Word: ibex
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Back-breeding has an advantage over cloning in that it creates a whole population, rather than just an individual animal. Last year, Spanish scientists used cloning to successfully recreate an ibex that disappeared in 2000, and in Poland another group is trying to clone the aurochs using DNA from bone and teeth samples. But for a species to survive once it's brought back to life, it must have enough genetic variability to reproduce. "A population needs to be adaptive," says Johan van Arendonk, a professor of animal-breeding and genetics at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, adding that...
...they have discovered that although some cheetahs are shot, the main reason for the animals' decline is that their favorite foods are disappearing from the landscape. Both the goitered and jeeber gazelles have been virtually wiped out by nomadic hunters. Cheetahs have been forced to survive on urial and ibex--mountain sheep and mountain goats--which are impossible to chase on steep, stony slopes. "Cheetahs have to wait for them to come down to the foothills in search of water holes," says Hunter. "It means they have a narrow hunting window, and that is depressing their population." To rehabilitate...
Most troubling, it's not just prolific-as-rabbits deer and other common prey that are being killed in such canned hunts, as they're sometimes called; it's rarer creatures too. All manner of exotics--including the Arabian oryx, the Nubian ibex, yaks, impalas and even the odd rhino, zebra or tiger--are being conscripted into the canned-hunt game and offered to sportsmen for "trophy fees...
Windshield ranchers have also been busy creating their own personal game preserves. The Army first introduced camels to the area in 1856, and starting in the 1940s the locals began importing other exotic animals--ibex and zebras, nilgai antelope from Pakistan and barasingh deer from India. Veterinarians report a land-office business treating exotic pets. "I had to neuter a coatimundi once, and I didn't even know what species it was," says veterinarian Cuatro Patterson. (It's similar to a raccoon...
...other customers were reportedly summoned before a federal grand jury this summer to hear the bad news that the scarves--which can fetch up to $15,000--are not just wretchedly expensive; they're also illegal. "I was told that the hair came from the chin of the ibex goat," says Kempner. "That [the goats] rubbed it into the rocks and villagers picked it up and wove it into shawls." That is a quaint--and popular--delusion. The wool of a goat is combed and woven into pashminas. But the superior wool of shahtooshes is harvested from dead chirus...