A six-legged gazelle was spotted rearing up in Israel by a member of the country’s armed forces.
The animal had an extra pair of appendages growing out of its back, which was caused by a genetic condition called organ proliferation or polymelia.
The rare syndrome is also found in humans and occurs in fewer than one in 100,000 births, but it has also been reported in a range of mammals including cows, reptiles, chickens and mice.
The gazelle was spotted in a nature reserve in the southern Negev desert covering Palestine and Israel, just a few kilometers from the Hamas music festival massacre.
A member of the Israeli Defense Forces spotted a six-legged gazelle prancing through Israel’s Holy Land
The discovery was made in late March by an Israeli army reservist Nir Leichter when he stopped for coffee in the Nahal HaBoshor nature reserve.
Leichter quickly took a photo of the animal and sent it to the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) team in Jerusalem for further investigation. He discovered that the gazelle was born with a mutation.
Wildlife experts determined that the animal was born in 2021 and “survived a complex nest and as a young individual faced with many predators that endangered young fawns,” said SPNI’s Amir Balaban.
The gazelle was spotted by an Israeli army reservist, who took a photo and sent it to conservation officials (here the photo was taken)
Balaban shared a statement in an Instagram post that was translated from Hebrew to English.
He noted that the gazelle spent most of its life in danger due to its mutation, as its extra legs made it stand out from the herd.
However, the male had also met a mate and now has an offspring, which was captured by the IDF reservist.
“Contrary to expectations, the deer is healthy and strong and has three deer and a foal in its litter from last fall,” Balaban said.
‘He was seen as a host to the females in the short fields and the extra legs on his back pose no challenge to him.’
SPNI believes the genetic birth defect is hereditary, but the gazelle fawn does not appear to have the same condition.
Balaban told CBS News that the animal was the first known gazelle with the hereditary condition in the Middle East.
The six-legged gazelle (right) had also met a mate and now has an offspring, which was captured by the IDF reservist
The animal had an extra pair of appendages growing out of its back, caused by a genetic condition called organ proliferation or polymelia.
The animal was the first known gazelle with the hereditary condition in the Middle East
In Israel there are three subspecies: the Israeli gazelle, the Negev gazelle and the Shitim gazelle, of which very few specimens remain in the Arava region.
There is a visible difference between the sexes as the male is larger and his horns are longer than those of the female.
The Negev Desert was the site of a massacre in October 2023 when the militant Hamas group descended from the sky on an area where revelers had gathered for a nighttime trance music rave.
Hamas fighters managed to infiltrate Israel virtually unnoticed by paragliding over the normally heavily guarded border.
Moments later, the dancing stops and terror ensues as festival goers are forced to run for their lives as armed Hamas fighters begin shooting and kidnapping anyone in their path.
Panicked Israelis were seen screaming, running and rushing into cars as they tried to escape the festival in the northwestern Negev desert, about five miles from the city of Ofakim.