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Nothing in the modern environment can account for the physical abilities of the Pronghorn.
In a sense, they're an animal with an anatomy adapted for another place, or more accurately, another time. 00:52.000 [slow ambient music]
Across North America's open spaces roams an animal unlike any other in its ecosystem.
While most of the hoofed mammals on the continent are, to some extent, closely related, the pronghorn has its closest relatives in Africa.
The pronghorn further distinguishes itself from North America's other grazers by an unequaled ability to run. 01:28.000 [slow ambient music]
The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal on the continent, and can reach speeds of 55 miles per hour.
Its anatomy indicates that this isn't some kind of byproduct; a pronghorn's body is specialized for running.
Each pronghorn possesses hooves with padding, and a large trachea for breathing, on top of already being smaller in size than a deer.
In further support of the pronghorn's apparent specialization is the fact that, for the most part, it's unable to jump any significant height, an ability
that other hoofed animals in North America possess.
But what makes this specialization particularly interesting is that its almost completely unnecessary.
No predators are able to equal a pronghorn's speed. The only time pronghorn are particularly subject to predation is when they're juveniles,
during which time they may fall prey to fast predators like coyotes and bobcats, which may discover young pronghorn despite their mother hiding them.
An adult pronghorn has little to fear as long as they're not taken by surprise.
Because of this, the pronghorn's out-of-place anatomy cannot be explained within the context of its modern ecosystem.
Though the pronghorn may seem like it evolved in some distant land, perhaps even another continent, in reality, its ancestors likely evolved
in the same place it now lives, as pronghorn fossils have been found dating some twenty million years old.
Some have suggested that while the pronghorn has remained, the ecosystem itself has undergone a change.
From a geological standpoint, it wasn't long ago that the pronghorn had relatives in North America.
But many of its relatives didn't share the pronghorn's unique speed. On the contrary, the pronghorn's speed was rivaled instead by a predator.
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Similar in form to the mountain lions of today, the now-extinct American cheetah once existed alongside the pronghorn.
Unlike mountain lions, these large-bodied cats are thought to have possessed enough speed to hunt the otherwise uncatchable pronghorn.
The American cheetah was likely an ambush predator and the pronghorn its primary prey.
But around ten thousand years ago, the habitat that once supported both predator and prey was no longer the same environment in which the two
species evolved. As conditions became hotter and drier, the landscape changed, and the American cheetah, like many other North American animals
during this time period, went extinct.
The pronghorn, surviving in the continent's dry plains, is now an animal without its primary predator, and an animal that represents a time and an ecosystem
no longer in existence.
As such, the pronghorn remains a testament to North America's past and a unique example of the interplay between ecological relationships and evolution itself. 05:25.000 [slow ambient music]