Pyrenean Ibex Facts

The recently extinct Pyrenean ibex, also known by the Spanish common name bucardo, was one of the four subspecies of wild goat to inhabit the Iberian Peninsula. An attempt to clone the Pyrenean ibex was carried out in 2009, marking it the first species to undergo de-extinction, but the clone died due to physical defects in its lungs seven minutes after its birth.

Description

In general, the Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was a mountain goat which was substantially bigger and had larger horns than its extant cousins, C. p. hispanica and C. p. victoriae. It was also called the Pyrenean wild goat and, in Spain, the bucardo.

During the summer, the male bucardo had a coat of short, pale grayish-brown fur with sharply defined black patches. During winter it grew thicker, combining longer hair with a layer of short thick wool, and its patches were less sharply defined. They had a short stiff mane above the neck, and two very large, thick curving horns that described a half-spiral twist. The horns typically grew to 31 inches in length, with a distance between them of about 16 inches. One set of horns in Musée de Bagnères at Luchon, France, measures 40 inches long. Adult males bodies were just under five feet long, stood 30 inches at the shoulder, and weighed 130–150 pounds.

Female ibex coats were more consistently brown, lacking the patches and with very short, lyre-shaped and cylindrical ibex's horns. They lacked the male's manes. Young of both sexes retained the color of the mother's coat until after the first year when the males began to develop the black patches.

Habitat and Range

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During the summers, the agile Pyrenean ibex inhabited rocky mountainsides and cliffs interspersed with scrub vegetation and small pines. Winters were spent in snow-free upland meadows.

In the fourteenth century, the Pyrenean ibex inhabited much of the northern Iberian Peninsula and were most commonly found in the Pyrenees of Andorra, Spain, and France, and likely extended into the Cantabrian mountains. They disappeared from the French Pyrenees and Cantabrian range by the mid-10th century. Their populations began to decrease steeply in the 17th century, primarily as a result of trophy-hunting by people who craved the ibex's majestic horns. By 1913, they were extirpated except for one small population in Spain's Ordesa Valley.

Diet and Behavior

Vegetation such as herbs, forbs, and grasses comprised most of the ibex's diet, and seasonal migrations between high and low elevations allowed the ibex to utilize high mountain slopes in the summer and more temperate valleys during the winter with thickening fur supplementing warmth during the coldest months.

Modern population studies were not conducted on the bucardo, but female C. pyrenaica are known to congregate in groups of 10–20 animals (females and their young) and males in groups of 6–8 except in rutting season when they are largely isolated.

Reproduction and Offspring

Rut season for the Pyrenean ibex began in the first days of November, with males conducting ferocious battles over females and territory. The ibex birthing season generally occurred during May when females would seek isolated locations to bear offspring. A single birth was the most common, but twins were born occasionally.

Young C. pyrenaica can walk within a day of birth. After birth, the mother and kid join the female's herd. Kids can live independently from their mothers at 8–12 months but are not sexually mature until 2–3 years of age.

Extinction

While the exact cause of the Pyrenean ibex's extinction is unknown, scientists hypothesize that some different factors contributed to the decline of the species, including poaching, disease, and the inability to compete with other domestic and wild ungulates for food and habitat.

The ibex are thought to have numbered some 50,000 historically, but by the early 1900s, their numbers had fallen to fewer than 100. The last naturally born Pyrenean ibex, a 13-year-old female that scientists named Celia, was found mortally wounded in northern Spain on January 6, 2000, trapped beneath a fallen tree.

The First De-Extinction in History

Before Celia died, though, scientists were able to collect skin cells from her ear and preserve them in liquid nitrogen. Using those cells, researchers attempted to clone the ibex in 2009. After repeated unsuccessful attempts to implant a cloned embryo in a living domestic goat, one embryo survived and was carried to term and born. This event marked the first de-extinction in scientific history. However, the newborn clone died just seven minutes after its birth as a result of physical defects in its lung.

Professor Robert Miller, director of the Medical Research Council's Reproductive Sciences Unit at Edinburgh University, commented:

"I think this is an exciting advance as it does show the potential of being able to regenerate extinct species. There is some way to go before it can be used effectively, but the advances in this field are such that we will see more and more solutions to the problems faced."

Sources

• Brown, Austin. "TEDxDeExtinction: A Primer." Revise and Restore, the Long Now Foundation, March 13, 2013. 
• Folch, J., et al. "First Birth of an Animal from an Extinct Subspecies (Capra Pyrenaica Pyrenaica) by Cloning." Theriogenology 71.6 (2009): 1026–34. Print.
• García-González, Ricardo. "New Holocene Capra pyrenaica (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Bovidae) Skulls from the Southern Pyrénées." Comptes Rendus Palevol 11.4 (2012): 241–49. Print.
• Herrero, J. and J. M. Pérez. "Capra pyrenaica." The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: e.T3798A10085397, 2008.
• Kupferschmidt, Kai. "Can Cloning Revive Spain's Extinct Mountain Goat?" Science 344.6180 (2014): 137-38. Print.
• Maas, Peter H. J. "Pyrenean Ibex - Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica." The Sixth Extinction (archived in Wayback Machine), 2012.
• Ureña, I., et al. "Unraveling the Genetic History of the European Wild Goats." Quaternary Science Reviews 185 (2018): 189–98. Print.