Last week I gave you this mystery object from the Dead Zoo:

Usually I don’t give you clues, but for this one I thought it might be helpful in narrowing down possibilities since this specimen is faded and is probably lacking a lot of the colour features that might help with an identification. The clue wasn’t hugely helpful however, just a reference to the collector – one Major St. Leger Moore.

Palfreyman1414 and salliereynolds made the inital observation that this is an ungulate, but there are very many ungulates and that doesn’t narrow it down by much. Goatlips went on a bit of an adventure with Major St. Leger Moore and found some useful information – the Major served in the 9th Lancers who were posted to India during his service, in which time he picked up polo (which he was apparently involved in appropriating for Britain) and most likely this particular trophy.

With this information it becomes a bit easier to start narrowing down likely possibilities – there are around 21 species of bovid in India and only one of them looks anything like this – the Chinkara or Indian Gazelle Gazella bennettii (Sykes, 1831), which Goatlips hinted at with a cryptic reference to a cricketer. Of course, there are plenty of gazelle species in Africa, which Major St. Leger Moore may have visited outside his time in the military, since he was a keen sportsman and recognised as being able to “shoot straight”.

Checking the features of the Chinkara helps to add confidence to the identification. According to the ADW the Chinkara is:

…characterized by a sandy, yellowish and red colored fur with a pale white ventral region. Facial markings are well developed: they have a dark brown or black forehead and a light face with dark stripes and a noticeable nose spot. Fur color varies seasonally. In the winter, Indian gazelles are a dark grayish sandy color, and there is a distinct brown band edging the white ventral area of the torso. In the summer, the fur is a darker brown.

Indian gazelles have straight horns with prominent rings and tips that are slightly out-turned. Horns are found on both males and females, although they are relatively shorter in females. Sub-adult males are hard to distinguish from females because of their intermediate horn length. Horns can reach lengths of 250 to 350 mm in adult males. Female horns are usually half the length of and thinner in width than male horns and have less prominent rings. Average male horn length of the subspecies Gazella bennetti fuscifrons and G. b. shakari is 256.6 mm. Females of these subspecies have an average horn length of 184.7 mm.

McCart, D. 2012. “Gazella bennettii” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed April 22, 2021 at https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Gazella_bennettii/

While the colours preserved on the specimen aren’t quite good enough to provide much assurance, the details of the horns (especially when compared to other gazelle species, that often have much longer and more lyrate horns) correspond very well with the Chinkara. Not a certain identification, but pretty convincing.

So well done to Goatlips for some nice detective work!