Coachella Valley Bighorn Sheep Meet The Alpine ibex

Coachella Valley BIGHORN SHEEP, Meet The Alpine IBEX

They look like protruding rocks, or maybe some kind of metal studs, but lean in, and you’ll see they have what seem to be … legs.

Although they do not live in the Coachella Valley our team finds them AMAZING and after you see what they can do we know that you will also!

Ibex are wild goats that live in the mountainous regions of Europe, north central Asia and northern Africa. There are five species of ibex, according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS). They have long, curved horns and cloven hooves. Males have long beards. Ibex are related to antelopes, buffalo, bison, cattle, goats and sheep.

Alpine Ibex

Maybe you’ve seen this, (it’s gotten around), but I’m still gobsmacked. Totally amazed. Just look at them—perched on the sheer face of a dam in the Gran Paradiso National Park of northern Italy, challenging our perception of depth like an O’Keeffe-inspired Cubist painting, but also tickling our Dalí sensibilities, because: What are they doing up there?

They’re here because this wall is rich with salt, a mineral they crave, so they’ve come to lick, while balancing matter-of-factly with four feet(!) on a surface so narrow, that I can’t figure out how they manage it.

Alpine Ibex

And yet, they casually browse the surface as if they were wandering across a country road. They also can make little leaps upward and sometimes will swing around, two legs briefly dangling mid-air they are designed for verticality — like mountain sheep.

Alpine ibexe licking salt from the rocks

Watching sheep go bounding up a vertical wall, the writer Ellen Meloy once observed, they get their power from their backsides: “The rump carried all the muscle … with nothing beneath their hooves but air and a foothold barely larger than my lower lip.”

To learn more about these amazing goats please visit…https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Goats-Scale-Dam-World-Demands-to-Know-Why.html