African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

It seems difficult to believe that there can be any truth in the theory suggested by Mr. Wallace, that recognition marks have been developed in certain species of large mammals because they are necessary to enable nearly allied species of animals to know their own kind at a glance, and so prevent interbreeding; for the ranges of very nearly allied forms of one genus, such as the various species of hartebeests and oryxes, or the bontebok and the blesbok, very seldom overlap, and so each species keeps true of necessity and without the help of special recognition marks. Where the ranges of two nearly allied species do overlap interbreeding probably will take place.

There seems little doubt that the species of hartebeest known as Neumann's hartebeest has interbred with Jackson's hartebeest in certain districts where the ranges of the two species meet. In the neighbourhood of Lake Nakuru, in British East Africa, I shot, in February 1903, a hartebeest which was not a Jackson's hartebeest, but which closely resembled an animal of that species in the character of its horns and the measurements of its skull, whilst all the others in the same herd appeared to be true Neumann's. I have known too of one undoubted case of the interbreeding of the South African hartebeest (B. Caama) with the tsessebe (Damaliseus lunatus).

This animal (an adult male) was shot by my friend Cornelis van Rooyen in Western Matabeleland, where the ranges of the two species just overlap. In coloration it was like a tsessebe, but had the comparatively bushy tail of the hartebeest, whilst its skull and horns (which are, I am glad to say, in the collection of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington) are exactly intermediate between those of the two parent species. This skull has been very unsatisfactorily labelled "supposed hybrid between B. Caama and D. lunatus." But as, when I presented it to the Natural History Museum, I gave at the same time a full description of the animal to which it had belonged, which I got from the man who actually shot it, there is no supposition in the matter. If the skull and horns in question are not those of a hybrid between the South African hartebeest and the tsessebe, then they must belong to an animal still unknown to science.

There is, I think, no large mammal in the whole world whose coat shows a greater richness of bloom and a more abrupt contrast of colours than the bontebok, so called by the old Dutch colonists of the Cape because of its many coloured hide, for bont means spotted, or blotched, or variegated. The whole neck, the chest, the sides and under parts of the head, and the sides of the body of this remarkable antelope are of a rich dark brown, and the central part of the back is of a beautiful purple lilac; whilst, in strong contrast to these rich dark colours, the whole front of the face, a good-sized patch on the rump, the whole belly, and the legs are of a pure and brilliant white. In life, and when they are in good condition, a wonderful sheen plays and shimmers over the glossy coats of these beautifully coloured animals, which fully atones for the want of grace and refinement in the shape of their heads and the heavy build of their bodies.

Now, a practical acquaintance with the very limited extent of country in which the bontebok has been evolved, and where the survivors of the race still live, makes it quite impossible for me to believe that the extraordinarily brilliant colouring of this species of antelope can have been gradually developed in order to make it inconspicuous and therefore difficult of detection by carnivorous animals, nor can I believe that it has been evolved for the purpose of mutual recognition between individuals of the species; for although the snow-white blaze down the face or the white rump patch might very well subserve such a purpose, I see no necessity, looking to the habitat and the habits of the bontebok, for special recognition marks.

Now, before proceeding further, I think I ought to say a word as to the points of resemblance and the differences between the bontebok and its near ally the blesbok.

In the latter, the wonderful contrasts of colour to be seen in the former are considerably toned down; but the difference between the two species is merely superficial. The general body colour of the blesbok is dark brown, but not so dark as on the neck and sides of the bontebok, and the delicate purply lilac colour of the back in the latter species is altogether wanting in the former. In the blesbok, too, the colour of the rump just above the tail, which in the bontebok is snow-white, is brown, though of a paler shade than any other part of the body. In the blesbok, too, the white face "blaze" is not continuous from the horns downwards as in the bontebok, but is interrupted above the eyes by a bar of brown. The legs, too, in the blesbok are not so white as in the bontebok, and whilst the horns of the latter species are always perfectly black, in the former they are of a greenish colour.

In a word, the differences between the bontebok and the blesbok are confined to the intensity of the colours on various portions of their hides, the former being much more brilliantly coloured than the latter.

Owing to the fact that the early Dutch settlers at the Cape first met with the antelopes which they called bonteboks on the plains near Cape Agulhas, and subsequently at first gave the same name to the nearly allied species which was discovered about one hundred years later in the neighbourhood of the Orange river, although these latter were undoubtedly blesboks and not bonteboks, a great confusion arose between these two nearly allied species, which I think that I was the first to clear up, in the article on the bontebok which I contributed to the Great and Small Game of Africa, published by Rowland Ward, Limited, in 1899. I cannot go into all the arguments I then used, but there can be no doubt that the animals which Captain (afterwards Sir Cornwallis) Harris first met with on the bontebok flats near the Orange river, in the Colesburg division of the Cape Colony, were blesboks and not bonteboks, and that all the millions of antelopes of the same species which he subsequently saw to the north of the Orange river and thought to be bonteboks were also all blesboks, and that he never saw a bontebok at all until after his return to the Cape, when he made a special journey to Cape Agulhas to secure specimens of that species, as he was "anxious to ascertain whether the animal rigorously protected in the neighbourhood of Cape Agulhas differed in any respect from that found in the interior, as pretended by the colonists."

I think myself that the correct determination of the true distribution of these two nearly allied species of antelopes is of the utmost importance to the question as to the influence of environment on the coloration of animals.