New Page 1

LA GRAMMATICA DI ENGLISH GRATIS IN VERSIONE MOBILE   INFORMATIVA PRIVACY

  NUOVA SEZIONE ELINGUE

 

Selettore risorse   

   

 

                                         IL Metodo  |  Grammatica  |  RISPOSTE GRAMMATICALI  |  Multiblog  |  INSEGNARE AGLI ADULTI  |  INSEGNARE AI BAMBINI  |  AudioBooks  |  RISORSE SFiziosE  |  Articoli  |  Tips  | testi pAralleli  |  VIDEO SOTTOTITOLATI
                                                                                         ESERCIZI :   Serie 1 - 2 - 3  - 4 - 5  SERVIZI:   Pronunciatore di inglese - Dizionario - Convertitore IPA/UK - IPA/US - Convertitore di valute in lire ed euro                                              

 

 

WIKIBOOKS
DISPONIBILI
?????????

ART
- Great Painters
BUSINESS&LAW
- Accounting
- Fundamentals of Law
- Marketing
- Shorthand
CARS
- Concept Cars
GAMES&SPORT
- Videogames
- The World of Sports

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
- Blogs
- Free Software
- Google
- My Computer

- PHP Language and Applications
- Wikipedia
- Windows Vista

EDUCATION
- Education
LITERATURE
- Masterpieces of English Literature
LINGUISTICS
- American English

- English Dictionaries
- The English Language

MEDICINE
- Medical Emergencies
- The Theory of Memory
MUSIC&DANCE
- The Beatles
- Dances
- Microphones
- Musical Notation
- Music Instruments
SCIENCE
- Batteries
- Nanotechnology
LIFESTYLE
- Cosmetics
- Diets
- Vegetarianism and Veganism
TRADITIONS
- Christmas Traditions
NATURE
- Animals

- Fruits And Vegetables



ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. Alligator
  2. Alpaca
  3. Anaconda
  4. Ant
  5. Anteater
  6. Antelope
  7. Baboon
  8. Badger
  9. Bat
  10. Bear
  11. Bee
  12. Boa
  13. Butterfly
  14. Camel
  15. Canary
  16. Cat
  17. Cheeta
  18. Chicken
  19. Chimpanzee
  20. Cobra
  21. Cod
  22. Condor
  23. Cormorant
  24. Cow
  25. Crab
  26. Cricket
  27. Crocodile
  28. Crow
  29. Deer
  30. Dog
  31. Dolphin
  32. Donkey
  33. Dove
  34. Duck
  35. Eagle
  36. Elephant
  37. Emu
  38. Falcon
  39. Ferret
  40. Fly
  41. Fox
  42. Gazelle
  43. Giraffe
  44. Goat
  45. Goose
  46. Gorilla
  47. Hare
  48. Hedgehog
  49. Heron
  50. Hippopotamus
  51. Horse
  52. Hyena
  53. Ibis
  54. Jackal
  55. Kangaroo
  56. Kingfisher
  57. Koala
  58. Leopard
  59. Lion
  60. Llama
  61. Lobster
  62. Louse
  63. Mantodea
  64. Mink
  65. Mole
  66. Mongoose
  67. Mosquito
  68. Mule
  69. Nightingale
  70. Octopus
  71. Opossum
  72. Orangutan
  73. Ostrich
  74. Otter
  75. Owl
  76. Panda
  77. Parrot
  78. Partridge
  79. Peacock (Peafowl)
  80. Pelican
  81. Penguin
  82. Pheasant
  83. Pig
  84. Pigeon
  85. Prawn
  86. Puffin
  87. Quail
  88. Rabbit
  89. Reindeer
  90. Rhinoceros
  91. Salmon
  92. Seagull
  93. Seal
  94. Shark
  95. Sheep
  96. Shrimp
  97. Silk worm
  98. Skunk
  99. Sparrow
  100. Spider
  101. Squid
  102. Squirrel
  103. Stork
  104. Swallow
  105. Swan
  106. Tarantula
  107. Termite
  108. Tiger
  109. Toucan
  110. Tuna
  111. Turkey
  112. Turtle
  113. Violet-ear
  114. Vulture
  115. Walrus
  116. Wasp
  117. Whale
  118. Wolf
  119. Woodpecker
  120. Yak
  121. Zebra

