Pregnant Female Scimitar Horned Oryx Stand In Herd , Oryx are mostly white with reddish brown necks and marks on the face and a long, dark, tufted tail. The white coat helps reflect the heat of the desert.Their black skin and tip of the tongue protects against sunburn while enlarged hooves enable the oryx to walk easily on sand. Dense eyelashes and strong eyelids protect against windblown sand.A century ago, hundreds of thousands of desert-adapted antelopes roamed the Sahara and Sahel regions of Northern Africa, a vast desert and sub-desert ecosystem that include parts of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan.Due to human disturbance, over-hunting, drought and loss of food because of excessive livestock grazing, the scimitar-horned oryx is now extinct in the wild, though surveys show that Niger and Chad may have appropriate habitat for reintroduction, and some reintroductions have begun in Tunisia.