THE GHOSTS: Qatar's extinct fauna
The Extinct Mammals of Qatar
In many ways, wildlife in Qatar has benefited from the transformation of the country since the advent of oil wealth, with city and rural vegetation providing a habitat for birds, small mammals and reptiles, and plentiful surface water available for migrating birds. But some indigenous creatures didn't make it into the 21st century.
The Golden Jackal
An Early Camping Trip
Seventy years ago an Englishman camped for a few nights on a lonely beach not far from the little fishing village of Al Ghariya on the north-east coast of Qatar. His name was Charles Belgrave, the adviser to the ruler of Bahrain, and he was accompanying a Bahraini delegation to Qatar. The rest of the party stayed on board the launches which had brought them from Bahrain and came ashore only for meetings, but Belgrave preferred to camp.
Later he recorded his impressions: 'There was white sand which extended into
the water, and low sand hills with tufts of scrub growing among them.
Camels grazed among the sand dunes, and I saw hares, gazelle and a desert
fox; once at night I heard a jackal.'
With this casual reference, Belgrave notes the presence of two animals which were to become extinct in Qatar within the next two decades: the Rheem or Sand gazelle and the Golden jackal [Canis aureus].
Rheem Gazelle and Golden Jackals
Rheem gazelle disappeared from the wild in Qatar in the mid-1950s, although a few managed to survive in the UAE, along with two other gazelle species. Recently they have been reintroduced into reserves, with some success, but no one knows exactly when the last of the Golden jackals disappeared. The last recorded sightings in the region of this handsome animal were between 1977-1983 in the Hofuf region of eastern Arabia, not very far from the border of the Qatar peninsula. Never a common animal in Arabia, jackals now survive in a range of areas, from south-eastern Europe and Russia through Asia Minor to Iran and the Far East and also in Africa.
Resembling a small wolf in appearance, The Golden jackal derives its name from its tawny brown coat speckled with black. A nocturnal animal, its habit of hanging around human settlements and scavenging probably accounts for its demise: jackals were poisoned or shot. Unlike desert foxes, which thrive in Qatar and in general steer clear of human habitation [although one in Abu Dhabi made its den in a supermarket car park!] the jackal was doomed once the human population expanded after the coming of the oil wealth.
The Camel Bird
 Sadder
still is the story of the 'Camel
bird' -- the Arabian ostrich [ Struthio camelus syriacus] which
once roamed the plains of Qatar. It is now extinct not only in Qatar
but everywhere else as well, although rumours persist that there may
somewhere, somehow be a few survivors. Small fragments of ostrich shell
turn up on archaeological sites within Qatar. Not only would the contents
of the eggs have been a welcome addition to a sparse diet but the shells
formed durable containers for water.
Ostriches were once common in Qatar. An early Arab poet says, when describing thoroughbred camels, ' They walk like Qatari ostriches, and they belong to a breed of great endurance.' There are ostriches among prehistoric rock carvings in Saudi Arabia, and the eggs have been found as grave goods in ancient burial mounds in Bahrain. Birds were a favourite motif on early Islamic pottery, and ostriches figure among them.
The Arabian ostrich was smaller than the giant African ostriches recently introduced onto the Ras Abrouq peninsula on the west coast of Qatar, which are the largest of the four sub-species of ostrich worldwide. In size and appearance it probably resembled the N. African red-necked ostrich.
Perfectly adapted to their harsh desert environment, Arabian ostriches were omnivorous, eating anything they could find including plants, insects, reptiles and small mammals. Almost certainly they had to manage without free water during the hottest months of the year. They bred during the winter, laying a clutch of between 12 and 20 eggs. Contrary to popular legends, ostriches are good parents, both parents helping to incubate the eggs.
Because 19th century European travellers in Arabia were so fascinated by ostriches, more is known about the about the 19th and early 20th century distribution of the species than about any other Arabian bird. There were two distinct populations, one in the south-east and the other in the north-west. The bird was first described in detail in 1919 by Lord Rothschild, but within two decades was declared to be extinct. The last one was killed in 1945 in the Hasa province of eastern Arabia, but in 1966 a dying specimen was said to have been washed down by a flood from the hills above Petra in Jordan. Since then no more have been seen.
When did ostriches become extinct in Qatar? No one knows for certain, but once firearms and cars became available in the 1930s, their fate was sealed. About 15 years ago an elderly citizen told me that his grandfather remembered seeing an ostrich near Salwa when he was a boy. We calculated that this would have been around the beginning of the last century.
The Onager
Even less is known about the distribution of the onager - a wild ass - in Qatar, but that they were certainly here in the past is testified by the presence of their remains on archaeological sites. Onager are cream-coloured animals with darker brown backs and short bristly manes like zebras, their colours blending into their desert environment.
Onager
Larger than the domestic donkey, which is descended from an African,
not an Asian ancestry, onager and their habits and appearance featured
in Arabic writings since very early times. Al Shammakh al-Dhubyani,
a poet who was born before the revelation of Islam and died after its
event, described the journeys of onager in search of pasture and water,
the sound of their thundering hooves when in flight, and the hunters
who stalked them. All kinds of legends grew up around these animals
- they were said to live longer than any other animal, being credited
with life spans of hundreds of years!
From earliest times the onager was regarded as a game rather than a domestic animal - they are indeed virtually untameable, like their relative the zebra. Their meat was therefore halal - lawful to be eaten, unlike that of horses and donkeys which is haram. Their amazing speed when fleeing from predators is mentioned in the Quran, and there are several references to them in the Bible. No hunter could hope to keep up with them, but their habit of bunching together when threatened made them easier to shoot when trapped in a narrow passage between rocks .
By 1850 the onager is recorded as becoming scarce in Syria and Palestine, although an English traveller recalled seeing herds in the Armenian mountains. Their extinction was hastened by World War I, when the whole area was infiltrated by heavily-armed troops, and railways and roads began to open up the desert. The last wild Syrian onager was shot in 1927, and by 1930 they were probably extinct in that country. Unlike the Arabian ostrich, the onager has not disappeared forever, but in Iran it is listed on the IUCN 'critically endangered' Red List. Two protected breeding herds have recently been introduced into the wild in Israel.
Frances Gillespie has contributed to several publications related to Qatar, is the author of Discovering Qatar and also writes regular feature articles for a national newspaper on the cultural heritage and natural history of the country. She is a former chairperson of the Qatar Natural History Group, and is still active on the committee.
Read a review of Discovering Qatar or purchase it online
Images:
Golden Jackal by Dr Tarak N Khan
Onagers by Jeff Kubina
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