Pursuing praxis

It occured to me that although I have blathered on about the awesomeness of bongos, I haven’t actually stopped to talk much about their biology, or even immodestly post a slew of my own pics of them. Well, time to fix that. Bring on the natural history!

The bongo is - big suprise - a spiral-horned antelope in the tribe Tragelaphini. That means they are closely related to things like bushbucks, elands, kudus, nyalas, and the like. Most phylogenies show bongos as closest to bushbuck (Gatesy et al., 1997; Matthee and Robinson, 1999) or sitatunga (Hassanin and Douzery, 1999) with bushbuck next most closely related. The strict consensus family tree compiled by Hernandez Fernandez and Vrba (2005) shows a three-way tie for next-of-kin between bongos, bushbucks, and sitatungas. 

What’s wierd about that is that these three species are best united by being forest-dwellers. After that they don’t seem to have much in common. Bushbuck males weigh 40-75kg; sitatunga males weight about 115kg; bongo males weigh about 300kg (Stuart and Stuart, 2000). Bushbuck are pretty wide-ranging in their habitats so long as its forest of one kind or another. Sitatungas are swamp-adapted, meaning they hang out in or near water pretty much all the time (they’ll comfortably submerge up to their nostrils to quietly flee an uncomfortable scene). Bongos range from lowland rainforests to montane tropical forests and high moorlands, and not much in between. In fact, there are two subspecies of bongos; the western one is the lowland rainforest variety, and the eastern one (very endangered) lives in mountain forests in East Africa. Presently it’s thought to be restricted to the Aberdare Mountains in Kenya, where park rangers see evidence of a bongo about once a year. Very shy, and very very rare. Also a preferred menu item for lions, I’m told.

Of primary interest to me, though, is the fact that bongo females (or more probably their ancestors) have evolved female horns. In fact, bongo females are more similar to bongo males than any other tragelaphine antelope besides the elands. And they evolved it totally independently. Way cool.

Plus they’re just plain strikingly colored, which makes them popular with tourists and scientists alike. Their facial markings make them look a little cross, which I think is cute, especially in the young ones. Without further ado, here are my pics, taken at the Mt. Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Animal Orphanage, outside Nanyuki, Kenya.  

I didn’t see any males there, but here are some good pics online:
http://www.brightszoo.com/images/BongoBoy_Large.JPG
http://www.foundalis.com/bio/zoo/bongo.jpg
http://dinets.travel.ru/bongo.jpg

References 

Gatesy, J., Amato, G., Vrba, E.S., Schaller, G. and DeSalle, R. 1997. A cladistic analysis of mitochondrial ribosomal DNA from the Bovidae. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 7:303-319.

Hassanin, A. and Douzery, J.J. 1999. The tribal radiation of the family Bovidae (Artiodactyla) and the evolution of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 13:227-243. 

Hernandez Fernandez, M., and Vrba, E.S. 2005. A complete estimate of the phylogenetic relationships in Ruminantia: a dated species-level supertree of the extant ruminants. Biological Reviews 80:269-302.

Stuart, C. and Stuart, T. 2000. Field Guide to the Larger Mammals of Africa. Struik Publishers.