“The Magic of the Real Safari” starts to publish adventure and research articles written by members of the Mountain Hunters Club. The scientific part of this material is one of the components of the CMH program aimed to create a gene bank of mountain ungulates. But our task was broader. The uniqueness of that expedition was in the fact that an extremely interesting hunt and a truly fascinating research work turned out to be connected at the molecular level.
Dushanbe met us, Moscow guests, with a fine drizzling rain and an almost spring smell of moist earth. When all formal procedures related to baggage collection were over, we hit the road. The car’s headlights glided on the wet night asphalt of the hospitable capital of Tajikistan.
Under the word “We” I mean the scientific-research and the hunting expedition at the same time led by Eduard Bendersky. That expedition included photographer and cameraman Oleg Laptev and the head of the Snow Leopard Foundation Dmitry Medvedev.
The purpose of our expedition was to hunt and study mountain ungulates in the eastern Pamirs, including argali, which was called differently by different authors. Today it’s called the Tibetan or Ladakh argali. The Englishman Edwin Ward, together with Sir Victor Brooke, examined a specimen obtained by Brooke in the vicinity in the vicinity of the Leh river (state of Jammu and Kashmir, India). They studied the structure of the skull and horns, and found some distinctive features that were considered sufficient to describe a new species – Brook's argali – Ovis brookei (Ward, 1874). But a few decades earlier Mr. Blyth (Blyth 1840) described the same sheep as a Himalayan one. But many zoologists are sure that the Brook argali habitats in the Himalayas and Tibet (we sometimes call it "brukey"). The Genetic analysis only, which has not yet been done, can confidently draw a line under these taxonomic collisions. Thus, on December 3rd, 2016, after less than a hundred and fifty years after Ward's publication, our expedition flew from Moscow to Tajikistan to get this rare argali in the high-altitude part of the Pamirs, near the junction of the borders of Tajikistan-Afghanistan-China, and to take samples for genetic analysis.
We moved to the hunting lands of the famous hunting company “Mugrab”, headed by the brothers Zafar and Atobek Bekmurodi. They shared our idea about the existence of Tibetan (Ladakh) argali in that area.
The car left the city and rushed confidently into the night gloom. We talked all the way and didn’t notice how time passed. Finally, the highway was left behind, and a steep mountain road led us to the hospitable house of Ayub Mulloerov. The main house was the center of a small estate, comfortably located in the gorges of the mountains. We were met by Ayub and his father, a very friendly and hospitable man. The table was set sumptuously in the Oriental style despite the lateness of the hour. In the center of the table was a huge turkey, cooked for our arrival.
We talked about screw-horned goats, Himalayan ulars, kekliks, ibexes and snow leopards that inhabit the mountains just outside the borders of this wonderful settlement. The hosts were happy to show pictures from camera traps and a variety of photos with trophies. The lands of the Mulloerovs are not just a hunting farm, but a real reserve, where they restored the number of many species, in particular the snow leopard, wild forest cat and markhor – the screw-horned goat. The number of the last one increased so much that the goats began to move across the Panj to neighboring Afghanistan, thereby increasing the biodiversity of the neighboring state.
We slept like babies in the cozy room allocated to us for the night – the night passed like an instant. In the morning, after breakfast, the smiling hosts took us on the road. We left that nice house but had kept the kindest impressions about them in our hearts. There was a feeling that those people lived in the mountains only to greet travelers like us.
Afghanistan laid just beyond the turbulent Panj River, closed in gorges. We could see the builders who made the road in the mountains and kids who play their games on the Afghanistan’s side of the river. We looked with curiosity at the one-story small villages that flashed past the car window. Sometimes, there was a loud cry of a keklik - a stone partridge from the rocks above the Afghan villages. The road on the Tajik side passed over deep cliffs, that gone almost vertically into the foamy, rapid Panj.
