A (Currently) Happy Tale: The Saiga Antelope
And some facts about horns and antlers – and who wears them.
Whenever I read an article about a species that was on the brink of extinction but whose numbers are slowly coming back because of sustained conservation efforts, I feel a bit of hope, if ever so small. And if it’s a creature I didn’t know about and it looks strangely beautiful, I want to find out more about it and share what I discovered. So here it is: Saiga tatarica, a species of antelope called Saiga.
Look at the picture above: doesn’t he look gorgeous? We know it’s a “he” because of the horns, females don’t grow any – unlike many other animals with horns. Which sent me down a rabbit hole: Who wears horns? And who wears antlers? Are there females with horns? With antlers?
The last question is the quickest to answer. Female reindeer or caribou1 are the only species of deer who grow antlers. Any deer or elk you see who has antlers is a male. Incidentally, antlers differ significantly from horns: they have different functions and different structures. The size of antlers matters: the larger a buck’s antlers, the more attractive to possible mates. When two males use their antlers to fight for dominance and for access to a female, the buck with the larger set is usually the successful one.
Unlike horns, antlers are bone structures and grow out of the skull of an animal from two attachment points called pedicles. When they grow, they’re covered by velvet, a fuzzy coating which functions like a skin which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone underneath. And wouldn’t you know it? There’s a huge velvet antler industry because it’s used in traditional Chinese medicine as well as a dietary supplement. New Zealand has a large deer ranching industry (Deer Industry New Zealand – the name makes me shudder) which regularly removes a stag’s velvet antlers and sells them mainly to South Korea and China.
The U.S.Food and Drug Administration requires that any product containing antler velvet bears the following disclaimer on the label: “This product has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”2
Once the antlers have reached their full growth, the velvet begins to fall off or is rubbed off, and the bone inside dies. Mature antlers consist of dead bone structure and eventually fall off, usually before the onset of winter. The males of most deer species repeat this cycle every year, with older animals growing larger antlers.
Horns, on the other hand, are permanent. Inside is a bone which keeps growing during an animal’s life, and the outside consists of keratin, the same stuff as human hair and fingernails. An exception is the rhinoceros: its horn doesn’t have a bony core but is made entirely of keratin. That’s why game wardens in regions where the animal is most threatened by poachers sometimes remove its horn.
Besides being used to establish social dominance between males, horns are used to ward off predators. And they have another function: in the arid, dry regions where many of the gazelle and antelope species live, the horns are useful tools with which to dig for water. Both males and females would benefit; maybe females even more, because they take care of their offspring.
So, is there any definitive answer to why the females of some species have horns, while most don’t? The biologists who concern themselves with such questions came up with different theories, and the latest has to do with body size. They found that only in larger species both male and female animals have horns. Their big bodies make it hard for them to hide, and the female would benefit from being able to defend herself and protect her young with sharp, pointed weapons. Here is an example:
Look at those horns! Both male and female gemsbok sport these formidable instruments of protection. Don’t mess with a gemsbok!
Okay, and finally we return to the Saiga antelope. They date back to the late Pleistocene (about 125,000 years ago) when their nomadic herds roamed from the British Isles all the way through the Eurasian steppe to Alaska and the Northwest Territories. The herds were millions strong. Unrestricted hunting in the 19th century and habitat loss in later years brought the Saiga to the brink of extinction. In the early 20th century their population was down to a few thousand animals. Although legal protection slowed down the decline somewhat, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to unrestricted poaching, and by around 2005 over 95% of the global population had been lost.
Around the same time the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) added the Saiga to their Red List as critically endangered.
Here are some amazing facts about this creature. They're called “floppy-nosed” because of their distinctive, downward-directed nostrils. This bizarrely shaped nose is actually a critical element that makes survival in dry conditions with extreme seasonal temperature swings possible. In the hot and dry summers the swollen nostrils filter out the dust and cool the blood, while in the winter they warm up the icy air before it reaches the lungs. When they’re migrating, they travel for more than 70 miles a day, and when they have to outrun a predator, their speed can reach 80 miles an hour!
For the last two decades, a number of international organizations collaborated to save the Saiga. Kazakhstan’s government (that’s where the majority of Saiga antelopes live) together with researchers, conservationists, and a range of national and international NGOs managed to protect the animals to bring their numbers up to close to one million individuals! And that despite a painful setback: in 2015 over 200,000 animals died because of a bacterium that normally doesn’t affect them at all. But unusually high humidity and extremely high daily temperatures transformed harmless bacteria into lethal pathogens. Climate change was ultimately responsible.
In December of 2023 the Red List status of the Saiga was changed from Critically Endangered to Near Threatened. One reason for the species’ comeback is the fact that females usually give birth to twins. However, they’re not out of the woods yet: global warming as well as poachers who sell the horns on the black market medicine trade in Asia are just some of the dangers the animals face.
The species’ new Near Threatened category reflects the potential for its status to deteriorate rapidly in the absence of ongoing conservation action. The commitment from the conservation community is unwavering in its support to this iconic species.3
I believe one can be cautiously optimistic about the beautiful Saiga.
what a great face he has, so charming. thanks