TINY and BEAUTIFUL - Blue Duicker

The little blue duiker  weighs a mere 4kg making it the smallest antelope in the area. It can be found in a va­ri­ety of forested areas, in­clud­ing rain forests, river­ine forests, dense thick­ets, and mon­tane forests. They are often found near human dwellings, and may use plan­ta­tions as cor­ri­dors in their habi­tat. Piles of dead trees or wood are some­times used as rest­ing sites. How­ever, the ma­jor­ity of their time is spent rest­ing in the open or at the base of a tree; this al­lows them to keep a clear line of vision.

It has a short bushy tail that is black with a white un­der­side almost constantly wagging. Their coat color varies de­pend­ing on their range, but is typ­i­cally brown, often with a blue tint. Males have a pair of grooved horns that are about 5 cm in height. Horns may also be pre­sent in fe­males, al­though not as fre­quently. Their horns tend to be hidden in the head crest. They can be dis­tin­guished by sev­eral key fea­tures, most no­tably the smaller skull and nar­rower nasal pas­sage.Fe­male blue duik­ers be­come sex­u­ally ma­ture at 9 to 12 months and males be­come sex­u­ally ma­ture at 12 to 18 months. At which point, they find a mate and re­main paired for life. Al­though blue duik­ers are con­sid­ered monog­a­mous, males oc­ca­sion­ally mate out­side of their pair.

They normally can reproduce any time through out the year with a gestation period that lasts from 196 - 126 days and produces only one calf. After the fe­male calves, the male leaves the ter­ri­tory for ap­prox­i­mately one month, dur­ing which time other males may enter the ter­ri­tory. New­born calves weigh about 10% of the mother's body weight. After calv­ing, the fe­male con­ceals her off­spring, and for the first sev­eral weeks after birth, the ma­jor­ity of con­tact be­tween the calf and fe­male takes place dur­ing nurs­ing. Even­tu­ally, when the calf is more ma­ture, it spends more time with its mother. The calf is weaned be­tween 2.5 and 3 months of age, and even­tu­ally leaves the ter­ri­tory on its own ac­cord.

Blue duik­ers use au­di­tory, vi­sual, ol­fac­tory, and tac­tile senses for com­mu­ni­ca­tion. They have sev­eral meth­ods of dis­play­ing alarm to a mate or off­spring, in­clud­ing vo­cal­iz­ing and flick­ing their tail. Au­di­tory sig­nals in­clude snort­ing, whistling, hit­ting an ob­ject with their horns, and stamp­ing their feet. Each of these dis­plays con­veys dif­fer­ent mes­sages and may com­mu­ni­cate alarm or sex­ual ex­cite­ment. Their pri­mary vi­sual dis­play is tail flick­ing; flick­ing their black tail re­veals a white un­der­side, which is be­lieved to com­mu­ni­cate im­mi­nent dan­ger. Blue duik­ers have sev­eral scent glands, the most no­table of which are the pre­or­bital glands. Pre­or­bital glands are thought to be im­por­tant in com­mu­ni­cat­ing so­cial ac­cep­tance and ter­ri­tory own­er­ship. Pair mem­bers may scent mark each other, their off­spring, or trees in their home range. In­di­vid­u­als often lick one an­other, a be­hav­ior that is thought to in­di­cate so­cial ac­cep­tance. Lick­ing is es­pe­cially ev­i­dent when a male is court­ing a fe­male.

Blue duikers are most active at dawn and dusk and feed mainly on fruit, as well as leaves, flowers, fungi, seeds and sometimes insects or even small animals . Like other duikers, they may follow feeding monkeys and birds through the forest, picking up the fruits that are dropped.

They get their name from the bluish sheen on their backs. They can be found in the Arabuko Sosoke forest and the Mt.Elgon area. But they are hard to see.

 

 

 

Blue duikers can be found in a variety of forested areas, including rain forests, riverine forests, dense thickets, and montane forests. They are often found near human dwellings, and may use plantations as corridors in their habitat.