Occasionally, the car was stopped by Tajik border guards, who recently replaced the Russian ones at those posts. Their uniforms differed from the Russian ones only in emblems and stripes. They let us pass without unnecessary "ceremonies” after a cursory examination of the documents. Their tanned, oriental faces did not express any emotions.
The snow-covered Khorog met with some special Pamir flavor. From there the path to the roof of the world started– to the mysterious Pamirs, where Tibetan and Himalayan ulars, ibex, snow leopards and huge herds of Marco Polo Mountain sheep dwelled at high altitudes, on rocky ridges separated by vast valleys. And there we hoped to find a not so numerous Tibetan (Ladakh) argali that lived probably somewhere there, near the border with Afghanistan. What did we know about that mysterious argali? Did it habitat on Pamirs? It was a question that we had to start solving.
The idea or our expedition.
In order to explain for the reader, the meaning and goals of our expedition, we will have to share the information, and it is advisable to start with a brief overview of the taxonomy of sheep. It’ll give you the opportunity to see how argali differ from others.
1. Mouflons – (54 chromosomes) wild sheep are genetically close to the domestic sheep. The smallest in size are up to 144 cm (body length from the edge of the upper lip to the base of the tail, along the bend); up to 65 kg of weight, less often more (95 kg) - as an exception; with heteronymous, less often perverted horns.
The body color is from black to red, with a large light spot on the side, the suspension of winter wool on the chest is dark or black. Mouflons are divided into a) European native to the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, widely acclimatized in Europe, etc. and b) Asian, habitat in the southern Transcaucasia, Asia Minor, Iran, Oman.
2. Urials – (54 chromosomes) are slightly larger than mouflons, body length up to 160 cm, weight up to 96 kg; horns are perverted, less often homonymous. Their body colors are from brown-red to sandy. The suspension of winter wool on the chest is from black-brown to light. They are spread in the countries of Central Asia (the Ustyurt Plateau, the Kopetdag range, the mountains of southern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Punjab, Baluchistan), described from Astor (Kashmir, India).
3. Argali, or argali - (56 chromosomes) wild mountain sheep with a body length of up to 210 cm, weighing up to 216 kg. The color is from brown-brown to light gray. The suspension of elongated winter hair on the chest is light. They habitat in the mountains of Central and Central Asia: from the Karatau and Pamir mountains to the Himalayas in the south, in the north-to the mountains of Altai, Tuva, Sayan and northern Mongolia the Hubsugul lake). It’s described from the river Bukhtarma on Altai ((the territory of Kazakhstan now).
4. Snow sheep are divided into two large groups: Asian (52 chromosomes) and American (54 chromosomes). Their names indicate where they live. Let's focus only on the Asian snow sheep. The body length of the Asian snow sheep is up to 188 cm, the body weight is up to 150 kg, the horns are homonymous in the same way as those of argali. Their colors are from brown with separate dark brown areas to ash-gray and light. They don’t have any suspension on the chest. They are widespread in Eastern Siberia: in the north to the east of the Yenisei, to the north and east of northern Transbaikalia, from the Kodar ridge, including to the mountains of Chukotka and Kamchatka. They inhabit many ridges of Eastern Siberia with access to the Arctic and Pacific Oceans in the northeast of the continent at the same time.
So, the snow sheep are widespread to north and to east from Baikal, while argali dwell to south and southwest from the lake. The ranges of argali and snow sheep coincided, "overlapped" (sympatry), including in Baikal Siberia in the early Holocene. Argali reached the north of Transbaikalia, and the snow sheep reached the Kuznetsk Alatau to the west. Their fossil remains have been found on a significant area of the specified territory, in particular, on the largest Baikal Island of Olkhon. It indicates that Olkhon may have been a peninsula in the historical past.
The scientists looked for differences between species and subspecies of animals in appearance before taxonomy or taxonomy began to use the method of gene analysis. As a result, a subjectively selected set of features could become a sufficient basis for describing a new species/subspecies. These features of the exterior make modern researchers evaluate whether the transition of the number of traits to a new quality was fairly noted in the past using the genetic level.
