Feeling Horny

My maternal grandparents' house was an amazing place. As soon as you walked through their front door you were in a hall covered in brassware. There was a sideboard with a full set of willow pattern china, dark varnished oak cabinets, a large gong (!) and some armchairs. It served as a waiting room when my GP grandfather saw patients in his study. Above the sideboards and cabinets, on the walls, hung a load of stuffed animal heads. Honestly I can't remember whether it was my grandmother's father or my grandfather's father who acquired them. Both worked in parts of Africa, as a civil engineer and a veterinarian respectively. There were antelopes, gazelles, no doubt all manner of "boks", and a couple of buffalo horns.

My grandmother had a little black book of all the things they had, and which of their children or grandchildren was to have which items once they died. Grannie left me all their maps of Shropshire, the county they had made home, and in which I was born. She also offered me the pick of the animal heads. Most of the full heads were in need of a lot of work (missing eyes, ripped skin etc), and I couldn't have afforded to do this. So I chose the five mounted sets of horns.

Yesterday I finally got round to hanging them up in my lounge.


And you can see some of the maps too:


So what have I got? I know the two above the doors are African buffalo, Syncerus caffer:

  
I think this one is a Grant's gazelle, Nanger granti, as the horns are enormous:


But it's these two bothering me:

  
I'm not too great on mammal identification. With the help of Ultimate Ungulate I think I've narrowed them down to perhaps impala (Aepyceros melampus) or gerenuk (Litocranius walleri). You should be able to click through to larger images of them. Maybe one of my loyal readers is more clued-up on their bovids than I am and can help identify them from my crappy photographs...