![]() These help make them hard to find in the dappled sunlight coming through trees. Kudu have a sleek, brownish gray coat with vertical white stripes on the body. Lesser kudu are great jumpers and can leap over obstacles up to 8 feet (2.5 meters) high. But if you were to straighten out the spirals, the horns would be up to 35 inches (89.5 centimeters) long. From tip to tip, the horns can grow up to 28 inches (71 centimeters) long. Greater or Cape kudu bulls have the longest horns. As its name suggests, the giant eland is the world's largest antelope. The spirals help the bulls lock horns with each other when engaged in fights over cows. In eland, the bulls' horns are always heavier and longer than the cows' and often have more spirals. Spiral-horned antelope bulls tend to be heavier and darker than the cows. The 13th Earl of Derby had a large, private zoo on the grounds of his home in England during the early 19th century. The giant eland is also known as the Lord Derby's eland. The horn material grows faster and thinner at certain times, and then thicker and slower at other times. So, how do the horns grow in a spiral? The twisting is a result of a growth pulse. In elands, the cows (females) have them, too. The bulls (males) have these impressive hood ornaments. Theodore Roosevelt once described greater kudu as "the handsomest of game animals." Greater kudu bulls are much larger than the cows, outweighing them by up to 220 pounds (100 kilograms).īuilt-in corkscrews: If an ungulate is called a spiral-horned antelope, you'd better believe it’s going to have a set of spiraling horns on its head! Kudu and eland fit this category.
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