The body measurements is the best way to characterize wild sheep by the height at the withers. Let's compare the rams considered above as this indicator increases: mouflon – 60-89 cm, urial-77-98 cm, Asian snow sheep-76-112 cm, argali-91-135 cm.
As you can see, argali are much superior to other types of sheep. This is due to the high legs of the animal, that is a biological feature of this species, adapted to fast running on relatively gentle mountain slopes and valleys. They have to run away and escape not from the snow leopards and wolves only. Argali are also great runners, capable to reach speeds of up to 60 km per hour or even more. And it’s done by an animal almost the size of a small Mongolian horse!
Argali can also differ in size and appearance features within the continental range. There are quite a lot of forms which have been described by many scientists/ They have tried to describe not only subspecies, but also new species of argali, which is quite common for the XIX – early XX centuries. Many forms of argali have geographical names that usually reflect the main places of distribution.
The geographical names haven't only sheep, but many other types of animals. But it’s very popular among sheep - they are named according to the place of the first description of the form, or according to the localization of the main distribution of the animal. The Pamir argali is widely known, when its synonym is the Marco Polo argali. The animal inhabits the mountains of the greater and lesser Pamirs in Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and is also found in some other territories. The Altai argali inhabit the Mongolian, Russian and Kazakh Altai. The Tibetan (Himalayan) argali inhabits the Tibeto-Himalayas, the Ladakh argali, etc.
Sometimes some forms of argali names are combined.
Argali named after Sir Victor Brooke.
Let's take a closer look at the Ladakh argali and start with the history of its description. As already mentioned above, the Englishman Edwin Ward described this animal in the century before last. Here is what he writes in his article "A supposed new species of wild sheep from Ladakh" dated January 20, 1874.:
"The skull and horns of the sheep, which is supposed to be called Ovis brookei, differs, in the opinion of Mr. Blyth, Sir Victor Brooke and myself, from other sheep with which it has been compared. Since the skull belonged to an animal that has not yet been described, the following measurements of the skull with horns can show this:
The length of the Ovis brookei skull between the horns is approximately 11 inches, which is 1 and ¼ inches longer than the two sheep named Ovis vignei have.
Ovis brookei, as well as Ovis vignei, which is presented here for comparison, was measured at the surgical college. The width of the first skull between the eye sockets was 4 and 5/8 inches, unlike Ovis vignei, in which this indicator is 4 and ¾ inches.
The horns of Ovis brookei belong to a young animal, which is confirmed by the condition of the teeth and four progressively increasing segments of the horns. The horn’s length was 33 and ½ inches.
The girth at the base is 13 and 3/8 inches. The 8 years old Ovis vignei has horns with the length 31 and ½ inches and the girth at the base 10 and ½ inches. Ovis brookei has large sizes, although the animal is younger.
All measurements were done in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Ovis vignei specimen No. 3778 is described as a Lodak argali and provided to the museum by Captain Strechi. The sample No. 3778a was provided by Dr. Sclater in April 1868. These two individuals differ from Ovis brookei even more than the large Ovis vignei individual with which I made a comparison. In all the samples that Sir Victor Brooke and I examined, it was found that the orbital fascia is not as deeply sunk down as in Ovis vignei and Ovis cycloceros. In this regard, Ovis brookei is larger and more like Ovis ammon and Ovis arkar.
... the interocular width is greater in relation to the length of the skull in this new individual (Ovis brookei-approx. authors), than in the two individuals discussed above. The difference in the length of the muzzle is more noticeable if you look at it from the front. Therefore, this new species is closer to Ovis ammon from the Himalayas or Ovis nodgsonii than to any other forms. The horns of Ovis brookei are not only more graceful, but are larger and more strongly curved, the length of the row of molars also exceeds the length of the same row in Ovis vignei.
