Unicorns

I was listening to (BBC MELVIN BRAGG) podcast on unicorns last night.

they essentially discussed that it was either a rhinocerous or an oryx, and that the animal was "first mentioned" in Persian literature in 500 bc, and the writer said that the animal live in India.

Well, Harapan archeology (i.e. Indus Valley) has a picture of a unicorn on a seal that dates back to 2000 bc.

and the Asian Rhinocerous is found in India, Sumatra and Java, and has one horn, although it's habitat in India is now limited (due to population, excess hunting and/or climate change).

"...The Indian rhino formerly occurred from the foothills of the Hindu Kush in Pakistan, across the sub-Himalayan region, to the India-Myanmar border on the eastern edge of the Brahmaputra watershed. By the late 19th century, the Indian rhino had been eliminated from everywhere except the Chitwan Valley (Nepal), lowland Bhutan, the Teesta Valley (west Bengal, India) and the Brahmaputra Valley (Assam, India). For most of the 20th century, known populations have been concentrated in southern Nepal and northeastern India."
\

by the way, this is an oryx:

and the factoid for today comes from Wikipedia:

Between 1969 and 1977, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish intentionally released 93 Gemsbok into the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and that population is now estimated between 3,000 and 6,000 animals.[3] Within the state of New Mexico, oryxes are classified as "big game" and can be harvested with the proper license, however the quality of the hunt may be affected by military regulation of the missile range.

since I used to live uphill from white Sands, I know about this. Also about the Luftwaffe squadron who trains there.

Indeed, we once lived were between White Sands and Roswell, so we saw a lot of weird stuff in the sky, and the Apache usually shrugged and figured they were testing something...