- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring camera-trapped animals from around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Camera traps bring you closer to the secret natural world and are an important conservation tool for studying wildlife. This week we meet the bushbuck.
the antelope (Tragelaphus scriptus) is an antelope found in sub-Saharan forests and scrublands. It is the least social and non-territorial of the African antelopes with adult rams actively avoiding eye contact with each other, and neither rams nor sheep defending their ranges.
These shy and usually solitary antelopes have distinctive white spots on their necks and throats and vertical stripes or rows of spots on their sides. Males have horns, which are long, spirally twisted, and relatively straight. The horns begin to grow at ten months of age and can grow up to 50 cm long.
When threatened, bushbucks will react in a variety of ways. If they are in the woods or thick brush, they can freeze in one position and remain very still, allowing their coloration to camouflage them. Sometimes they lie on the ground or run away, producing a series of hoarse barks. When surprised in an open area, they will sometimes stand still or slowly walk to the nearest cover.
Bushbuck females go to great lengths to hide their young. After giving birth, the mother cleans and hides the newborn calf. When she visits and nurses him, she eats her dung, so there is no scent left to attract predators.
The main threat to the bushbuck is habitat loss due to the unsustainable growth of agriculture, settlements, and roads. Hunting pressures pose another threat to these animals in parts of their range. This species is currently classified as Least Concern by the IUCN and has a stable population. Watch the video to learn more about this species!
A special thanks to Pearson McGovern for sharing his footage with us. Pearson is a research biologist with the African Chelonian Institute (ACI), a nonprofit organization focused on conserving Africa’s tortoises and tortoises and their habitats through grassroots research, education, and collaboration. With efforts across West Africa, ICA is doing its part to ensure that this threatened group of animals has a fighting chance in a rapidly changing world. ACI is part of the African Aquatic Conservation Fund (AACF), which has a broad focus on the aquatic ecosystems of Africa and the threatened wildlife that call these ecosystems home. To learn more about the work of ACI and AACF, you can follow them at africanchelonian.org and Africanaquaticconservation.org, respectively, or on Facebook and Instagram. To follow Pearson in the field, follow @pearsmcg on Instagram.
Romi Castagnino it’s from mongabay Associate Digital Editor and Presenter. Find her on Twitter and Instagram: @romi_castagnino
Header image by Hans Hillewaert via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
