by Olsen et al. (2001). 19 of these ecotypes corresponded with previously suggested subspecies, while six other haplotypes were newly recognized forms in the Volta region, Niger, Angola. and Luangwa and Zambesi Valleys. However, further research is onging to clarify the taxonomic status of bushbuck species, subspecies and ecotypes, so the situation is likely to remain somewhat fluid for a while however, this does provide an opportunity to link the use of genetics in taxonomy to large-scale conservation in Africa, given the widespread distribution of bushbuck (in the broad sense) and apparent more local/region distribution of subspecies and ecotypes (Wronski 2009).

References

Moodley, Y. & Bruford, M.W. (2007). Molecular Biogeography: Towards an Integrated Framework for Conserving Pan-African Biodiversity. PLoS ONE 2(5): e454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000454

Moodley, Y., Bruford, M., Bleidorn, C., Wronski, T., Apio, A., & Plath, M. (2009). Analysis of mitochondrial DNA data reveals non-monophyly in the bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) complex Mammalian Biology - Zeitschrift fur Saugetierkunde, 74 (5), 418-422 DOI: 10.1016/j.mambio.2008.05.003

Olson, D.M., Dinerstein, E., Wikramanayake, E.D., Burgess, N.D. & Powell, G.V.N. (2001). Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on earth. BioScience 51: 933-937.

Wronski, T. (2009). Bushbuck, harnessed antelope or both? Gnusletter 28(1): 17-19.
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Labels: Africa, genetics, mammals, taxonomy
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Sorry guys you've been having so much fun thought i'd bore you a little,

My best always!

damn good jaco hahaha

Keep it up, Jaco, some of us want to learn !

Thought I'd put it in the mix, hope you found it usefull.

My best always.

Jaco,

As they say in the U.S. "There it is." Very nicely done.

Now I've got to find one.