Sir Victor Brooke promised to provide more information on this species. I should note that I suggested to name the new species Ovis brookei as a sign of respect for this gentleman. I hope to get additional data on this type of sheep for its full description."
It is considered that the Ladakh argali (Ovis ammon brookei Ward, 1874) belongs to the variety of Tibetan (Himalayan) argali (Ovis ammon hodgsonii Blyth, 1840), which has a truly huge distribution – on a significant part of the highlands of Tibet, the Himalayas, Ladakh, Karokorum, Kunlun and some other systems.
A point on the map
We were interested in the north-western Karakoram part of this giant area, which approached the Vakhan corridor, located on the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Our expedition headed to the mountains adjacent to these places.
The reason was a number of reports from local outfitters and hunters that there is another argali that differs in a number of features from the world-famous Pamir argali.
Eyewitnesses spoke about the possible existence of the Ladakh argali in the Pamirs, and we tried to analyze the possibility of the existence of the Tibetan argali in the Pamirs because it was generally believed that it belonged to the variety of Tibetan argali. There were all the prerequisites for this. The range of the Tibetan argali is quite close to the Pamirs. It reaches the Karakoram – which is called "just around the corner"! We knew the peculiarities of the migration activity of argali, we can conclude that they would overcome such a distance. It was also possible to move that north-eastern edge of the range of the Tibetan sheep to the Pamirs. We cannot exclude that those places were the northern edge of the hybridization zone of the Pamir and Tibetan argali, where both of those phenotypes could manifest themselves.
We decided to turn to the testimony of eyewitnesses, one of whom was the world – famous American hunter of Arab origin, Hussein Galobchi. He published a letter that confirmed the possibility of another form of argali living in the Pamirs, on the pages of the popular Ovis magazine.
Hussein Galobchi sent an open letter to Ovis magazine with a request to print it, keeping the style and without changes. The magazine fulfilled his request.
Here's what he writes:
Hussein Galobci's letter to Ovis magazine
"As you know, I have been to the Pamirs several times. In recent years, I have observed an argali that look similar to Marco Polo, but I believe that they aren’t Marco Polo. I have prepared a closed report and hope that someone will accumulate more information on this sheep than I’ve managed to do.
I am not a biologist, not a sheep expert or a scientist, but I have hunted sheep in all parts of the World for the last 50 years, so I can express my opinion. I ask for help from anyone who can shed light on this type of argali, which I have been observing in the Pamirs for the past 2 years. I have hunted in the Pamirs a large number of times, with a person who really knows this sheep and he knows every inch of the Pamir mountains. He is a former hunter and the guide who accompanied Mr. "Spike" - Loyd Zeman on his hunt in 1989, who opened the hunt for Marco Polo, as we know it now. That hunt has changed the life of Yuri Mathison, a successful owner of an outfitting company in the Pamirs. He is a true connoisseur of mountains and sheep. His company became the first outfitter in Tajikistan and very successfully collected exceptional trophies for the Record Book. We have warm fraternal relations. He owns the largest territory in the Pamirs for Ovis ammon polii.
In 2006, he leased a third large piece of area from the government – this area is located in the southern part of the Pamirs and borders the famous Vakhan corridor.
In the autumn of 2006, Yuri called me and said that he saw several groups of sheep resembling Marco Polo from afar while inspecting his new territory. After the closer inspection,they noticed that they have a clear difference from Polo. The local hunters said that those were sick Marco Polo, and therefore their horns didn't grow long. I asked Yuri to send me a photo. In the fall 2007 Yuri had a client who got so called “sick” Marco Polo (Fig.A) and send me the picture. That sheep had the appearance of Polii, many characteristic features that I hadn’t observed before during my travels to the Pamirs. The most prominent feature was the horns (Fig. A). Yuri said that that ram was one of nine in the group where all sheep looked the same. I called him to says that I was agree that that ram wasn’t sick but could be the subspecies of argali. After that, he sent me a map to determine the subspecies, what kind of argali could it be? What kind?
