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Tibetan antelope

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"Chiru" redirects here. For the Indian actor, see Chiranjeevi.

iTibetan Antelope

Conservation status

Image:Status iucn3.1 EN.svg
Endangered (EN)

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Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Family:	Bovidae
Subfamily:	Antilopinae
Genus:	Pantholops Hodgson, 1834
Species:	P. hodgsonii

Binomial name

Pantholops hodgsonii
(Abel, 1826)

The Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) is a medium-sized bovid which is about 1.2 metres (4 feet) in height. It is native to the Tibetan plateau including China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai province, and Xinjiang province; India near Ladakh and formerly western Nepal. The Tibetan antelope is also known commonly by its Tibetan name chiru. The coat is grey to reddish-brown, with a white underside. The males have long, curved-back horns which measure about 50 cm (20 inches) in length.

Despite its classification in the Antilopinae subfamily, recent morphological and molecular evidence suggests that the Chiru is more closely allied to goats and the subfamily Caprinae (Gentry 1992, Gatesy et al. 1992, Ginsberg et al. 1999).

Tibetan antelope are gregarious, sometimes congregating in herds hundreds strong. The females migrate up to 300 km yearly to calving grounds in the summer where they usually give birth to a single calf, and rejoin the males at the wintering grounds in late autumn (Schaller 1998). Chirus live on the high mountain steppes and semi-desert areas of the Tibetan plateau such as Kekexili, where they feed on various forb and grass species. The average life span is about eight years.

Tibetan antelope are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service due to commercial poaching for their underwool, competition with local domesticated herds, and the development of their rangeland for gold mining. The Chiru's wool, known as shahtoosh, is warm, soft and fine. The wool can only be obtained by killing the animal; Its numbers have dropped accordingly from nearly a million (estimated) at the turn of the 20th century to less than 75,000 today. The numbers continue to drop yearly. The struggle to stop illegal antelope hunting was portrayed in the 2004 film, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol.

In July 2006 the Chinese Government inaugurated a new railway that bisects the Chiru’s feeding grounds on its way to traversing the highest pass on Earth to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. In order to avoid harm to the animal, thirty-three special animal migration passages have been built beneath the railway. According to remote video monitoring, more than 800 Chiru had already used these underpasses by the second week of railway service. While they were at first intimidated by the unfamiliar railway across their migration routes, after one animal wandered through, the rest of the herd followed.

The Tibetan antelope has been selected as one of the five official mascots for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. The mascot, named "Yingying", is one of the "Five Friendlies" of the 2008 Summer Olympics and represents the Chinese tradition of blessing of health.

[edit] References

Gatesy, J., D. Yelon, R. DeSalle, and E. Vrba. (1992). Phylogeny of the Bovidae (Artiodactyla, Mammalia), based on mitochondrial ribosomal DNA sequence. Mol. Biol. Evol. 9: 433–446.
Gentry, A. (1992). The subfamilies and tribes of the family Bovidae. Mammal Review 22:1–32
Ginsberg, J. R., G. B. Schaller, and J. Lowe. (1999). Petition to list the Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) as an endangered species pursuant to the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973. Wildlife Conservation Society and Tibetan Plateau Project.
Mallon (2003). Pantholops hodgsonii. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. [Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered.]