 

 
CONDIZIONI DI USO DI QUESTO SITO
L'utente può utilizzare il nostro sito solo se comprende e accetta quanto segue:

  • Le risorse linguistiche gratuite presentate in questo sito si possono utilizzare esclusivamente per uso personale e non commerciale con tassativa esclusione di ogni condivisione comunque effettuata. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. La riproduzione anche parziale è vietata senza autorizzazione scritta.
  • Il nome del sito EnglishGratis è esclusivamente un marchio e un nome di dominio internet che fa riferimento alla disponibilità sul sito di un numero molto elevato di risorse gratuite e non implica dunque alcuna promessa di gratuità relativamente a prodotti e servizi nostri o di terze parti pubblicizzati a mezzo banner e link, o contrassegnati chiaramente come prodotti a pagamento (anche ma non solo con la menzione "Annuncio pubblicitario"), o comunque menzionati nelle pagine del sito ma non disponibili sulle pagine pubbliche, non protette da password, del sito stesso.
  • La pubblicità di terze parti è in questo momento affidata al servizio Google AdSense che sceglie secondo automatismi di carattere algoritmico gli annunci di terze parti che compariranno sul nostro sito e sui quali non abbiamo alcun modo di influire. Non siamo quindi responsabili del contenuto di questi annunci e delle eventuali affermazioni o promesse che in essi vengono fatte!
  • L'utente, inoltre, accetta di tenerci indenni da qualsiasi tipo di responsabilità per l'uso - ed eventuali conseguenze di esso - degli esercizi e delle informazioni linguistiche e grammaticali contenute sul siti. Le risposte grammaticali sono infatti improntate ad un criterio di praticità e pragmaticità più che ad una completezza ed esaustività che finirebbe per frastornare, per l'eccesso di informazione fornita, il nostro utente. La segnalazione di eventuali errori è gradita e darà luogo ad una immediata rettifica.

     

    ENGLISHGRATIS.COM è un sito personale di
    Roberto Casiraghi e Crystal Jones
    email: robertocasiraghi at iol punto it

    Roberto Casiraghi           
    INFORMATIVA SULLA PRIVACY              Crystal Jones


    Siti amici:  Lonweb Daisy Stories English4Life Scuolitalia
    Sito segnalato da INGLESE.IT

 
 



ANIMALS
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antelope

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Antelope

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
This article deals with the African herbivorous mammals. For other uses, see Antelope (disambiguation)

Antelopes are a polyphyletic group of herbivorous African and Asian animals of the family Bovidae, distinguished by a pair of hollow horns on their heads. These animals are spread relatively evenly throughout the various subfamilies of Bovidae; many are more closely related to cows or goats than to each other. There are many different species of antelope, ranging in size from the tiny royal antelope to the giant eland. They typically have a light, elegant figure, are slender, have graceful limbs, small cloven hoofs and a short tail. Antelopes have powerful hindquarters and, when startled, run with a peculiar bounding stride that makes them look as though they are bouncing over the terrain like a giant rabbit. Some species of antelope can reach speeds of 60 miles (100 kilometers) per hour, making them among the fastest of land animals.

Physical Description

Apart from basic characteristics, antelopes differ from each other in appearance and physiology almost as much as they differ from other members of the cattle, goat, and sheep family. For example, the common eland towers over most breeds of domestic cattle and can be 300 times heavier than the tiny royal antelope.

All antelopes have long, slender legs and powerful muscles where the upper legs meet the body, providing leverage and increasing leg stride and speed. Though antelopes are good jumpers, they are not particularly good climbers. A few do display good balance, such as the klipspringer, which stands on the tips of its hooves. The gerenuk, another African species, is one of the few antelopes that habitually stands on its back legs.

