Oryx are a type of desert antelope that are mostly white with reddish-brown necks and marks on the face and a long, dark, tufted tail. They stand up to 4 feet and 6 inches tall at the shoulder, and both male and female oryx have curved horns that grow to be several feet long.
...The animal used to have a healthy population in its native land of Africa, until hunters cut their numbers down to nearly nothing. The National Zoo's oryx was living at the Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va., and will join others sent from zoos around the world to a conservation center in Tunisia, in order to create a diverse gene pool....
These four scimitar-horned oryx are among the nine (click here) that were returned in December 2007 to Tunisia, where they have been extinct since the late 1970s. A male oryx from the Smithsonian's National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va., was included in the group. The animals will eventually be reintroduced into the wild...
