Bongos has a massive body with high-bent back, its shoulder-height reaches 130 cm, the weight 225 kg. The color of the fur is sincerely bay, with older males, it becomes darker. The flanks are coated with 12-14 very prominent, vertical white strips. The underside of the Bongos is black. The long tail carries an Endquaste. The females and young are more brightly colored. Both sexes carry big horns with a spiral-meander.
Spread The Bongo comes in the west today - and middle-African rain-forest-area and island-nicely in the mountain-forests at the Mount Kenya and in the Aberdare-Bergen Kenya before. This island-good (disjunkte) spread declares itself from Africa's youngest geological past. Simultaneous with the ice age in Europe prevailed 10 000-15 000 years ago and older in Africa the Pluvialzeit (rain-ages). The rain-forests were extended in changing moist-periods over whole East-Africa at that time. The spread-area of forest-animals, as the forest-pig and the Bongo, stretched over the entire African forest-area through it. As the climate became drier, East-Africa's landscape changed into a savanna. The forest-animals vanished. Only in the mountain-forests, some of them, among them the Bongo, could outlast until on the present-day day.
Habitat The Bongo lives in dense rain-forest or secondary-forest with as swampy as possible underground. it sometimes appears surprising at the edge of settlements. In the mountain-forests, it climbs as far as into the bamboo-region (3500 m).
Way of life Bongos live in family-associations of no more than 3 animals. Loners occur among the adult bucks. However, also groups are observed up to 20 animals occasionally.
In its precincts, the Bongos keep to solid changes and certain excrement-sales-places. With extended head and at the body aimed horns, Bongos slip fast through dense undergrowth. This antelope is active predominantly at night. Bongos let its bleating voice only rarely heard.
Food Bongos eat leaves, instincts, bark and rotting wood, but apparently no bamboo.
Reproduction Since Bongos can only be observed in freedom as an exception, one is dependent in the zoo at observations at animals if one wants to experience its behavior. As the forest-bucks, so also the Bongos have a distinctive combination-prelude. It begins about each other with the circling the partners. The male comes the female densely after the heels. If the female stops, the buck sniffs at its genital-area and flehmt.
The heat-period of the female lasts 3 days. After 284-286 days of Tragzeit, one single young was born. The pairs apparently hold together in lifelong monogamy.
Endangering Bongos don't occur very in large numbers in its habitat, is not valid yet as endangered, however.
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