Tibetan Antelope
Conservation status
Endangered
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Artiodactyla Family: Bovidae Subfamily: Antilopinae Genus: Pantholops Hodgson, 1834 Species: P. hodgsonii
Binomial name
Pantholops hodgsonii (Abel, 1826)

The Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) is a medium-sized bovid which is about 1.2 metres (4 feet) in height. It is native to the Tibetan plateau including China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai province, and Xinjiang province; India near Ladakh and formerly western Nepal. The Tibetan antelope is also known commonly by its Tibetan name chiru. The coat is grey to reddish-brown, with a white underside. The males have long, curved-back horns which measure about 50 cm (20 inches) in length. The conservation status of a species is an indicator of the likelihood of that species continuing to survive either in the present day or the future. ... Image File history File links Status_iucn3. ... The critically endangered Siberian Tiger, a rare subspecies of tiger. ... Scientific classification or biological classification is a method by which biologists group and categorize species of organisms. ... Digimon, the only known animals. ... Template:Tax more Chordates (phylum Chordata) are a group of animals that includes the vertebrates, together with several closely related invertebrates. ... Subclasses Allotheria* Order Multituberculata (extinct) Order Volaticotheria (extinct) Order Palaeoryctoides (extinct) Order Triconodonta (extinct) Prototheria Order Monotremata Theria Infraclass Marsupialia Infraclass Eutheria The mammals are the class of vertebrate animals characterized by the production of milk in females for the nourishment of young, from mammary glands present on most species... Families Suidae Hippopotamidae Tayassuidae Camelidae Tragulidae Moschidae Cervidae Giraffidae Antilocapridae Bovidae The even-toed ungulates form the mammal order Artiodactyla. ... Subfamilies Bovinae Cephalophinae Hippotraginae Antilopinae Caprinae A bovid is any of almost 140 species of cloven-hoofed mammals belonging to the family Bovidae. ... Genera See text Antilopinae is a subfamily of Bovidae. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... In biology, binomial nomenclature is the formal method of naming species. ... Subfamilies Bovinae Cephalophinae Hippotraginae Antilopinae Caprinae A bovid is any of almost 140 species of cloven-hoofed mammals belonging to the family Bovidae. ... Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province and Sichuan Province of China lie on the Tibetan Plateau. ... The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) (Tibetan: བོད་རང་སྐྱོང་ལྗོངས་; Wylie: Bod-rang-skyong-ljongs; Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), is a province-level autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ... Qinghai (Chinese: 青海; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ching-hai; Postal System Pinyin: Tsinghai; Tibetan: མཚོ་སྔོན་ mtsho-sngon; Mongolian: Köke Naγur; Manchu: Huhu Noor) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, named after the enormous Qinghai Lake. ... For the county in Shanxi province, see Xinjiang County. ... Ladakh (Tibetan script: ལ་དྭགས་, Ladakhi IPA: , Hindi: लद्दाख़, Hindi IPA: , Urdu: لدّاخ; land of high passes) is a region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in Northern India sandwiched between the Karakoram mountain range to the north and the Himalayas to the south. ...

Despite its classification in the Antilopinae subfamily, recent morphological and molecular evidence suggests that the Chiru is more closely allied to goats and the subfamily Caprinae (Gentry 1992, Gatesy et al. 1992, Ginsberg et al. 1999). Genera See text Antilopinae is a subfamily of Bovidae. ... Scientific classification or biological classification is a method by which biologists group and categorize species of organisms. ... Species See Species and subspecies The goat is a mammal in the genus Capra, which consists of nine species: the Ibex, the West Caucasian Tur, the East Caucasian Tur, the Markhor, and the Wild Goat. ... Genera Capricornis Nemorhaedus Rupicapra Oreamnos Budorcas Ovibos Hemitragus Ammotragus Pseudois Capra Ovis Pantholops A goat antelope is any of the species of mostly medium-sized herbivores that make up the subfamily Caprinae or the single species in subfamily Panthalopinae. ...

