Watched the Jim Zumbo show on a hunt in Namabia and they shot a Blue Wildebeest, following the pictures etc Jim said to the PH Hannes Du Plessis "This is the same Wildebeest that crosses the river and is attack by the Crocs" The PH says "Yes this is the very same Wildebeest, but that is in Tanzania". Well I think the migrating Wildebeest is the Whitebearded Wildebeest. It is a shame that people doing these shows are not more careful in their identification of species. JMO Some people may watch the show and believe everything said on them.

I stopped watching Zumbo a year or so ago when he made a Kodak Moment out of giving ten pounds of bush meat to a village family, acting like he was the UN World Food Program. It was so obviously staged it turned my stomach. So nothing that guy airs surprises me, or would if I still watched him.

DOJ

Obviously Hannes doesn't know the difference either.

Mark

I'm not familiar with the "white bearded wildebeast". I have to assume that it is the East African subspecies of the "brindled gnu", or "blue wildebeast" of Southern Africa. The other species of wildebeast is the "black wildebeast", or "white tailed wildebeast" with its forward, downturned horns.

If you accept that there are only two species of wildebeast (the blue with its bovine-type horns; and the black with its forward/downturned horns), then it would be correct to identify the "blue wildebeast" of Southern Africa as the "same" as the species that is found in Tanzania. Of course, simply because of the physical separation, the blue wildebeast of Namibia and those of Tanzania are likely to be identifiably different SUB-species.

There's 5 types of wildebeest. Check the bottom of this page: http://www.shakariconnection.c...species-si-to-z.html

However, the ones in Masailand are all white bearded.

All of the "blues" are Connochaetes taurinus. Here is the listing of the five subspecies:

Subspecies
Five subspecies: Blue wildebeest (C.t. taurinus) in Zambia and to the south and west; Cookson's wildebeest (C.t. cooksoni) in the Luangwa valley of Zambia; White-bearded wildebeest (C.t. mearnsi) in Kenya and Tanzania; Johnston's wildebeest (C. t. johnstoni) and C.t. albojubatus.

Saying that the white-bearded variety of Tanzania is not the same species as the blues of Namibia would be like saying that the Whitetail Deer of Maine is not the same species as those of Alberta. They may be distinct subspecies, but they are the same species (unlike a whitetail and a mule deer, or a black and a blue wildebeest).

Stonecreek, with all due respect comparing the Whitetail Deer to The Blue Wildebeest is just not cricket. Even your post shows there are different sub-species and when one places one beside the other anyone but a blind man could see they are different. ie Whitebearded is just that not a black beard, the Nyassa has a destinct white chevron on the face etc etc..

Different subspecies though, hence the third name. The problem to some extent is that the lumpers and groupers have different arguments, which is largely why RW & SCI classifications differ...... but going back to the original post, the white bearded that occurs in Masailand and takes part in the migration, has a distinct white beard, whereas the blue wildebeest that occurs in RSA and surrounding areas has no white beard and looks very different.

Then of course, we have the problem of areas that contain more than one type and interbreed...... quite what one should call them, I don't know......... perhaps the best term might be bloody nuisance!

Depends if one is a lumper or a splitter.

Lumper: same and he's right.

Splitter: different and he's wrong.

Personally I'm a splitter.

Various "Breeds" or you might call them "Subspecies" of dogs look very different however they can and do interbreed producing fertile offspring. Horses and donkeys also look rather different however the cross breed offspring are not, as a rule,fertile hence they are considered different species. Don't know much about the details of Wildebeest, have shot a couple (Bow) in SA that were called Blue, however the above rules would apply with regard to species / sub species.

Since this is one of those somewhat pointless arguments I'm reluctant to jump in... but I'm bored.

Curiously American deer came to my mind as well when the discussion started. Yes, Maine and Texas whitetails are the same SPECIE but so are Alberta and Florida Key's whitetails! Even a blind man could tell they aren't the same though. As for the ability to cross-breed, how about those ocasional whitetail/mule deer crosses??? On the American board there was recently the question of Caribou and Reindeer, again they are "the same" but with obvious differences...

The point though is that the animals hunted in Namibia (& S.A.) absolutely ARE NOT the ones seen on National Geographic and elsewhere migrating even if they were the same sub-specie... which they are not.

Zumbo appears as a self rightious goober however (IMO) and I have no doubt he was playing to the uninitiated viewer in an effort to make something appear more exciting, which I hope we can agree was totally unnecessary. As for the PH's response, he was getting paid. Making the host look bad on TV isn't a good way to get repeat business!

Whitetail and Mule deer do occasionally crossbreed however the offspring are generally not fertile and from at least one bit of research are not particularly healthy. Great Danes and miniature poodles are at least as different in appearence as whitetail deer from any two locations (Maine and Texas in the above note) however as with the two dog breeds they can interbreed and produce offspring. Granted the two dog breeds may need some help due to size differences but the egg and sperm will get along just fine.

Stonecreek is absolutely correct. It is widely recognized that there are two wildebeest/gnu species and five subspecies.

There are more than 30 subspecies of white-tailed deer in North America. Although the differences are not as pronounced as in wildebeest, an experienced hunter should have no trouble identifying whitetail bucks from Alberta, Florida, Texas, Kansas, Arizona, or southern Mexico, for example.

As for hybrids, when I still edited the SCI record books, someone submitted a photograph with his entry for a wildebeest he'd taken with a well-known outfitter in South Africa. Its head and horns looked like any other blue wildebeest, but the damned thing had a bushy white tail. The entry was rejected.

Incidentally, "specie" should be used only when talking about currency. It is not the singular form of "species."

Bill Quimby