Black wildebeest wildebeest can also affect human beings negatively. Wild individuals can be competitors of commercial livestock, and can transmit fatal diseases such as rinderpest, and cause epidemics among animals, particularly domestic cattle. They can also spread ticks, lungworms, tapeworms, flies, and paramphistome flukes. Black wildebeest The black wildebeest or white-tailed gnu ("Connochaetes gnou") is one of the two closely related wildebeest species. It is a member of the genus "Connochaetes" and family Bovidae. It was first described in 1780 by Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann. The black wildebeest is typically in head-and-body length, and the typical weight is . Males stand
Black wildebeest in the 1800s. The black wildebeest is currently included in the same genus as the blue wildebeest ("Connochaetes taurinus"). This has not always been the case, and at one time the latter was placed under a separate genus of its own, "Gorgon". The black wildebeest lineage seems to have diverged from the blue wildebeest in the mid- to late Pleistocene, and became a distinct species around a million years ago. This evolution is quite recent on a geologic time scale. Features necessary for defending a territory, such as the horns and broad-based skull of the modern black wildebeest, have been