Tibetan antelope are gregarious, sometimes congregating in herds hundreds strong. The females migrate up to 300 km yearly to calving grounds in the summer where they usually give birth to a single calf, and rejoin the males at the wintering grounds in late autumn (Schaller 1998). Chirus live on the high mountain steppes and semi-desert areas of the Tibetan plateau such as Kekexili, where they feed on various forb and grass species. The average life span is about eight years. This article is about the region Kekexili (Hoh Xil). ... A forb is a non-woody flowering plant that is not a grass. ... Natural vegetaton dominated by grasses Grass is a common word that generally describes a monocotyledonous green plant in the family Poaceae. ...

Tibetan antelope are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service due to commercial poaching for their underwool, competition with local domesticated herds, and the development of their rangeland for gold mining. The Chiru's wool, known as shahtoosh, is warm, soft and fine. The wool can only be obtained by killing the animal; Its numbers have dropped accordingly from nearly a million (estimated) at the turn of the 20th century to less than 75,000 today. The numbers continue to drop yearly. The struggle to stop illegal antelope hunting was portrayed in the 2004 film, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol. The World Conservation Union or International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is an international organization dedicated to natural resource conservation. ... The USFWS logo The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a unit of the United States Department of the Interior that is dedicated to managing and preserving wildlife. ... Shahtoosh (also written Shatush) - a Persian word meaning Pleasure of Kings - was the name given to a specific kind of shawl, which was woven with the down hair of the Chiru or Tibetan Antelope, by the weavers of Kashmir. ...

In July 2006 the Chinese government inaugurated a new railway that bisects the chiru’s feeding grounds on its way to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. In an effort to avoid harm to the animal, thirty-three special animal migration passages have been built beneath the railway. However, the railway will bring many more people, including potential poachers, closer to the chiru’s breeding grounds and habitat. The Chinese government's historically poor management of resources also endanger areas protected for the Tibetan antelope. Early elections in November are announced in the Netherlands. ... Lhasa (Tibetan: ལྷ་ས་; Wylie: lha sa; Lhasa dialect IPA: [; Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), sometimes spelled Llasa, is the traditional capital of Tibet and the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Tibet (older spelling Thibet; Tibetan: བོད་; Wylie: Bod; Lhasa dialect IPA: [; Simplified and Traditional Chinese: 西藏, Hanyu Pinyin: XÄ«zàng; also referred to as 藏区 (Simplified Chinese), 藏區 (Traditional Chinese), ZàngqÅ« (Hanyu Pinyin), having the two names different connotations; see Name section below) is a plateau region in Central Asia and the...

2008 Summer Olympics mascot

The Tibetan antelope is one of the five official mascots for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Its mascot name is "Yingying." The Friendlies (Chinese: ; pinyin: Fúwá; literally Good-fortune Children) are the mascots of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. ... The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, will be held in Beijing, China from August 8, 2008 through August 24, 2008, with the opening ceremony to take place at 08:08pm and 08 seconds. ...   (Chinese:  ; Pinyin: BÄ›ijÄ«ng; IPA: ), a metropolis in northern China, is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ...

References

• Gatesy, J., D. Yelon, R. DeSalle, and E. Vrba. (1992). Phylogeny of the Bovidae (Artiodactyla, Mammalia), based on mitochondrial ribosomal DNA sequence. Mol. Biol. Evol. 9: 433–446.
• Gentry, A. (1992). The subfamilies and tribes of the family Bovidae. Mammal Review 22:1–32
• Ginsberg, J. R., G. B. Schaller, and J. Lowe. (1999). Petition to list the Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) as an endangered species pursuant to the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973. Wildlife Conservation Society and Tibetan Plateau Project.
• Mallon (2003). Pantholops hodgsonii. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. [Database entry includes justification for why this species is endangered.]

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (also known as the IUCN Red List and Red Data List), created in 1963, is the worlds most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species and can be found here. ... The World Conservation Union or International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is an international organization dedicated to natural resource conservation. ...

External links

• Slaughtered in the Name of Fashion: UK newspaper article on Shahtoosh
• ARKive - images and movies of the Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii)
• Animal Diversity Web
• Wildlife Trust of India |Save The Chiru
• WWF
• United States Federal Register. (Oct. 6, 2003)
• Antelope leap to safety through rail underpass London Times, 10-Jul-2006