Rhim Gazelle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Bovidae
Subfamily: Antilopinae

[Photo] Slender-horned gazelle, Gazella leptoceros, at the Cincinnati Zoo. Date 2007-11-10. Author FisherQueen (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FisherQueen).

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

The Rhim Gazelle (Gazella leptoceros), also known as the Slender-horned Gazelle or the Sand Gazelle, is a slender-horned gazelle, most adapted to desert life.

Description
The palest of the gazelles, this animal has adapted to desert life in many ways. Their pale coat reflects the sun's rays instead of absorbing them, and their hooves are slightly enlarged to help them walk on the sand, although occasionally they occupy stony regions. The horns on the male are slender and slightly S-shaped, and the horns donned by the female are even thinner and lighter, and they don't curve as drastically.

Habitat
The Rhim or Rheem Gazelle is found in isolated pockets across the central Sahara Desert (Kingdom 1997, Spinage 1986). The extreme heat of this environment limits their feeding to the early morning and evening and G. leptoceros gains most of its water requirements from dew and plant moisture, relying little on open water sources.

It is a nomadic species moving across its desert range in search of vegetation, though it does not have a set migratory pattern (East 1997, Kingdom 1997).

Endangered by the early 1970's, this species of gazelle was in serious decline. They were hunted firstly by mounted then by motorized hunters for sport, meat or their horns which were sold as ornaments in North African markets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhim_Gazelle

The text in this page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article shown in above URL. It is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.