Males stand about 135cm at the shoulder and have a mass of about 230kg. Old males are black with a satiny sheen to their coats and the under parts are pure white.
Females are a dark brown.
Both sexes have horns, but the female's are shorter and more slender than the male's. They are found in southern and eastern Africa, but their distributional range has shrunk extensively in the wake of human development and subsequent habitat fragmentation. The giant sable, subspecies H.n.variani, occurs between the Cuanza and Luando rivers in north-western Angola. They are a savanna woodland species, dependant on cover and the availability of water. They avoid dense woodland and areas that have been heavily utilised by other species.