Markhor

Male markhor grow the most elaborate horns of any wild goat, tightly twisted into a corkscrew or open spiral shape depending on the population, and in the largest old males the horns can exceed 1.5 metres measured along the curve, with straight-line lengths well over a metre. The horns grow throughout the animal's life, adding a ring each year, and are used mainly in contests between males during the breeding season, when rivals rear up and crash their horns together, then lock and twist in a wrestling match that establishes dominance and access to females. Females also have horns, but they are far shorter and less twisted.

Markhor numbers fell through much of the 20th century due to unregulated hunting for meat and horns, competition with growing herds of domestic goats and sheep, and habitat loss, and by the 1990s many populations were small and fragmented. The turnaround in several areas, most notably in Pakistan, came from community-based conservation schemes in which local communities are granted a small number of permits each year to guide tightly regulated hunts targeting a few old, post-breeding males, for very high fees. The bulk of that money goes directly to the communities, giving them a strong financial incentive to protect the markhor and its habitat from poaching and to limit livestock grazing, and markhor populations in participating areas have grown substantially as a result.

The markhor inhabits some of the most rugged mountain terrain in Central and South Asia, on steep rocky slopes, cliffs, and scree fields, and in scattered woodland, at elevations ranging from around 500 metres up to over 3,600 metres, often moving to lower, more sheltered ground in winter. Its main strategy for avoiding predators such as snow leopards, wolves, and lynx is to feed and rest in extremely steep, broken terrain where its exceptional climbing ability and balance let it move safely but a pursuing predator cannot, and to rely on keen eyesight and group vigilance to detect danger early and retreat onto the cliffs.

Yes. The markhor is a wild goat in the genus Capra, the same genus that contains the domestic goat and several other wild species such as the ibex and the wild goat or bezoar. Markhor can and sometimes do interbreed with domestic goats where the two come into contact, which is one of the concerns associated with livestock grazing in markhor range, alongside competition for forage and the transmission of diseases from domestic animals. The domestic goat is generally thought to descend mainly from the bezoar rather than the markhor, but the markhor has contributed to some domestic goat breeds in parts of Asia.