Lesser kudu Lesser kudu The lesser kudu ("Tragelaphus imberbis") is a forest antelope found in East Africa. It is placed in the genus "Tragelaphus" and family Bovidae. It was first described by the English zoologist Edward Blyth in 1869. The head-and-body length is typically . Males reach about at the shoulder, while females reach . Males typically weigh and females . The females and juveniles have a reddish-brown coat, while the males become yellowish grey or darker after the age of 2 years. Horns are present only on males. The spiral horns are long, and have two to two-and-a-half twists. A pure
Lesser kudu just the lesser kudu by American zoologist Edmund Heller, the type species being "A. strepsiceros". However, the lesser kudu is now placed in "Tragelaphus". In 2005, Sandi Willows-Munro (of the University of KwaZulu-Natal) and colleagues carried out a mitochondrial analysis of the nine "Tragelaphus" species. mtDNA and nDNA data were compared. The results showed that the tribe Tragelaphini is monophyletic with the lesser kudu basal in the phylogeny, followed by the nyala ("T. angasii"). On the basis of mitochondrial data, the lesser kudu separated from its sister clade around 13.7 million years ago. However, the nuclear data show that lesser