Chamois is an animal. Chamois lifestyle and habitat

Caucasian chamois, although in small and fragmented populations, can still be found throughout most of their historical range. The largest population lives in the Russian Federation within and around the Caucasian Biosphere Reserve. Other populations of chamois inhabit a number of national parks and reserves (Teberdinsky, Alania, North Ossetian, Elbrus, Sochi, Tlyaratinsky) in the Greater Caucasus in several administrative-territorial units of the Russian Federation (Karachay-Cherkess Republic, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Krasnodar region and Dagestan). In Georgia, Caucasian chamois are found in the Tasheti National Park and Lagodekhi State Reserve, and in Azerbaijan, in the Zagatala State Reserve and Ilisu State Reserve, as well as in the western part of the Shahdag National Park.
The horns of the Caucasian chamois, as a rule, are short and thick, located almost vertically and moderately diverging to the sides, i.e. they are shorter and more compact than that of the alpine chamois, with a relatively smaller distance between the ends of the horns. Horns longer than 25.4 cm in males are very rare; the average of 71 harvested chamois (from SCI and RW) is 20.6 cm. The average circumference at the base is 8.6 cm. Females with only three recorded horns are slightly shorter, on average less curved and thinner. Unfortunately, the typical CIC measurements (largest horn circumference, height and distance between the ends) are not available for comparison with other subspecies living to the west.

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Chamois animal are representatives of the class of mammals, their height is no more than 75 cm, and their weight is up to 50 kg. Chamois are very graceful, their body is a little short, and the legs, on the contrary, are quite long, their length can reach one meter, and the length of the hind limbs is more than the front ones. The head of the chamois is of medium size, with the shape of the horns inherent only to it: straight at the base, at the ends they have a bend back and down.

The color of the chamois fur depends on the season: in winter it is dark chocolate, the belly is red, the bottom of the muzzle and throat are yellow-red. In summer, the chamois has a shorter fur, red with a red tint, the belly is light, the head is the same color as the body.

The hooves of the chamois are slightly elongated compared to other members of the family. Chamois live in the Carpathian, Pontic and Caucasian mountains, the Pyrenees, the Alps and the mountains of Asia Minor.

The chamois living in the Caucasus Mountains differ slightly from their Western European relatives in the shape of the cranium, so they are classified as a different subspecies.

A favorite place of residence of chamois is rocky steeps and cliffs not far from fir, spruce forests and birch groves, it is in the coniferous thickets that they feel best. In search of food, the chamois descends into the meadows.

In search of a good habitat, chamois can climb up to three kilometers, however, places with snow and glaciers are avoided. These are very attached to their habitat and appear on the same slopes at the same time of day, they are not even afraid of the possibility of the presence of hunters, or shepherds with livestock.

The nature and lifestyle of the chamois

Mountain chamois more often they live in small groups, but sometimes they unite in numerous herds, if such a herd gathers, then the most experienced old female becomes the leader.

As a rule, it is the females that predominate in the herd, the males do not enter the herd and either live individually or in small male groups, and adjoin the herd only during the mating period.

In summer, chamois live high in the mountains, and by winter they move lower, it is winter that is the most difficult time for these, because of the snow it is very difficult to get food, and it also constrains fast jumps and movements, therefore chamois goat can be easy prey for hunters.

Despite the great curiosity inherent in chamois, they are very cowardly. During the day, they alternately rest, and for the night time they choose an open area. Chamois jump and climb mountains faster than any antelope; while running, they can make jumps up to seven meters.

Chamois nutrition

Mountain chamois it is a herbivore, in summer they feast on juicy alpine plants, and in winter they have to feed on the remnants of grass peeking out from under the snow, moss and lichens.

In the photo, chamois graze, eat grass

They tolerate the lack of water well, content to lick the dew from the leaves. If the snow is too deep, then they can feed on only lichens hanging from trees for several weeks, and chamois can also crawl to haystacks left in meadows in search of food.

However, very often, due to a lack of food in winter, many chamois die. Chamois need salt, so they constantly visit salt licks.

