Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Artiodactyla > Bovidae > Connochaetes > Connochaetes taurinus

Connochaetes taurinus (blue wildebeest)

Synonyms: Antilope taurina (homotypic); Gorgon taurinus

Wikipedia Abstract

The blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus), also called the common wildebeest, white-bearded wildebeest or brindled gnu, is a large antelope and one of the two species of wildebeest. It is placed in the genus Connochaetes and family Bovidae and has a close taxonomic relationship with the black wildebeest. The blue wildebeest is known to have five subspecies. This broad-shouldered antelope has a muscular, front-heavy appearance, with a distinctive robust muzzle. Young blue wildebeest are born tawny brown, and begin to take on their adult colouration at the age of two months. The adults' hues range from a deep slate or bluish gray to light gray or even grayish-brown. Both sexes possess a pair of large curved horns.
View Wikipedia Record: Connochaetes taurinus

Infraspecies

Connochaetes taurinus albojubatus
Connochaetes taurinus cooksoni
Connochaetes taurinus johnstoni
Connochaetes taurinus mearnsi
Connochaetes taurinus taurinus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
4
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
24
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 9.13
EDGE Score: 2.32
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  362.662 lbs (164.50 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  39.959 lbs (18.125 kg)
Male Weight [4]  500.452 lbs (227.00 kg)
Diet [2]  Herbivore
Diet - Plants [2]  100 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  1 year 1 month
Male Maturity [1]  2 years 6 months
Gestation [1]  8 months 13 days
Litter Size [1]  1
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [1]  24 years
Migration [3]  Intracontinental
Snout to Vent Length [4]  7.249 feet (221 cm)
Speed [5]  39.996 MPH (17.88 m/s)
Weaning [1]  9 months 8 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Lycaon pictus (African wild dog)[7]
Panthera leo (Lion)[8]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 5Wikipedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
♦ 6Seasonal variation in the diets of Bohor reedbuck, waterbuck and wildebeest in a moist dystrophic savanna in Tanzania, Stephanie Halsdorf, Bettina Gutbrodt, Harry Olde Venterink, Werner Suter, Peter J. Edwards, Doctoral Dissertation, ETH ZURICH, 2011
♦ 7Who's Eating Who
♦ 8Predator–prey size relationships in an African large-mammal food web, Norman Owen-Smith and M. G. L. Mills, Journal of Animal Ecology Volume 77, Issue 1, Pages 173-183
♦ 9Nunn, C. L., and S. Altizer. 2005. The Global Mammal Parasite Database: An Online Resource for Infectious Disease Records in Wild Primates. Evolutionary Anthroplogy 14:1-2.
♦ 10Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 11Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0