Mouflon

Description:

The mouflon (Ovis aries orientalis[1] group) is a subspecies group of the wild sheep Ovis aries. Populations of Ovis aries can be partitioned into the mouflons (orientalis group) and urials or arkars (vignei group).[2] The mouflon is thought to be one of the two ancestors for all modern domestic sheep breeds.

Habitat:

Today mouflon inhabit the Caucasus, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran. Originally the range stretched further to Anatolia, the Crimean peninsula and the Balkans, where they had already disappeared 3,000 years ago. Mouflon were introduced to the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Rhodes and Cyprus during the neolithic period, perhaps as feral domesticated animals, where they have naturalized in the mountainous interiors of these islands over the past few thousand years, giving rise to the subspecies known as European mouflon (O. aries musimon). They are now rare on the islands but classified as feral animals by the IUCN.[6] They were later successfully introduced into continental Europe, including Spain, France, Germany, central Italy, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Canary Islands, and even some northern European countries such as Sweden and Finland. Here spotted in a German forest