Speed Goats
A herd of pronghorn graze along the Beartooth Front.
Pronghorn, American Antelope, Speed Goats - all three are names you hear used for Antlocapra Americana. Despite common misconceptions, pronghorn are not closely related to either antelope or goats. In fact, their closest living relatives are actually giraffes and okapi.
They are the only member of their family and they only exist in North America.
A pronghorn doe with her fawn.
I always begin looking for fawns on June 1st and it is amazing how often I find them on that day but not before. First time mothers usually have one young but then produce twins and triplets from that time on.
The babies are extremely vulnerable to predators for the first week of their life. Their best defense during that time is to stay still, hiding in the sagebrush as the mother feeds and patrols the area for danger.
“Baby Face”. Young pronghorn have delicate features that belie their ability to take care of themselves once they are big enough to run.
Both male and female pronghorn, such as this doe, sport horns.
The horns on males are larger and their faces have a wide black band that runs from their eyes to their nose.
Pronghorn are unique in that their horns are not permanent in the way of other horned animals nor do they drop them and re-grow them each year as do animals with antlers.
Instead, the horns grow a heavy sheath of keratin that drops off each year, leaving the base of the horn intact.
It is rare to find a completely intact shed horn covering like this one due to the fact that they degrade quickly in the elements.
Pronghorn are the fastest animals in the Western Hemisphere and some of the fastest in the world. They are uniquely able to maintain high speeds over long distances and can run at 30 mph for more than 15 miles. There are lots of questions about why an animal needs to be able to run more than 60 miles an hour when it has no predators that even come close to be able to reach those speeds. One theory is that those enemies did exist in long ago times but have since became extinct.
A herd of pronghorn grazes late in the day on Bald Ridge.
To hear more about pronghorn, be sure to listen to my podcast on the subject by clicking the button below, or by downloading the latest episode from Apple Podcasts or Spotify.