We set the date, in the spring of 2008, to explore the territory We had studied several books and articles and have come to the conclusion that it could be part of the Tibetan argali Orvis Ammop hodgsonii. That is divided into the following Ovis ammon ammonoides-Himalayan, Ovis ammon bambhera Nepali Argali, Ovis ammon blythi-Tibetan, Ovis ammon brookei-Ladakh, Ovis ammon henrii-Tibetan, Ovis ammon hodgsoni-Tibet-Nepali (we leave all these names how Hussein Golabchi called them. (note by
E. B. and D. M.)).
Spring of 2008, I was in a familiar place, in Yuri's camp in the Pamirs. We used the camp of another outfitter, whose camp bordered on Yuri's new territory, and had so-called "remote" sheep. That camp belonged to Atobek and was known as the Hot Spring Camp. Yuri and Atobek have been friends for 30 years. They both lived in Murgab. . Yuri was the head of the hotel, when Atobek was with an employee of the Ministry of Forestry. I knew Atobek well because hunted with him in 91 and 92 years when he worked as a guide for Mattison. I knew him as an excellent hunter and organizer. In 1995 he started his own business and was successful in it. We didn’t hunt with him since 1992, but we were always friends. I spent two nights at his house in Murghab, when we were far from Yuri's camp. His family was very hospital for me both times. So, we called Atobek and informed him of our intentions before leaving the camp. He was happy to see us when we arrived. Then he asked about that sheep and said that there was no need to go to the territory of Yuri, because there were several individuals on his territory. The next day we left in two cars. Atobek knew exactly where these sheep were and we reached the needed place in 15 minutes. By lunchtime, we saw several groups of those individuals. It was strange to see how those sheep and Marco Polo sheep pastured in the same valley. They didn't mix and stay far apart from each other.
It was the first time when I saw that sheep up close. There was no doubt that that sheep were not Marco Polo, they were a mixture of several races – but which ones?
Then we arrived back to the camp and I fetched the measurement we did on that territory. The average sheep was about 40 pounds and heavier than the polii, with a heavier body. Those legs were 1 and 1/4 shorter and a white stripe (suspension-approx. authors) went to the neck and the scruff. Differences in horns – the ram was 9.5 years old. The massive horns were18 inches near the base what was impossible for Marco Polo but their length was only 42 inches. The horns rose slightly up and twisted down and did not diverge at the ends to the sides (as in Marco Polo – approx. authors)
Quotes:
The heteronymous horns were small — up to 70 cm, thin at the base, the edges are smoothed in general outlines, somewhat rounded. The horns were directed upwards from the frontal bone, then back and to the sides. Their ends bended inwards (towards the neck) towards each other more often in a horizontal plane, sometimes slightly upwards and inwards. The ends of the heteronymous horns were always located above the animal's neck. Such horns are characteristic of the smallest subspecies of the sheep— the Transcaucasian.
The perverted horns (curved in the same plane) occupy an intermediate position between the first and subsequent types according to the shape of the bend. They rose up from the frontal bone then back and to the sides, the ends of the horns bended down and inwards the neck. The entire bend of the horns from the bases to the ends lied in one plane. Sometimes the very tips of them slightly deviated from the general plane in the direction of the neck or from it, but didn’t begin the second curl of the spiral. The perverted horns are characteristic of medium-sized sheep: Ladakh, Bukhara, and mouflons.
Homonymous horns differ from other types in that they first go up, back and to the sides, and then down, forward and to the sides so that their ends fall below the neck and are directed not towards each other, but in opposite directions. Homonymous horns have a distinct spiral twist. Such horns are possessed by large sheep — Kyzylkum, Karatau, Turkmen, Tianshan, Kazakhstan, Pamir and Altai argali, as well as snow sheep.
