Wildlife Africa- Wildbeest Behavior

HABITAT	Light wooded open savanna and short grass plains are the ideal conditions for Wildbeest.
HABITS	Wildbeest are gregarious animals, concentrating in herds of up to a few thousand individuals, if conditions are propitious. There is no stable social groupings in the herd. Adult bulls establish their own territories within the herd, where they try to retain the cows and their calves. Fights amongst adult bulls consist mainly in a lot of pushing, each contender on his knees, not causing any body harm at all. Young Wildbeest are evicted from the breeding herds at the age of 12 months, forming "bachelor groups" of up to 40 individuals. The female Wildbeest does not leave the herd to give birth. Although it's fragile appearance at birth, the calf is able to follow his mother within about 2 hours. Wildbeest have two annual cyclic migrations coinciding with the rainy Summer Season and the dry Season in Winter. They follow fixed migration patterns, with the same wet and dry season concentration areas used every year. Adult animals can weigh up to 250 Kg. and have a life span of about 20 years.
DIET	Wildbeest are exclusively grazers.
BREEDING	Cows give birth for the first time at the age of 3 years. One single calf is born strikingly different from the adults.

ORDER	FAMILY	Scientific name
Artiodactyla	Bovidae	Connochaetes taurinus (Burchell,1823)