The national animal of Uganda is the Uganda kob. This animal features on the Ugandan national coat of arms and is amongst he most important national symbols. They are a subspecies of the kob which itself is a kind of antelope, and they are found in a few countries.
There are a great many species of antelope in Africa as a whole, and yet to even the lightly trained eye many of them are easily distinguishable from one another.
The Ugandan kob is certainly among Uganda’s most recognizable and iconic wildlife, so let’s find out more about why they are the national animal.
What is the national animal of Uganda?
The national animal of Uganda is the Ugandan kob.
This is a species of antelope that is found in a few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, naturally most commonly in Uganda.
They themselves are a subspecies of the broader kob species, which is a migratory species found over large parts of Central Africa.
The Ugandan kob in particular is typically reddish brown which is one of the most obvious ways it is distinguished from other species of kob.
They are similar in appearance to their close relatives the impala, though there are some key differences.
Ugandan kobs are more sturdily built, and only the males of the Ugandan kob have horns.
Their horns are lyre-shaped, divergent at their tips and strongly ridged.
They display a slight degree of sexual dimorphism, with males being just a little bit larger than the males.
Males are around 3 to 3.3 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh around 207 pounds on average.
Females, on the other hand, are usually around 2.7 to 3 feet tall, and weigh only around 139 pounds.
They have a white patch on their throat, muzzle, eye ring and inner ear, as well as white undersides and black forelegs, but other than this they are entirely reddish brown.
They are herbivorous, naturally, and feed mostly on grasses and reeds.
They form loose social groups depending on the availability of food, usually comprising mostly females and young males.
They are highly migratory and one particular group in South Sudan was recorded to have traveled as much as 124 miles during the dry season following food and water.
Females are sexually mature by the time they are two years old, but males take considerably longer to reach full maturity.
Why is the Ugandan kob the national animal of Uganda?
The Ugandan kob is the national animal of Uganda for a variety of reasons.
On the one hand, they are seen as important symbols of many Ugandan values and this is why they feature on the country’s coat of arms.
They are seen as images of freedom, liberation, power, strength, and yet at the same time quiet beauty and grace.
They also symbolize unity in their habit of moving in sometimes large social groups and so they are seen to embody a great many things which are important to the people of Uganda, and given their name they are plainly most numerous in Uganda—though they are also found elsewhere.
On the other hand, they are seen, more literally, as embodiments of Ugandan natural beauty.
They embody the natural landscape of Uganda insofar as they represent the savannahs and open grassland which constitutes so much of Uganda’s natural landscape.
Few other animals could be seen to so ideally embody it in this way.
Though they are currently listed as of least concern by the IUCN Red List, at the same time they are also a common target of poachers.
So, the Ugandan government also hopes to bring attention to the need to protect them by making them the national animal.
What is the lifespan of the Ugandan kob?
It can naturally vary a great deal in the wild, though given that much of the population today resides in protected areas in national parks, they can often live to be quite old.
Sometimes, the Ugandan kob will live to be as old as 17, though the general lifespan might be a bit less than that, around 12-15 years depending on the circumstances.
17 years is about the upper ceiling in terms of age and in the perfect situation in captivity, this is usually how old they will get.
Where do Ugandan kob live?
Though they are called Ugandan kob, they are commonly found in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, including South Sudan, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They occur to the west of the Nile, and the northeast of the DRC, though their range used to extend into northwestern Tanzania.
They are mostly found in wooded or open savanna, not very far from water and they can also be found in grasslands close to bodies of water like rivers and lakes.
Their habit of lying out in the open grassland is what has made it such a common target for poachers as they are visible from such a distance.
The Ugandan kob may not have the charisma of the lion or the impressive might of the elephant, but nonetheless, it’s easy to see why they might become the national animal of Uganda and hold such symbolic significance to the people of Uganda.
They are among the nation’s most visually striking and iconic wildlife and they fit very well into the country’s coat of arms.
All of this goes together to make them a perfectly fitting choice of national animal.