Goitered (Arabian Sand, Persian) Gazelle

Habitat

The goitered gazelle inhabits sands and gravel plains and limestone plateau.

Large herds were also present in the Near East. Some 6,000 years ago, they were captured and killed with the help of desert kites. Rock art found in Jordan suggests ritual slaughter.

Behavior

It runs at high speed, without the leaping, bounding gait seen in other gazelle species. Throughout much of their range, goitered gazelles migrate seasonally. Herds cover 10–30 km per day in the winter, with these distances being reduced to about 1–3 km in summer.

Their mating behavior is polygynous and usually occurs in the early winter.

Subspecies

Several subspecies have been described. Groves & Leslie (2011) distinguish four forms, which they treat as separate monotypic species. Wacher et al. established that G. s. marica is a separate species, Gazella marica.

• Persian gazelle (Gazella (subgutturosa) subgutturosa) - southeastern Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Syria, northern and eastern Iraq, Iran, southern Afghanistan, western Pakistan
• Turkmen gazelle (Gazella (subgutturosa) gracilicornis) - Kazakhstan (Buzachi) in the east to about Lake Balkash, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan
• Yarkand gazelle (Gazella (subgutturosa) yarkandensis) - northern and northwestern China (Xinjiang, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Gansu, Nei Monggol), Mongolia; includes subspecies hilleriana

It is listed as an endangered species in Pakistan.

Former subspecies

• The Arabian sand gazelle (Gazella marica) occurs in Saudi Arabia, southern Syria, southwestern Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Oman, offshore Persian Gulf islands.

Until recently, goitered gazelles were considered to represent a single, albeit polymorphic, species. However, recent genetic studies show one of the subspecies, G. s. marica, is paraphyletic in respect to the other populations of goitered gazelles, although gene introgression is observed in the contact zone between the two species.