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The Gland Scorpion Poll: Arbitrarily-Chosen Members of Ruminantia Taxon


Favorite from amongst arbitary list of members of Ruminantia  

16 members have voted

  1. 1. Which is your favorite from this list? (If your true favorite is not on the list, that's beside the point.)

    • Cattle
      2
    • Domestic Sheep
      1
    • Domestic Goat
      1
    • Giraffe
      1
    • American Bison
      2
    • Moose
      2
    • African Buffalo
      1
    • Mouse-Deer
      2
    • Okapi
      2
    • Ibex
      0
    • Bighorn Sheep
      0
    • Mountain Goat
      2


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I have prepared this poll for one burning question, because it was passed over for the Grand Spiderweb Poll. There are actually many, many species of even-toed ungulates, and they actually include cetaceans and hippos. I actually was thinking exclusively of members of the Ruminantia taxon. Even then there's a lot of them so I just picked a few of the ones I personally think are amusing. Which is your favorite from this list?!

Edited by The Almighty Doer of Stuff
Two choices disappeared, had to re-add them.
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I'd been curious about the odd use of the word "antelope" in the song "Home on the Range" for quite a long time, and I finally looked it up. Antelope are not found in the Americas, as I thought, but the song actually refers to the pronghorn, which some at the time were calling an antelope.

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On 7/22/2017 at 2:10 PM, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:

Huh. Dik-diks are pretty interesting. I never cared much for deer in general though, except for moose.

Dik-diks are true antelope, just very small and somewhat unusual ones. They live in Africa, eat leaves instead of grass, are monogamous, and the female is bigger than the male. One of their calls is transliterated as "dik-dik," hence the common name.

 

The particular individual in the photo comes from the Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon. I think the presences of horns means it is a male. The black spot in front of the eye is some kind of scent gland.

 

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Pronghorn are one-of-a-kind (or rather, the last of their kind). Although they superficially resemble true antelope and fill a similar niche, their nearest living relatives are the giraffe and okapi. The horns grow from the tips (enabling the prong), unlike true antelope where the horn grows from the base. They are the fastest land animals in North America. They probably evolved their speed due to the need to escape from the now extinct American cheetah (not related to the African cheetah). They are unable to jump well, so barbed wire fences and other obstacles pose a conservation threat to certain populations and subspecies. A partial solution has been to remove the lowest wire of the fence, enabling pronghorns to crawl underneath it.

 

12867056943_5f5330387b_c.jpg

 

This pronghorn was part of a herd found near Chino Valley, Arizona. They might have been foraging for cactus fruit at the time.

 

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Dikiyoba thinks everyone who posts in this thread sucks, and should be ashamed of themselves. Ashamed! (But deer are not armadillos.) :p

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