Goitered Gazelle: Description, Importance, and Conservation Efforts

June 21, 2022

By Eman Abdallah Kamel

Eman is a writer and an engineer. She is interested in writing about animals, their facts, and many other topics.

The goitered gazelle is an endangered animal. This article discusses the goitered gazelle’s history, characteristics, and behavior, in addition to its importance and efforts to preserve it.

The goitered gazelle is an endangered animal.

Goitered Gazelle

The goitered gazelle belongs to the family Bovidae and the subfamily Antilopinae. They inhabit deserts, sub-desert plains, calcareous plateaus, and gravel plains from northern China and Mongolia to the Arabian Peninsula.

Small groups are found in western and southern Afghanistan and Pakistan. It can also be found in northern Saudi Arabia, the Empty Quarter desert, Oman, the central deserts of Iran, all over the United Arab Emirates, and southeastern Turkey.

Goitered gazelles are fully adapted to a dry and hot desert environment. They live in the foothills and mountain valleys. Their habitats range from clay and sandy soils to basaltic deserts or salt flats. In winter, they inhabit snowless areas and use deep valleys, low mountain canyons, or dense shrubs as shelter from the winds.

Goitered deer are herbivores; their diet includes grass, legumes, and pumpkins. In agricultural areas, they eat fruits, barley sprouts, chickpeas, corn, melons, onions, sugar cane, oats, and wheat. The plants they eat provide most of their water.

Goitered gazelles can climb to a height of 3,500 meters during the warmer months in Kazakhstan and can live in China in areas that reach up to 3,000 meters high.

According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the classification of the goitered gazelle is poor.

Goitered Gazelle Map
wikimedia.org

Scientific Classification

Kingdom	Animalia
Phylum	Chordata
Class	Mammalia
Order	Artiodactyla
Family	Bovidae
Subfamily	Antilopinae
Tribe	Antilopini
Genus	Gazella
Species	G. subgutturosa

History

The goitered gazelle is one of the species that has occupied a unique place in the literature, folklore, and arts of most peoples, such as the Azerbaijani people.

Less than a century ago, herds of gazelles grazed abundantly in the lowlands and foothills of the Southern Caucasus. Fossils of gazelles in the Caucasus go back two million years.

Around 1900, goitered gazelles were abundant in nearly every desert or semi-desert region throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.

The number of gazelles in the eastern Caucasus during the first half of the last century declined from tens of thousands to 200 specimens in the 1960s.

Also, in the mid-twentieth century, it was estimated that approximately one million Goitered gazelles lived in the Soviet Union alone.

In 2001, the population of Goitered Gazelles was estimated at 120,000–140,000. This decline has occurred over the last decade. In the past 10 years, the rate of decline has reached more than 30%.

The declines are huge in Kazakhstan, south-eastern Turkey, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Georgia, and Mongolia.

Arabian sand gazelle (Gazella marica) at the Dubai Desert Conservation Area. wikimedia.org

Subspecies

There are four subspecies of goitered gazelles:

Arabian sand gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa marica).
Mongolian goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa hilleriana).
Persian goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa subgutturosa).
Yarkand gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa yarkandensis).

Description and Behavior

The goitered gazelle is medium in size with light hooves. But they have stronger bodies than most other Asian deer species.

Did You Know?

Goitered gazelle is called by that name because it has an enlargement that resembles an enlarged thyroid gland in the larynx.

Males are larger and have a larger goiter than females.
The weight of adult males ranges from 20 to 43 kg. The weight of adult females ranges from 18 to 33 kg.
Adult males have long black horns, 203 to 340 mm long, close together at the base and curving away from each other towards the distal ends. Females generally do not have antlers.
Goitered gazelles have long ears and large black eyes.
At the end of their long, slender legs are tiny black hooves. The goitered gazelle has a strong muscle in the posterior thigh joint; this enables strong traction that stabilizes it while running in rough terrain. They can run at a speed of 65 km/h.
The colors of gazelles vary from white to brown, with shades of gray, red, and yellow. Facial dandruff is often white and tends to fade with age.
They have a relatively short tail covered with dark brown or black hair.
Mating occurs from September to December. Male performances during courtship include neck pulls, swollen glands, nose-up positions, and front leg kicking.
Goitered gazelles form large herds in winter, while females leave in small groups of 1 or 2 pregnant females. Most males mate with 2 to 12 females, but some males do not mate at all.
Generally, goitered gazelles mature within one year, but the female can become pregnant at the age of 5 months.
Males can have offspring at 10.5 months of age; however, they do not usually mate before 1.5 to 2.5 years and can still conceive for more than 10 years.
Pregnancy lasts from 148 to 159 days. Females move to areas of higher ground before birth. Calves are usually born between March and May.
Most adult females give birth to twins. But generally, young and adult females give birth to one gazelle.

Goitered gazelle fawn.
flickr.com

On average, calves weigh 1.86 kg at birth, are completely weaned at 6 months of age, and are not under parental care.
After birth, calves can stand and suckle within 10 to 15 minutes. The females tend to graze 50 to 500 meters from their young and seek out a new lair for the calves.
If a female gives birth to twins, the babies are typically separated by 50–1000 meters in the first 4–6 days after birth. For the first six weeks, babies are breastfed two to four times per day. After that, babies are breastfed for at least three to six months.
A young gazelle can graze and drink water at 4 to 6 weeks of age.
At the age of 18 to 19 months, a gazelle reaches puberty size. The horn grows at 3 to 6 months of age and is complete at 1 to 1.5 years. Male horns continue to grow until the age of 6 years.
Gazelles communicate with deep grunts, wheezing, and hissing. They often hiss as an alarm. Females make hoarse, low-pitched noises to summon their young.
The males make a low whistling sound that can be heard from 100 to 150 meters away during the breeding season. They also use glandular secretions to demarcate and communicate with their species, especially during the breeding season.

Goitered Gazelle
inaturalist.org

Importance

Goitered gazelles play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. They are an important food source for many different species of carnivores.

With the numbers of these deer declining, so do the animals that depend on them. For example, the decline in tiger numbers is due to the decline in deer numbers.

According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, there are two extinct gazelle species in North Africa and ten others listed as vulnerable or endangered, and as prey species decline, leopards are turning to livestock for food. Therefore, livestock keepers kill these leopards.

Thus, one of the main initiatives for leopard preservation is to restore wild prey species, such as gazelles.

Goitered Gazelle
shutterstock.com

The Main Threats to the Goitered Gazelle

The main threats to goitered gazelles include unrestricted poaching for their meat and skins.
Economic and agricultural development are primarily responsible for habitat destruction.
Harsh winters in Central Asia also have a significant negative effect on the goitered gazelle.

Efforts to Recover Goitered Gazelle

In Azerbaijan, areas suitable for goitered gazelle reintroduction include five nature reserves, three national parks, and four sanctuaries. Several organizations, including the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the International Development Education Association, and the World Wide Fund for Nature, have partnered up to reintroduce gazelles to Azerbaijan’s historical collection.

In Abu Dhabi, UAE, the Environment Agency completed a project to assess the genetic diversity of the Arabian Sand Gazelle population in forests. These forests are currently home to over 55,000 gazelles.

In Oman, the Sand Gazelle Conservation Project aims to propagate them and return them to their natural habitats.

Qatar has also established several nature reserves to preserve endangered species of wild animals, such as the goitered gazelle.

Sources

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