Basically it is an antelope with twisty horns and there are lots of them from the family Tragenlaphinae. They include, in descending size order, bongo, greater kudu, lesser kudu, sitatunga, nyala and bushbuck. Some twisted enthusiasts include the eland but there is a lack of consensus as to this vast creature’s taxonomy. Interesting but irrelevant – the eland, spiral-horned or not, has been farmed for milk.

In southern Africa we find greater kudu, nyala, sitatunga and bushbuck.

Only the bulls have horns except on very rare occasions when females are strangely horned – these are the bearded ladies of the antelope world.

Special mention

The bongo, although not occurring on the sub-continent, deserves a special mention because it the biggest and rarest. The bulls mass up to 400 kgs. It is endangered and only occurs in the tropical rain and alpine forests of central, west and east Africa.

What’s interesting?

A lot of white.

The spiral-horned antelope have white chevrons on their faces, white stripes down their sides and bright white under their tails. The bulls also tend to have white tips to their horns. The reasons for these adaptations are a source of some debate.

As far as the chevrons on the face go, they are probably there to reflect light into the eyes. Most of the spiral-horned antelope live in dimly lit, thick bush. The white chevrons apparently reflect light into their eyes which in turn helps them to see marauding predators.

The white stripes on the flank? These help with camouflage in the dappled light of their habitats. It’s no surprise that species living in the thickest vegetation have the most obvious striping – compare the picture of the nyala which lives in thick riverine vegetation and the kudu which lives in more open woodland areas.

Fluffy white tail? Most features that draw one to look at the back end (think waterbuck ‘targets’ and erect warthog tails), are following mechanisms. When on the run from death at the teeth of a predator, the antelope flick their tails over. This allows their companions, especially if they are young calves, to follow.

The spiral-horned antelope are also known for their loud, low frequency alarm bark that sounds like a mixture between a huge dog and an irate baboon. Apparently a lower frequency sound penetrates more deeply in dense vegetation.

What do they do?

Like most creatures, they eat and breed.

Greater kudu are savannah woodland species and so will not live in desert, forest or grassland. That said, they can live in very dry conditions such as those prevalent in the Karoo or the Kalahari. They tend to live in small groups of up to twenty. The older bulls like to live alone or with a number of young apprentices.

Nyala only occur in the eastern parts of southern Africa, they occupy thicker woodland than do their larger kudu cousins and are probably most at home in riverine vegetation. Mature bulls are shaggy, grey while cows are completely dissimilar chestnut brown.

Bushbuck, which are more solitary than their larger cousins, live in the thickest vegetation. They are also water dependent and need to drink regularly. That said, where the right habitat exists, they occur readily – the bushbuck is the most widely distributed antelope in sub-Saharan Africa.

Sitatungas are adapted entirely for marsh and papyrus. They have specially adapted feet for living in the wet. The two cloves of their hooves can splay wildly which allows them to walk on mud and floating vegetation islands without sinking. You can see these rare and highly specialised animals at Jao Camp, Xigera Camp, Kwetsani Camp and Jacana Camp.

Imagine our surprise when, straight from our arrival at the airstrip, we arrived at Jao Camp in the late afternoon to spot a sub-adult sitatunga male quietly foraging in the more open areas directly behind the guest rooms! We could not believe our luck and I even managed to get the sequence of adjoining images to prove it!

This enigmatic and highly elusive antelope is a specialist swamp denizen of the Okavango Delta where it usually resides in the quiet backwaters and most remote islands. Even if it is seen it is often only a fleeting glimpse of a startled antelope before it disappears again. The eastern sides of the Jao Concession are one of the best places to see this rare antelope and a study done here in the late 1990s by Jennifer Lalley estimated that as many as 650 sitatunga occurred in the area, with this population multiplying in the peak of the flood season when suitable habitat was available.

Due to the big flood that the Okavango Delta and the Jao Concession is experiencing this year, we are currently enjoying outstanding sightings – just like this - of sitatunga right around camp. It seems that their seasonal movement and feeding patterns are affected by the annual flood regime of the Delta, causing the animals to move out of the reedbeds and onto the flooded grassland on the fringes of the mainland during high water periods.

Apart from the Delta it is also found in undisturbed wetlands of West and Central Africa, but is usually a very rare sighting anywhere. The adult males sport impressive spiral horns and despite weighing up to 60kg they are often perfectly camouflaged in their preferred habitat. Their dark, shaggy coats also make them hard to see.

Although closely related to the more common kudu and bushbuck, the sitatunga spends most of its life in or near water. Sitatunga are highly adapted to living in perennial swamps like the Okavango Delta. Its hooves are splayed and v-shaped to help it move across floating vegetation and if threatened it will even dive into the water to hide.

As the sitatunga is such a specialist antelope its biggest threat is habitat destruction and pristine areas like the Okavango Delta are one of this species’ last strongholds. A sighting of this length of time and at such a close distance was a privilege indeed.