This gazelle’s historic range is the Horn of Africa: on the Somali coast, inland to Ethiopia. It lives in stony brush, grassland and semidesert. It has been hunted to extinction in Ethiopia and is endangered in Somalia due to war, hunting and overgrazing. Gazelle are herbivores, eating herbs, shrubs and succulents.
This gazelle is named for John Hanning Speke, an English explorer. In the 1850s and 1860s he became famous for his search for the Nile River’s source.