Popular Official Guide to the New York Zoological Park (September 1915): Thirteenth EditionHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
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Popular Official Guide to the New York Zoological Park (September 1915): Thirteenth Edition
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
New York Zoological Park
Fortunate indeed is the zoological park or garden which can exhibit even
one living specimen of the White Mountain Goat. It is a very difficult
matter to take an animal from a rarified dry atmosphere, at an elevation
of 8,000 feet, and induce it to live at sea level, in a dense and humid
atmosphere, on food to which it is by nature wholly unaccustomed.
We have been successful in establishing here, on a breeding basis this
rare and difficult animal, (_Oreamnos montanus_). One kid was born in
1908 and another in 1910, and both have thriven, the former now being so
large as to look like an adult specimen.
For some subtle reason which we can not explain, these animals—like the
chamois and mouflon quartered in small pens near the Small-Mammal
House—do not thrive in any of the large, rock-bound corrals of Mountain
Sheep Hill. They are kept in a rock-paved corral near the Pheasant
Aviary and the Crotona Entrance, and to their use has been devoted a
rustic barn, which they shelter in or climb over, according to the
weather. To see them walking nonchalantly over the steep roof, or
perching upon its peak, is one of the drollest sights of the Park.
The White Goat, sometimes mistakenly called “goat antelope,” belongs to
a small group known as the Rupicaprines or rock antelopes. It inhabits
many different kinds of territory, but usually the rugged sides and
summits of high mountains, at irregular intervals from southwestern
Montana and northern Washington, northward to the head of Cook Inlet on
the coast of Alaska. (See map of distribution, with label.) The valley
of the upper Yukon contains practically no goats. They are most abundant
in southeastern British Columbia, where in a very small area, in
September, 1905, Mr. John M. Phillips and the writer actually counted
239 individuals.
Of the five animals now exhibited in the Park, three were captured a few
days after their birth, in May, 1905, about seventy miles north of Fort
Steele, British Columbia. They arrived here October 9, 1905, and up to
this date they have thriven as well, and grown as rapidly, as they would
have in a state of nature. Their food consists of the best clover hay
obtainable, and crushed oats. When they shed their coats, in the spring,
they are almost as white as snow, but with months of use, their pelage
becomes soiled and slightly discolored.
A fully adult male mountain goat stands from 39 to 41 inches in shoulder
height, and weighs, _on scales_, from 258 to 300 pounds.
THE PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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