Bruce L. Smith - Life on the Rocks: A Portrait of the American Mountain Goat

Curious yet cautious, a goat peers over a lichen-encrusted rock. (Photo by author)

Its not hard to imagine how the early explorers, trappers, and fortune-seekers might find the notion of a white buffalo roaming the mountaintops as much reality as phantom or fable. Some 2550 million bison once roamed the continent and were well known to most who ventured west. Even in fiction, the taxonomy of this stout-shouldered creature was enigmatic. A passage from The Big Sky, Pulitzer prize-winning author A. B. Guthries yarn about the mountain men of Montana, describes the mountain goat this way:

It aint a buffler proper, nor a white antelope, neither, though you hear the name put to it and a sight of others. They keep to the high peaks, they do, the tip top of mountains, in the clouds and snow.... Not manys seen a live one. A man has to climb some for that.

Native people of North Americas First Nations, of course, had known the animal for centuries. Some hunted them for food, ceremonial items, and clothing. But well into the twentieth century, these wilderness cliff-walkers were relatively untouched by the westward march of Euro-Americans. It was an animal more of myth and mystery than avarice, and thus it escaped the tsunami of exploitation suffered by the more easily targeted bison, pronghorn, deer, elk, and the goats mountain cousin the bighorn sheep.

Along with its closest relatives that inhabit European and Asian peaks, the mountain goat completes a distinct taxonomic grouping, the Rupicaprini Tribe (Rupes = rock, capra = goat), within the sheep, goat, antelope, and cattle family (the Bovidae). The rupicaprids are regarded as goat-antelopes, possessing traits of both true goats and antelopes but are neither. Characteristic of the mountain goat and its relationsand distinguishing those species from other members of the Bovidae familyare their thin-boned and fragile skulls, and short, dagger-like horns that look similar in both sexes.

From Alaskas Kenai Fiords to Washingtons Mount Shuksan (this photo), ice, rock, and stunning scenery typify the domain of the mountain goat. (Photo by author)

The mountain goats rupicaprid relatives are the mysterious gorals and serows of Asia, and the chamois of Europe. The total number of species depends upon which taxonomist you ask, but there may be as many as four species of goral and between three and six species of serows (see Walkers Mammals of the World and Mammal Species of the World for species accounts). Most authorities agree on two species of chamoisRupicapra pyrenaica of the Pyrenees and Apennine Mountains of France, Spain, and Italy, and the more abundant Rupicapra rupicapra of the Alps, the Balkans, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus.

An adult Chinese goral (Naemorhedus griseus) (Photo by author)

An adult Japanese serow (Capricornis crispus) (Photo by author)