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World's largest herd of Mongolian gazelles sighted
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by Amy Judd | May 12, 2009 at 01:21 pm
171 views | 12 Recommendations | 2 comments
The world's largest herd of Mongolian gazelles has been sighted in Mongolia, and is the largest event like this ever recorded. It was estimated by watching scientists that there were about a quarter of a million of all the gazelles on the earth in this one herd.
"It was stunning," says Kirk Olson of the University of Massachusetts, US. "I don't know if I was surprised or simply blown away by what we came across."
The sighting took place in 2007, when scientists were tacking these creatures, one of the last nomadic ungulates to travel and survive in large numbers, but the findings were finally published today.
They fitted the gazelles with collars to track their movements and one day they saw the herd of abot 250,000.
"Groups of this size are impressive and beautiful to see," describes Olson. Then the following day, at about midday, they drove to a hillside offering a great view of what appeared to be one such herd.
"But it was really one edge of a group that ended up being over 250,000 by one estimate.
"We were simply amazed at the sight. The image I have in my mind of seeing this massive aggregation of gazelles will always be etched into my memory."
It is not unusual for these animals to gather in groups of about 10,000, and one herd was recorded to have 80,000.
But 250,000 has never been documented before.
The gazelles only had a few places to graze that summer and scientists think that is part of the reason why they gathered in this place all together.
However, due to development and increasing human populations, it is unlikely that herds of this size will survive.
"The 250,000 sq km in Eastern Mongolia is simply the remaining natural example of a much larger ecosystem that spanned over Inner Mongolia and Manchuria totalling about 1.5 million sq km," he says.
If these animals are to survive in this manner, they will need help from conservation programs, otherwise if their habitat is lost, they will not survive.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 13:43 on May 12th, 2009
Excellent story.
Thanks.
at 20:22 on May 12th, 2009
The reason for this seems still unknown though. I know that when the African wilder beast gather in masses like that, it is usually a bad sign, leading to a mass suicide off sort, usually due to over population and food shortage.