Reproduction and lifespan of chamois

Chamois lifespan 10-12 years old, puberty occurs about 20 months, however, they begin to reproduce not earlier than reaching the age of three.

The chamois mating season begins at the end of October, mating takes place in November. Females carry pups for 21 weeks, and pups are born in May June.

Childbirth takes place among dense pine thickets, as a rule, pregnancy ends in the birth of one kid, less often two, almost immediately they stand on their legs and after a few hours they can follow the mother.

In the first time after giving birth, the female avoids open areas, but the babies quickly learn to run on the rocks and soon the female returns to their usual habitat.

Babies are very attached to their mother, who takes care of them for six months. In the event of her death, the cubs can find themselves second mothers. At the age of four months, horns begin to appear in the cubs, and they bend only by the end of the second year of life.

Chamois are quite a large family, the exceptions are Caucasian chamoiswhich are listed in Red Book Russian Federation, so at the moment their population is about two thousand individuals, and most of them live in the reserve.

In the photo, a chamois is a female with her cub

Chamois are wild, it was not possible to domesticate them, however, a breed of dairy-meat goats was bred in Switzerland, which received the name from their distant relatives goat Alpine chamois... Own name domestic chamois got because of the similarity with congeners in color, endurance and excellent adaptation to any natural conditions.

The chamois belongs to the bovids family and forms a genus in which there is one species. Natural habitat is the Pyrenees, southern and central regions of Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus. These animals are well adapted to life in rocky terrain. Summer is spent in alpine meadows above the tree line at an altitude of at least 3600 meters. In winter, they descend to lower altitudes of about 800 meters. At the same time, they live in forests with a predominance of pine.

In height, these representatives of bovids reach 70-80 cm. The body length is 107-135 cm. The body weight in males reaches 30-60 kg, in females it is 25-45 kg. The tail is short. It is almost invisible, and can be seen only during bowel movements. Both females and males have short horns bent back. In males, they are thicker. The muzzle is short, the ears are sharp, the legs are long and slender.

Fur color differs in summer and winter. In summer, it has a rich brown color, while the belly is noticeably lighter. In winter, the fur color becomes light gray. There are characteristic black stripes near the eyes. There is a dark stripe along the back. The insides of the legs are white. The head is light brown.

Reproduction and life expectancy

Pregnancy lasts 170 days. As a rule, 1 cub is born in May or early July. Twins are rarely born, and sometimes triplets. The newborn's weight is 2-3 kg. He immediately begins to follow his mother everywhere. Milk feeding lasts 6 months. If the mother dies, then other females take care of the cub.

Young males stay with their mother for up to 2-3 years, and then unite in small groups. They live in them up to 8 years, until they become mature, and each of them does not occupy a certain territory. Sexual maturity in females occurs at the age of 2.5 years, and in males at the age of 3.5 to 4 years. In the wild, the chamois lives for 15-17 years, in captivity it lives up to 22 years.

Behavior and nutrition

Females with young live in herds, the number of which is 15-100 individuals. Adult males lead a solitary life most of the year. During the rutting period, which runs from late November to early December, they behave aggressively and fight among themselves for females. Such fights can end with the death of one of the males.

The diet consists of different types of vegetation. In summer it is a grass growing in alpine meadows, and in winter bark and needles are eaten. Chamois rest in the middle of the day and can be active on moonlit nights. These animals die from rockfalls, epidemics and predators. Fleeing from the pursuit, they can reach a speed of 50 km / h. They jump 2 meters high, and the jump length is 6 meters. The main enemies are

Animals of relatively small or medium size; height at the withers from 71 to 86 cm; body length from 102 to 119 cm. The main length of the skull is 169-201 mm. Live weight in the range of 25-45 kg, rarely more. The average weight of a male is about 30-36 kg.

