Alpine Ibex (Capra ibex) are big wild mountain goats that
live among the peaks in the European Alps where predators cannot reach. They
are a sexually dimorphic goat with larger curved horns and like to occupy the
steep, rocky terrain above the tree line between 2000 to 3000 meters above sea
level. It is extremely difficult to live there because there is no food upon
the point.
These goats are very social as both males and females live
separately most of the year and coming together just for the mating purpose.
The breeding season begins in early December and lasts around six weeks. During
this time, male Ibex herds break up into smaller groups that look for females.
When the spring and summer season comes, then plenty of grass
available to them for feed. Like the snow falling starts, they are fattening up
and build reserves to meet their requirements in winters. During the colder weather,
the Alpine Ibex make their homes safely in the clouds. Many studies have shown
the flexibility of their social systems related to environmental conditions.
The Capra ibex sibiricais related to predation, winter snowpack,
forage availability, and human activities; in moose and white-tailed deer
snowfall has an important influence on habitat selection. During the rut,
ibexes used larch woods and rocky slopes, probably to minimize the risk of
avalanches.
In the spring there was great variability in the use of the
different habitats. The ibexes exploited all kinds of fresh vegetation to
gratify their energetic requirements, and low altitude pastures were used
only in this season. In summer, Ibexes stayed at a higher altitude, above
the timberline and seemed to prefer Alpine meadows and stone ravines.
The Alpine Ibex lacks some essential minerals in their diet,
like salt which aren’t available in the grass. Like many herbivores,
the Ibex must seek out natural salt licks. In the spring season, they meet their
salt requirements but licking rock surfaces for leached salts. The concrete
Dams fulfills the needs of salt and minerals to Alpine Ibex. These Dams release
the calcium-aluminum mineral during the curing process. This process is also
called ettringite almost 20% available in hardened concrete.
The Alpine Ibex are excellent climbers. They can easily climb
any sheer vertical face of the dam’s wall. During the climbing process, they
use small protruding boulders as a foothold to lick ettringite off the dam’s wall
surface. These mountain goats scale such massive heights due to their soft,
split hooves.
The Ibex can scale such great heights because of their soft,
split hooves that can grip any surface like a pincer. The large grazing
mountain goats’ ungulates habitat has been studied in reintroduced populations
in the central and eastern European Alps.
The Italian Cingino Dam is a famous place where many Alpine
Ibex’s gravity-defying stunts. Moreover, such unusual behavior has
also been observed at the Barbellino dam in Lombardy, and Lago della Rossa dam
in Valli di Lanzo, Piemonte. The Alpine ibex approaches sexual maturity at
around 18 months, but females do not reach their maximum body size for 5 to 6
years.
The Alpine ibex almost became extinct all over Europe at
the beginning of the XIX century. However, they were surviving only in the area
around the Mt Grivola within what these days are the Gran Paradiso
National Park Italian Alps. The population was saved from extinction and
recovered thanks to the setting up of the royal hunting reserve in 1856.
Then later anomalous behavior compared with autochthonous ones.
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