'Unicorn' antelope captured in sacred forest (photo)

For the first time in more than ten years, there has been a confirmed sighting of one of the rarest and most enigmatic animals in the world, the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) from the Annamite Mountains of Laos and Vietnam, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said today.

"The Government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (also known as Laos) has announced that in late August villagers in the central province of Bolikhamxay captured a saola and brought it back to their village," IUCN said in a news statement.

"Unfortunately, the animal, an adult male, weakened by the ordeal of several days in captivity, died."

Source

This could very well be the last photo you will ever see of this [almost] extinct animal which was only recently discovered around May 1992. At that time the Ministry of Forestry and World Wide Fund for Nature of the Vu Quang Nature Reserve, Ha tinh province, found three sets of long straight horns of a new bovid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) in hunters' houses!! Follow up visits found 3 sets of skins along with various bone fragments such as skull and jaw dentitions.

The Saola is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d80352282cb6.jpg[/atsimg]

According the the report, the animal was found in the village's sacred forest in the remote Xaychamphon District,why it was captured then transported for many days to the authorities beggers belief!. Ignorance? a chance to earn some money for the find? Who knows.. The report also states that their are no specimens in any zoo anywhere in the world and that their population could be in the dozens, certainly not in their hundreds.

You can read the full report here

What a beautiful animal..so bad it died

you know what makes me mad is it died in captivity. why cant they just take a picture of it and leave it alown. it would not have died. now there is one less. its better they found a male and not a female. you only need one male to repopulate a species

How is it considered a unicorn? I thought that ment only 1 horn?

you'd think for local's of the area they would have the knowledge and decency to let such a rare creature live.

Just goes to show what we are really like... it's rare so capture it and cook it. Rare steak's are the best, but a "rare" rare stake is better.

reply to post by jaynkeel

How is it considered a unicorn? I thought that ment only 1 horn?

here is the explanation given in the article.

"Saola are secretive and so seldom seen (no biologist has ever reported seeing one in the wild) that they have been likened to unicorns, in spite of the fact that they have two horns. It's been speculated that a Chinese myth of a magical unicorn, the qilin, may have been derived from familiarity with saola in prehistoric China, although the species does not occur there today, if it ever did.

besides "unicorn" is bound to attract more readers than "saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) "

~meathead

reply to post by Freelancer


That really sucks. Why didn't they leave it be? Was if for fame?

I have a bad feeling that this is how the Bigfoot in America will finally go extinct. Fame and fortune hunters will start capturing them one by one, until...