Waterbuck

Lifestyle

Just like other African mammals, this animal lives predominantly in Central Africa as well as in the east and west of the continent. It belongs to the family of horned animals, is a ruminant, an even-toed ungulate, and as a young animal a herd animal, with the size of the herds ranging from half a dozen to several dozen. The adult male, however, increasingly develops into a loner.

Appearance

The waterbuck has a withers height of just under one and a half meters. The withers is understood in quadrupeds as the transition from the neck to the back as the actual animal size. With up to five hundredweight, i.e. about 250 kilograms, the weight of an adult male animal is quite considerable. Its fur is long and rather straggly, and its sense of smell is not very highly developed. In contrast to the female, which is hornless, the male has horns that are strongly ringed and curved backwards. As can be observed in other animals, it uses its horns, among other things, in direct combat when it comes to fending off or completely scaring away one or more rivals during the mating season.

Nutrition

The waterbuck is, so to speak, a vegetarian, because its diet consists mainly of aquatic plants and especially a lot of grass. Depending on where it lives, it must also be able to go without water and the associated food for longer periods of time. The habitats for this genus of animals include bushes, forests and the open savannah in Africa, but also reed areas on the edges of lakes. In reeds and water, the animal likes to retreat when in danger. Its greatest enemy in the wild is the lion. This African antelope usually gives birth to one or two young after a gestation period of 270 days, i.e. nine months. Nowadays it lives in many African national parks, so that the population of this species is considered secure.