The constitution is generally light. A relatively short body with a wide and deep rib cage rests on rather thick high legs. The dorsal profile is somewhat convex; the height at the rump is 4-6 cm higher than the height at the withers. The head is light, with a narrow muzzle tapering towards the end. The nasal mirror is small, captures only the space between the inner corners of the nostrils, but sometimes along the inner edges it reaches almost to the upper corners of the latter. The entire upper lip, except for a narrow median strip, is covered with hair. The color of the nasal mirror is black-brown. The eyes are not very large, but protruding, noticeably protruding to the sides. The iris of the eyes is yellow-brown. The ears are relatively long, about 12-14 cm, usually at least half the length of the head.

Both males and females have horns; in the latter they are relatively well developed, only slightly shorter and thinner than in males. The bases of the horns are located above the eye sockets. Their shape is characteristic in the form of almost parallel, vertically set, and in a living animal even hooks are often slightly inclined forward and correctly bent back at the tops. The cross section of the horns is round or oval; the girth at the bases is about 7-8 cm. The distance between the bases rarely exceeds 10-15 cm. The length of the horns along the bend is from 17-18 cm in females, to 24-24 cm in males. The color of the horns is grayish brown or dark brown. The surface of the horny sheaths bears a large number of small transverse rings with grooves between them. At the bases of the horns, the rings are located close to each other and narrower, closer to the apices are wide, smoothed, with noticeable intervals between them. The bent ends of the horns have no transverse ringing. In addition, a small but well-defined longitudinal striation is noticeable along the entire length from the bases to the tops of the horns.

The neck of the chamois is short but relatively thin. The head, even in a calm state, is kept upward. The legs, as already noted, are high and rather thick. Attention is drawn to the large size of the hooves in comparison with the overall size of the animal, which, moreover, can greatly expand. Their length from the posterior edge of the calcaneal crumbs to the tops on the forelimbs is from 66 to 73 mm, on the hind limbs from 62 to 68 mm. The height of the hooves along the front edge on the front legs is 43-47 mm, on the hind legs it is 1-2 mm less. A characteristic feature of the chamois hooves is that their thick horny wall bends inward and forms a clearly visible protrusion directly behind the heel crumbs. This ledge, apparently, plays the role of a brake or hook when the animal descends along steep rocky slopes. The accessory hooves are high but well developed (about 34 mm long and up to 22-23 mm wide) and probably also play a significant role as brakes when moving in rocks. The color of the hooves is dark brown.

The tail of the chamois is short (about 12 cm), even with hair only slightly exceeds the length of the ear.

The color of the chamois is rather uniform, subject to insignificant individual variability, but seasonal dimorphism is strongly pronounced.

The general tone of the pet coloring is rusty-red or yellowish-red, sometimes with a slight brownish tinge, depending on the number of hairs with brown ends and the degree of their browning.

The head is lighter than the torso and neck. The upper side of the nose is yellow, only occasionally with a slight brownish tinge; the latter becomes clearer on the forehead. The crown is rusty-reddish, the same tone as the sides of the trunk and neck. The end of the muzzle, especially the anterior edge of the upper lip, is yellowish white.

Habitat and distribution of chamois

The origin of the chamois (Rupicapra Blanville) genus is still unclear. In the Upper Pliocene, on the territory of France and Italy, a form lived, in the direction of specialization, very close to the chamois, but had a bend of the tops of the horns not backward, but forward.

All reliable finds date back to the Middle or even Upper Pleistocene. In the Pleistocene, this genus was distributed much wider not only to the south, but also to the north. The remains of a chamois, for example, have been found in Belgium.

Currently, the chamois lives in the Cantabrian mountains (Spain), the Pyrenees, the French, Italian, Bavarian, Swiss and Austrian Alps, the Apennines, the Carpathians within Czechoslovakia, southern Poland and Romania, in some mountains of Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece, in the mountains the eastern part of Asia Minor, the Main Caucasian ridge and the Transcaucasia. Modern scattered chamois ranges represent the remains of the once continuous area of \u200b\u200bdistribution of this species.

In the second half of the last century, they twice tried to relocate the chamois to the mountains of Norway; but both attempts ended in failure, since the imported animals died in a short time due to unclear reasons.

