Snapshot Serengeti Talk

Topi and eland?

  • heylei by heylei

    I almost classified this as 2 eland, but the marks on the inside of the leg of the closer animal made me say 1 topi, 1 eland. They seem in awfully close proximity, do these two species tend to intermingle?

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  • dms246 by dms246 moderator

    Actually, your first instinct was spot on - these are both eland. If you look closely at the one on the right, you can see that it also has black patches behind its knees. Then if you look at slide 3 of the example images in the classification screen, you can see that eland do indeed have those black patches. They are a really good identifier for eland.

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  • heylei by heylei

    I did see the marks on the one on the right and identified that as an eland. What tripped me up was the curved black markings on the legs on the left--I saw those as back legs and it looked like this: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3588/3680463356_7b58bb3b86.jpg
    But if I think of them as front legs, they are absolutely eland legs! It's crazy how things can look so different when you don't quite understand what you're seeing.

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  • dms246 by dms246 moderator

    Heh... isn't it just? Often the first step in identifying what's in the photo is simply working out what way round everything is! 😃

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