Topi

Damaliscus lunatus jimela is a subspecies of topi, and is usually just called a topi. It is a highly social and fast type of antelope found in the savannas, semi-deserts, and floodplains of sub-Saharan Africa. The word tope or topi is Swahili, and was first recorded in the 1880s by the German explorer Gustav Fischer to refer to the local topi population in the Lamu island region of Kenya; this population is now designated as Damaliscus lunatus topi. Contemporaneously, in English, sportsmen referred to the animal as a Senegal hartebeest, as it was considered the same species as what is now recognised as D. lunatus korrigum. Other names recorded in East Africa by various German explorers were mhili in Kisukuma and jimäla in Kinyamwezi. The Luganda name was simäla according to Neumann, or nemira according to Lugard. By the turn of the 19th century this antelope was called a topi by most in English. Writing in 1908, Richard Lydekker complains that it would have so much simpler if all these new forms of korrigan had simply been called East African korrigan, Bahr-el-Ghazal korrigan, etc., than constantly adopting different native names for different geographic forms of essentially the same antelope. In 2003 Fenton Cotterill argued the correct name for jimela topi was nyamera in English, referencing that to the 1993 Kingdon field guide, which reports it as another Swahili name for topi antelopes. New names invented in 2011 for various populations of this subspecies were Serengeti topi, Ruaha topi and Uganda topi. Damaliscus lunatus jimela was originally described in 1892 by the German zoologist Paul Matschie based on the skull of an animal shot by the famous German hunter Richard Böhm in what is now Tanzania, and a watercolour painting Böhm had made of the animal, which his widow had given to Matschie. By the turn of the century this had become the accepted scientific name for topi in East Africa, but in 1907 a new subspecies was introduced by Lydekker to classify the topi occurring in Kenya and Uganda: D.