Chamois biology and lifestyle

The chamois is a typical mountain forest animal. Steep rocky areas of the mountains with the presence of forests are a prerequisite for the existence of chamois. The area of \u200b\u200bits vertical distribution is located from the lower border of the forest, sometimes at heights of only 600-700 m, to the subalpine and alpine zones, up to 3000 m and more. Both the rocks and the forest are primarily places of refuge. Apparently, even more relies on the last chamois, and in case of danger it is more likely to throw itself into a dense forest, if there is one nearby, than into rocks. In the forest, she will notice a person and hide from him before he finds her. However, in places where chamois are of little concern, they willingly graze both in treeless mountains and in open pastures, especially if there are areas of rocks and other shelters nearby.

Clearly expressed seasonal migrations, like in some other ungulates, are not observed in chamois; throughout the year they can be found from the lower forest zone to the highlands. Only the degree of their occurrence at different altitudes and habitats changes. In summer, the bulk of the animals are kept at altitudes from 1700 to 2500 m, in the upper forest strip, in the subalpine and alpine zones. Favorite habitats at this time are steep, rocky places near the forest, steep wooded slopes, overgrown with rare pine, fir, spruce and birch. The chamois also willingly keeps on subalpine and alpine meadows adjacent to dense thickets of birch forests, where animals hide in case of danger and rest in the hot daytime hours of the day.

The correct change of hours of rest and grazing is disrupted in cloudy, cool weather, in autumn and winter, as well as in summer in a strip of forest where animals find enough shade. In these cases, and in the middle of the day, you can meet a large number of fattening animals, and most of them rest in the afternoon, in the evening. In bad weather, chamois spend whole days under the eaves of rocks, in caves or climb under trees, eating low hanging branches.

The chamois is a herd animal. The size and composition of herds is variable even within the same habitat and season. A disturbed herd of chamois does not run in one direction, but rushes scatteringly and again gathers in random groups of a different composition. In addition, the observed size of herds also depends to a large extent on the total number of chamois in a particular area. In areas where chamois are few in number, they keep 2-3 pieces. In the past, in the Western Caucasus, there were often herds of a hundred specimens.

In some cases, the formation of large herds, apparently, is associated with the restriction of the places of possible habitation of chamois due to the displacement of domestic animals by herds.

Larger herds of chamois are observed in August and September. In contrast to many other ungulates, by winter and especially in spring, the size of herds gradually decreases, and only in summer, after lambing, chamois begin to herd again.

The composition of herds is often mixed, from animals of all ages and of both sexes. But sometimes adult males and females form independent groups with young ones.

Chamois nutrition

Chamois food in the summer is mainly various herbaceous plants. Compiled by A.A.Nasimovich, according to observations in the subalpine and alpine zones, the list of their summer food includes 33 species of grasses and 8 species of shrubs and trees. Among herbaceous plants, in terms of the number of species, forbs prevail, but in the list of especially readily eaten forages, cereals - fescue and bluegrass - are in the first place, followed by meow, bells, anemone, buttercups, penny, butterbur and hogweed. In tree and shrub species, leaves and young shoots are eaten, and in fir needles.

The basis of winter nutrition is, in addition to dry grasses obtained in snowless and little snowy areas, woody and twig food - branches and bark of willow, beech, mountain ash. Fescue, leaves and shoots of winter-green plants are eaten in large quantities: fescue, mistletoe, cherry laurel. Moss, tree lichens and even pine, fir and spruce needles are also eaten. According to some reports, chestnut fruits are readily eaten by chamois. There are no known cases of eating hay harvested in haystacks, as if observed in European chamois, in the Caucasus.

Chamois breeding

Chamois reach sexual maturity and begin to participate in reproduction in the third year of life. At the age of three, the first lambs are usually brought. The rutting and mating season falls from late October to early December. At this time, larger herds of chamois are divided into small groups of 3-5, up to a maximum of 10 heads. Females during this period behave calmly, but males become very excited, move a lot, run from one herd to another, as a result of which they lose a lot of weight. Tournament fights take place between males. Cases of injuries and wounds from blows during fights are not known, but sometimes one male pushes another into the abyss, which can be accompanied by injury or death. During the rut, males often scream, making sounds that vaguely resemble the bleating of a sheep, but more deaf.

