Addax

Appearance

The Addax is greyish-brown in winter and almost completely white or sandy blonde in summer. It has white hindquarters and legs, and long, brown hair on the head, neck, and shoulders. Their heads are marked with brown or black patches that form an X over their noses. The Addax has a brown hair tuft extending from the base of its horns to between its eyes.

Its head-to-body length is 120 to 130 cm (47 to 51 in), and its tail is 25 to 35 cm (9.8 to 13.8 in) long.

Published measurements include mass about 112.5.

The only member of the genus Addax, it was first described scientifically by Henri de Blainville in 1816.

Range and habitat

The Addax inhabits arid regions, semideserts, and sandy and stony deserts. It also inhabits deserts with tussock grasses (Stipagrostis species) and succulent thorn scrub Cornulaca. Reports of sightings have been made from the eastern Air Mountains in Niger and Bodélé in Chad.

Although enormous reserves, such as the Hoggar Mountains and Tasilli in Algeria, the Ténéré in Niger, the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve in Chad, and the newly established Wadi Howar National Park in Sudan, cover areas where the Addax previously occurred, some do not keep Addax now because they lack the resources. Reintroductions in the wild are ongoing in Jebil National Park (Tunisia) and Grand Erg Oriental (the Sahara), and another is planned for Morocco.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Breeding

In captivity, males show signs of territoriality and mate guarding, while captive females establish dominance hierarchies, with the oldest females holding highest rank. Breeding occurs throughout the year, but it peaks during winter and early spring.

In the northern Sahara, breeding peaks at the end of winter and the beginning of spring. In the southern Sahara, breeding peaks from September to October and from January to mid-April. Breeding season is at its peak during winter and early spring.

In crisis

The Addax is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. It is threatened by unregulated hunting and is locally extinct in Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan. Declines in the population of the Addax have been ongoing since the mid-1800s.

Addax are easy to hunt due to their slow movements. Other threats include chronic droughts in the deserts, habitat destruction due to more human settlements, and agriculture.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Addax is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Addax, Wikidata item Q190154. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.