Gemsbok Profile
Deserts are known to be the home of some of the toughest sons of biscuits in the animal kingdom. Most of these are in the form of grizzled reptiles or venomous arthropods. Mammals typically can’t compete in a world of baking sands and little water.
The Gemsbok is no ordinary mammal. This is toughness incarnate; a true desert specialist.
Gemsbok Facts Overview
| Habitat: | Arid, desert, savanna |
| Location: | Southern Africa, from Namibia to South Africa |
| Lifespan: | 24 years in captivity |
| Size: | Up to 2m long (78 inches), 1.2m (47 inches) tall |
| Weight: | Up to 250kg (551 lb) |
| Colour: | Light grey to brown |
| Diet: | Grasses, forbs, roots, tubers |
| Predators: | Lion, hyena, cheetah, leopard |
| Top Speed: | Up to 60 km/h (37 mph) |
| No. of Species: | 1 |
| Conservation Status: | Least Concern (IUCN) |
Gemsboks are adjusted to the desert in a multitude of ways. They can retain valuable water, seek out scarce resources, avoid heat, adjust to it, and impale any predator that threatens to put a stop to its success.
These are very powerful animals, and have adaptations that give them an edge over almost every other mammal, even when introduced to foreign lands.
Interesting Gemsbok Facts
1. They’re dry weather specialists
These incredible antelope are native to desert regions of Southern Africa. The Kalahari and Namib are two of the most difficult places for a large mammal to live, so those that thrive need to be especially tough.
The first line of defence against the heat is to avoid it. Gemsboks will make use of shade where it’s available, but when grazing in the sun, will orient themselves so that the smallest parts of their body are facing the heat.
They have a complex network of blood vessels that carry hot blood away from the brain and direct cooler blood from the nasal passages towards it.
They’ll mostly graze at night, where there is more moisture and less heat, but where water is scarce – as it commonly is in the desert – they have incredible water-retention capabilities. Using these adaptations, they can withstand temperatures of up to 45°C
Gemsbok are exceptional at minimising water loss, and aside from specialised kidneys to recycle water, one outstanding adaptation to this is their heterothermic strategy. 1
2. They’re heterotherms
As a human, your incredible ability to maintain about 37.5°C no matter what’s going on outside is down to various regulatory mechanisms like sweating, shivering and burrowing under blankets.
The stability of our core temperature is called homeothermy, meaning “same temperature”, and it’s a great strategy as long as you have the resources to maintain it. Sweating uses a whole bunch of water, so we have to drink every day to top up. We also lose salt, so we need to get electrolytes from somewhere, too.
In contrast to this, some animals are poikilotherms. This means they’ve adapted to allow their body temperature to fluctuate with the environment.
This is rare in mammals, as for most of us, our proteins denature within a few degrees above our comfortable temperature.
Gemsboks are heterotherms, meaning they can pick and choose between these two strategies as the situation dictates. This allows them to sweat when they have access to plenty of water and use other methods when away from a water source. 2
3. They can dig
Another way they survive during the long period of desert dryness is by digging up water-filled tubers.
To get to these root masses, they’ve become adept at digging. While digging for roots, they can also access valuable salts and minerals to supplement their nutrition, and this hidden resource allows them not only to survive but to thrive in the harsh conditions.
Gemsbok are able to reproduce in weather that forces other animals to migrate. 3
4. They have excellent defences
In the Kalahari, it’s not just the heat that can kill you. Large groups of herbivores offer a united front against predators, but in the desert, there’s rarely enough food to sustain such a group.
It’s too hot to run for long, and with such scarce resources, it could spell certain death to leave the area anyway.
So, Gemsbok have evolved truly effective weaponry on their heads. These are not trophies of virility or tools with which to establish which male is the strongest, these are lion killers.
This truth is evident by the very fact that female gemsbok have horns that are just as impressive as those of the males.
An adult Gemsbok is able to fend off more than a single lion by themselves, and a small team are a force to be reckoned with.
Female gemsboks have even been known to kill lions. 4
5. Their small mouths avoid competition
In the Kalahari, gemsbok share habitats with wildebeest, and both species are grass and roughage specialists. They both have similar body masses, meaning they occupy a very similar niche in the ecosystem, exploiting similar resources.
But evolution is exceptional at conserving energy, and competition is expensive, so these two animals have evolved to exploit these resources in different ways.
When it’s hot and wet, and there’s a lot of plant matter to choose from, both species share their space. As the weather changes and grasses become more scarce, they separate into slightly different spots. While the wildebeest wander over to the dense, shorter grasses, the gemsbok prefers the longer, taller, grass communities.
The shape of their mouths is the key here. The gemsbok’s smaller muzzle allows them to be more selective with their feeding, picking out the small pockets of nutrient-rich foliage among the grass. 5
6. They don’t segregate
Gemsbok herds aren’t fussy about who they let in. Females and males stick together, unlike in many large herbivores, and this might be a product of the added protection they can provide one another.
Groups range in size from around 4 to 18, with hot weather seeming to encourage larger groups to form. There seems to be no preference for same-sex in these groups, so no bachelor or breeding female exclusive clubs, like in other antelope.
7. They’re being farmed
The toughness of this animal makes it of interest to farmers and could provide additional income where traditional livestock just can’t hack it.
Their ability to go without water and their large size and year-round production makes them a strong candidate for commercial game meat, and they’re likely to last a lot longer into the coming climate catastrophe than domestic sheep and goats.
8. They’re invading America
Some have already made their way into the Americas. New Mexico saw its first introduced populations in 1969, with a total of 93 being released over the subsequent eight years.
Those pioneers have spread to an impressive 3,000 in number now, and their range has expanded Northward with them.
Their sheer tenacity as an extremophile gives them an advantage over some of the native fauna, and there are talks that they’re outcompeting the locals, which could make them an invasive species. There are no predators in the Americas that are powerful enough to take them on as adults, so need to be managed by regulated hunting.
They’re also liable to damage grasslands and may cause problems for pronghorns and domestic grazers.
Gemsbok Fact-File Summary
Scientific Classification
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Family: | Bovidae |
| Genus: | Oryx |
| Species: | gazella |
Fact Sources & References
- Melinda Frances Boyers (2018), “A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BEHAVIOURAL AND THERMOREGULATORY RESPONSES OF BLUE WILDEBEEST AND GEMSBOK TO ARIDITY”, Wired Space.
- Andrew E. McKechnie (2011), “Heterothermy in Afrotropical Mammals and Birds: A Review”, Oxford Academic.
- Jean-François Asmodé (1990), “Food choice and digging behaviour of naive arabian oryx reintroduced in their natural environment”, Hal Open Science.
- BBC Earth (2019), “BBC EarthTwo Lions Take on Oryx | Natural World: Desert Lions”, YouTube.
- Ruckstuhl, K. E (2009), “ Activity budgets and sociality in a monomorphic ungulate: the African oryx (Oryx gazella)”, Sci Hub.