The duration of pregnancy in chamois is about six months. The first lambs appear at the end of April. Mass lambing occurs in May, but occasional cases of later births are observed, apparently, until June.

Infraclass - placental

Rod - chamois

Literature:

1. I.I. Sokolov "Fauna of the USSR, Ungulates" Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1959.

Description

The chamois measures approximately one meter in length and 75 cm at the withers. The tail is very short, its length does not exceed 8 cm. The weight of the chamois is from 30 to 50 kg. She has a compact and strong build with a slender neck, short snout, pointed ears, which are almost half the length of the head. The chamois has long, slender legs with flat hooves, as well as up to 25 cm curved back horns inherent in both sexes. Behind them is an opening from which a slimy, foul-smelling secret is secreted during the mating period.

In summer, chamois are red-brown, on the belly the color is light red-yellow. She has black-brown stripes on her back, a yellowish-white neck. The back of the legs is white, the tail is black on the underside and at the tip. A black stripe extends from ears to eyes. In winter, chamois are dark brown above, white below. Legs and head are yellow-white.

Spread

Chamois in the mountains

Enemies and dangers

The natural enemies of chamois are lynxes, wolves and bears. Sometimes the young growth of chamois becomes the prey of the golden eagle. Danger for chamois is also represented by stones and fragments of rocks rolling downward, as well as avalanches, in which, first of all, cubs die. In difficult winters, many chamois become victims of hunger.

Heraldry

Chamois images can be found on the coats of arms of European municipalities.

Links

Categories:

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• Bovids
• Animals described in 1758
• Mammals of Eurasia
• Non-heraldic figures

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See what "Serna" is in other dictionaries:

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Chamois - Rupkapra rupicapra see also 9.4.5. Genus Chamois Rupicapra Chamois Rupkapra rupicapra (in both males and females they stick up vertically, and at the end they are bent with a small hook. Body length 115 135 cm, height at withers 70 80 cm. Coloring in summer red, in winter ... Animals of Russia. Directory

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SERNA, chamois, wives. A genus of mountain antelope with vertical horns curved at the end, a wild goat. “It is not the chamois that goes under the cliff, the eagle after hearing the hard years; alone in the hallway the bride wanders, trembles and waits for a decision. " Pushkin. Ushakov's explanatory dictionary. D.N. ... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

SERNA, mammal (bovids family). Body length up to 135 cm, tail 5-8 cm, weight up to 50 kg. The horns of males and females are small. Lives in the mountains of Europe, Asia Minor, the Caucasus. Easy to move over rocks. Object of sport hunting and ... ... Modern encyclopedia

Artiodactyl animal of the bovids family. Height at withers 70-80 cm, weighs up to 50 kg. The horns of males and females are small. Inhabits the mountains of Europe and M. Asia, including the Caucasus. Object of sport hunting and breeding ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

SERNA, s, wives. Artiodactyl animal of this. bovids, mountain antelope. Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

- (Rupicapra rupicapra), a mammal of the family. bovids. Unity, kind of genus. L. up to 135 cm, h. in the shoulders up to 80 cm, weight up to 50 kg. Males and females have hook-shaped horns. The coat in winter is long, thick, black-brown; in summer, short, brick-colored. ... ... Biological encyclopedic dictionary

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- (Rupicapra rupicapra Pall.) A ruminant artiodactyl mammal from the subfamily Antilopiane) of the bovid family Body length about 90 cm., Tail 8 cm.; height 75 80 stm. Horns are almost the same size in both sexes, up to 25 cm. ... ... Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron

chamois - fast-footed (Polezhaev); wild (Kozlov); shy (Mei); timid (Ldov) Epithets of literary Russian speech. M: Supplier of the court of His Majesty, the partnership of the Quick Press A. A. Levenson. A. L. Zelenetsky. 1913 ... Dictionary of epithets