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Yellow-backed duiker
"The yellow-backed duiker is the largest of all 22 diver species out there. Did you know that there are European zoos currently have fewer than 10 yellow-backed duikers?"
Food
Fruit, seeds and leaves
Life span
10 - 15 years
Weight
45 - 80 kg
Number of young
1 young
Gestation period
7 months
Habitat
Dense forest areas in western and central Africa
IUCN status
Sensitive
EEP
Yes
About the Yellow-backed duiker
The yellow-backed duiker is a shy antelope from dense African forests. When in danger, it dives at lightning speed among bushes, its yellow back hairs standing up to impress. With scent trails under their eyes, divers communicate with conspecifics. They eat mostly fallen fruit, but also leaves, roots and sometimes even meat. By scattering seeds, they help the forest grow. In the wild, their numbers are declining due to hunting and deforestation. In zoos, such as ZooParc, they are now given a safe place to ensure their survival.
Appropriate name
Duikers are so named because they dive very quickly when in danger. They usually live in dense forests. When they see or hear a predator, they make a whistling sound. They then remain completely still for a moment. The yellow hairs on their backs stand up, making them appear larger. A few moments later, they dive among the bushes and are no longer visible.
Talking by smell
Yellow-backed duikers have scent glands under their eyes. From these comes a liquid that smells strongly. With this scent, the duikers "talk" to each other. They leave their scent on the trees and bushes they walk past. If other duikers smell that, they know that that area is already inhabited. Duikers also use their scent to let each other know when they want to mate.
Fruit snack
Yellowback duikers eat a lot of fruit. They eat fruit that falls from the trees or what other animals, such as monkeys, drop. They often eat fruits that are too hard or too big for other animals. A yellow-backed duiker can swallow a fruit nearly 5 inches long in one sitting. Besides fruit, a yellow-backed duiker also eats leaves and roots. Sometimes they even eat meat from other animals, such as lizards or birds.
Foresters
Because yellow-backed duiker eat a lot of fruit, they are important to the forest. Many fruits have hard seeds and pits. These seeds the yellow-backed duikers swallow whole. Sometimes they spit them back out when they are ruminating and sometimes they defecate them. As a result, the seeds and pits end up in a different place in the forest. Thus, new fruit trees grow in different places.
Fewer and fewer
Yellow-backed duikers live in dense forests. As a result, it is not easy to survey them. Therefore, it is not known exactly how many yellowbacked duikers still live in the wild. There are probably about 150,000 left in the wild. What is known is that these animals are hunted a lot and their habitat is getting smaller. In most areas where yellow-backed duikers live, numbers are declining rapidly.
More and more
There are very few yellow-backed duikers in zoos. ZooParc is now the sixth zoo in Europe to keep this species. The intention is to keep more and more of them. Because yellow-backed duikers do not fare so well in the wild, it is important to give them a safe place in zoos. To this end, zoos are working together. Hopefully then more and more young will be born and the number of yellow-backed duikers in zoos will grow.