Skull Sexual Monomorphism in the Gwembe Dwarf Goat Breed from Zambia

Abstract

This study involved some morphometric parameters of the skull of thirty adult Gwembe Dwarf Goats (15 males and 15 females) without any apparent skeletal disorders. Lower jaws were not included in this study. A total of 43 linear measurements were analyzed. The analysis reflected no differences between sexes, thereby indicating lack of general conformation differences between males and females. However, comparison of the parameters that exhibited most variance revealed that horncore basal circumference and length of the horn core on the front margin were strongly influenced by sex. Therefore, only the horn conformation could be used as discriminator sexual variable. This result couples with the fact that males usually have stronger and larger horns than females but skull size seeming no to be very different between sexes. The obtained results would indicate a marked sexual monomorphism in this breed.