Mammals
Dik-dik
Madoqua kirkii · also called dik-dik, kirk's dik-dik
The dik-dik is one of the smallest antelopes in the world, a delicate, knee-high browser of the African thornbush with enormous dark eyes and a long, twitching snout. It never needs to drink, it whistles its own name when alarmed, and it keeps the same mate for life.
Overview
Dik-diks live in dry thornbush and scrub across the Horn of Africa and East Africa, with a separate population in Namibia and Angola. They stand only 30–40 cm at the shoulder and weigh 3–6 kg, grey-brown above and white below, with a crest of hair on the forehead and slender, wire-thin legs. They eat leaves, buds, flowers, and fruit, chosen carefully, and get enough moisture from their food that they rarely drink.
The cooling snout
The dik-dik’s elongated, mobile snout is full of blood vessels. By panting rapidly through it, the animal cools its blood by evaporation while losing far less water than open-mouthed panting would — an adaptation to living in hot, dry country without a water source.
A life in pairs
A male and female hold a shared territory for years, usually until one dies. They forage a little apart but patrol the boundaries together, marking twigs with a sticky black secretion from glands beside the eyes and maintaining communal dung heaps as scent signposts. A single fawn is born after about six months and lies hidden for two to three weeks before following its mother.
Name and defence
Startled, a dik-dik bolts in sharp zigzags at up to 40 km/h, giving a whistling “dik-dik” call through its nose — the source of its name, and a signal to the predator that it has been seen.
Status
The dik-dik is Least Concern, common and widespread in suitable habitat, though hunted locally for meat and skins.
Dik-dik: common questions
Why does the dik-dik have such a long nose?
The snout is a cooling device. It is longer and more mobile than in most small antelopes and is richly supplied with blood vessels. When the animal gets hot, it pants rapidly and shallowly through the nose, and evaporation from the large moist surface inside the snout draws heat out of the blood passing through it. This lets the dik-dik shed heat without the heavy water loss that comes from panting with an open mouth or from sweating, which matters a great deal for an animal that lives in hot, arid bush and does not drink. The flexible snout is also used to sniff and manipulate the leaves and buds it feeds on.
Do dik-diks really mate for life?
Yes, more strictly than most antelopes. A male and female form a lasting pair, hold a shared territory of usually five to twenty hectares, and typically stay together until one of them dies. Genetic studies show relatively little cheating compared with many supposedly monogamous mammals. The pair does not spend all its time together, though. The two often forage and rest tens of metres apart, coming together to patrol boundaries, refresh scent marks, and deal with intruders. Males invest heavily in guarding their single partner rather than trying to gather a harem, partly because females are spread thinly across the landscape and hard to monopolise in groups.
How does a dik-dik avoid being eaten?
Almost everything hunts it, including leopards, caracals, servals, jackals, eagles, monitor lizards, and pythons, so its life is built around vigilance and escape. It has very large eyes for a wide field of view, freezes and relies on its cryptic coat when a threat is distant, and when flushed it sprints away in sharp, unpredictable zigzags at up to about 40 km/h while giving its whistling alarm call. It sticks to areas with enough cover to hide in but open enough to see approaching danger, and it knows its small territory intimately, which helps it choose escape routes.
What is the difference between a dik-dik and other small antelopes?
Dik-diks are among the very smallest antelopes, standing only about knee-high to a person, and are distinguished by the elongated cooling snout, the tuft of erectile hair on the forehead that partly hides the male's short horns, and the prominent dark scent gland below each eye. They are strict browsers that do not need to drink, they live in permanent monogamous pairs on small territories rather than in herds, and they are named for their call. Similar-sized African animals such as the klipspringer, oribi, and steenbok differ in habitat, social system, and details of build and coloration.