Antelopes bear a dense coat with short fur. Most antelopes have fawn or brown-colored fur so they can camouflage themselves while eating. There are some exceptions, including the rare zebra duiker which has dark vertical stripes, and the gemsbok which has gray and black fur and a vivid black-and-white face. A common feature of the gazelle is a white rump, which flashes a warning to others when it runs from danger. One species of gazelle, the springbok, also has a pouch of white brushlike hairs running along its back. When a springbok senses danger, its pouch opens up, and the hairs stand on end.

Antelopes are ruminants. Like other ruminants, such as cattle and sheep, they have well-developed cheek teeth or molars, which grind cud into a pulp. They have no upper incisors; in order to tear grass stems and leaves, their lower incisors press against a hard upper gum pad when they bite.

Antelopes rely on their keen senses to avoid predators. Their eyes are on the sides of their heads, and their pupils are elongated horizontally, giving them a broad view of danger from both the back and front. Their senses of smell and hearing are also acute, giving them the ability to perceive danger while out in the open where predators often prowl after dark.

Both sexes of most antelope species grow horns, though the males' horns are generally larger. The dik-dik and klipspringer, two species where the male mates with only one female, have horns that are little more than spikes. However, in species where males compete to mate with several females, horns may grow as long as 1.5 m (5 ft.). Despite their large size, antelope horns are hollow and lightweight. Antelope horns are almost always slightly curved, although in some species such as the blackbuck, they are shaped like a pair of corkscrews spiraling out in opposite directions.

In many species, the males are larger than the females. In several species, such as the Asian blackbuck, males and females also differ in color.

Antelope life spans are hard to determine, and most known figures relate only to those in captivity. Captive gnus have lived to be over 20 years old, and captive impalas have lived into their late teens. In the wild, antelopes rarely live to their teens, as they are often preyed upon.

Behaviour

Unlike carnivores and primates, herbivores such as the antelope are not noted for high intelligence. Since their food cannot run, antelopes do not have to be quick-thinking. However, they can be very clever in escaping from their enemies. Antelopes are fast runners, although they are not the fastest animals in the world. They are good at quick, precise turns, and they can run very fast for extended periods of time. This gives them an advantage over many predators such as the cheetah, which relies on sprinting and can be tired out by the antelope's greater stamina.

The antelope's choice to flee is based largely on the type of predator and its distance from the herd. Usually, gazelles will permit lions to come within 200 m (650 ft.) before fleeing. They likely recognise that a hunting lion prefers to hide while stalking its prey, meaning a visible lion is unlikely to attack. Cheetahs, who are superb sprinters, pose a more dangerous threat. Gazelles will flee from cheetahs when they are over 800 m (0.5 mi.) away.

Antelopes communicate with each other using a varied array of sounds. For example, dik-diks whistle when alarmed, warning other animals of danger as well. This characteristic makes dik-diks less favorable prey for hunters. Generally, though, sight is a much more common form of communication than sound among antelopes. An antelope's mood is indicated by its posture and movement. When excited or alarmed, most medium-sized species of antelope bounce up and down on all four legs, keeping them stretched out straight. This behaviour, known as pronking or stotting, acts as an alarming display. Some biologists theorize that stotting also sends a message to predators, showing that individual antelopes are fit and alert, and therefore not worth pursuing.

Antelopes also use scent signals to communicate; these signals can linger for many days. Antelopes that live in herds have special glands in their hooves that leave a scented record of their movement. If an antelope were accidentally separated from its herd, it would be able to follow the scent tracks back.

Antelope species common to forests tend to stay in the same place all their lives, but species that live out in the open often migrate to feed and breed. The gnus carry out the most famous of these migrations through the plains and open woodlands of eastern and southern Africa. Gnus are sedentary in some places, but in others, such as Serengeti National Park, gnus travel between two different home ranges. One of these ranges is used during the dry season, while another is used during the wet season. Migration can be very risky; the dangers include crossing crocodile-infested rivers, but migration also supplies the gnus with food at different times of the year.

