Pronghorn

Where does the pronghorn live?

Home: Open prairies and sagebrush plains of western North America.

In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: about 130 cm long, 85 to 100 cm at the shoulder. It weighs about 45 kilograms. On the menu: plants.

The story behind it

A pronghorn can sprint at about 88 km/h, and unlike a cheetah it keeps going: a wide windpipe, a big heart and large lungs feed its muscles with oxygen kilometre after kilometre. Scientists think it became this fast because of a cheetah-like cat that hunted the American plains in the ice age and died out long ago. Its eyes are set far apart and catch movement far away, and the white hairs on its rump stand up like a flag to warn the herd. Pronghorn are not antelopes: they are the last members of an old American family, and their branched horns have an outer sheath that is shed and grown again every year. In winter some herds walk more than two hundred kilometres to better feeding grounds, and fences are their biggest problem, because a pronghorn would rather crawl underneath than jump over.

Find it on the globe

Pronghorn is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.