Roan Antelope

The roan antelope, Hippotragus equinus, is a large, savanna-dwelling antelope found in Western, Southern and parts of Central and Eastern Africa. It is named for its roan colour, a slightly reddish sandy brown, and has a lighter underbelly and a mostly white face with a black mask around the eyes. Both sexes have formidable recurved horns, larger in males and up to 100 centimetres long, and short erect manes down the back. It shares the genus Hippotragus with the extinct bluebuck and the sable antelope and was first described by the French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1803. The name equinus comes from the Latin for horse-like. A 1996 analysis of bluebuck DNA showed that the bluebuck is a distinct species.