Species

Various species of antelope from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur
Enlarge
Various species of antelope from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur

There are about 90 species of antelope in about 30 genera, of which about 15 species are endangered. These include:

Blackbuck antelope have been imported into the United States, primarily for the purpose of "exotic game hunts," common and popular in Texas. There are no true antelope native to the Americas. The pronghorn antelope of the Great Plains belongs to the family Antilocapridae. The Mongolian gazelle or zeren (Procapra gutturosa), sometimes classified as an antelope, can run with a speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). Suni are small antelope that live in south-eastern Africa. They stand between 12-17 inches high at the shoulder and are very similar to the dik-dik in size, shape and color, but have many smaller differences.

Antelope are not a cladistic group in and of themselves, but rather are considered a miscellaneous group. The term is used loosely to describe all members of the family Bovidae who do not fall under the category of sheep, cattle or goats. Native antelope can be found in Asia, India, and Africa.

Hybrid antelope

A wide variety of antelope hybrids have been recorded in zoos. This may be due to a lack of more appropriate mates in enclosures shared with other species, or misidentification of species. The ease of hybridization shows how closely related some antelope species are. It is likely that some so-called species are actually variant populations of the same species, and are prevented from hybridization in the wild by behavioural or geographical differences.

  • A mating between a male eland and a female kudu produced a sterile male hybrid that resembled the eland.
  • Blue wildebeest produce fertile hybrids with the smaller black wildebeest. This led to an entire herd of 180 "genetically contaminated" black wildebeest being destroyed in a wildlife conservation park in an attempt to preserve species purity.
  • In the early 1900s, the London Zoological Society hybridized several antelope species, including the water-bucks Kobus ellipsiprymnus and Kobus unctuosus, and the selouss antelope Limnotragus seloussi with Limnotragus gratus.

Listed antelope hybrids include:

  • Bongo Bongo (antelope)/Sitatunga
  • Lesser Kudu/Sitatunga
  • Eland/Greater Kudu
  • Blue Duiker/Maxwell's Duiker
  • Bay Duiker/Red-flanked Duiker
  • Bay duiker/Zebra duiker
  • Black duiker/Kaffir Duiker
  • Cape hartebeest/Blesbok
  • Bontebok/Blesbok
  • Black Wildebeest/Blue Wildebeest
  • Common Waterbuck/Defassa waterbuck
  • Defassa waterbuck/Nile lechwe
  • Defassa waterbuck/Kob
  • Nile Lechwe/Kob
  • Kafue Lechwe/Ellipsen waterbuck
  • Red-fronted Gazelle/Thomson's Gazelle
  • East African Oryx or Beisa oryx/Fringe-eared oryx
  • Grant's Gazelle/Thomson's gazelle
  • Beisa oryx/Gemsbok
  • Arabian Oryx/Scimitar Oryx or Scimitar-horned oryx
  • Thomson's gazelle/Roosevelt's gazelle
  • Slender-horned gazelle/Goitered Gazelle or Persian goitered gazelle
  • Goitered Gazelle or Persian gazelle/Blackbuck
  • Cuvier's Gazelle/Slender-horned gazelle

Cultural aspects

The antelope's horn is prized for its medicinal and magical powers in many places. In the Congo, it is thought to confine spirits. Christian iconography sometimes uses the antelope's two horns as a symbol of the two spiritual weapons that Christians possess: the Old Testament and the New Testament. In European Medieval culture, the antelope represented nobility as evidenced in Chaucer and John Lydgate. The antelope's ability to run swiftly has also led to its association with the wind, such as in the Rig Veda where antelopes are the steeds of the Maruts and the wind god Vaya.

In Fez, Morocco, leather made from the hide of the antelope was used to manufacture Adargas, shields used in battle.

External links

  • San Diego Zoo. Includes pictures.
  • Eland. Includes pictures.
  • African Wildlife Foundation's Hartebeest page. Includes a dropdown menu of other antelope pages.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antelope"