The Himalayan tahr is a wild goat. Not a sheep, not a true goat in the strict zoological sense, but a member of the goat-and-sheep subfamily, sitting somewhere between the two. In its own genus and species — Hemitragus jemlahicus — it evolved on the sides of the Himalayan ranges of Nepal, northern India, southern Tibet and western Bhutan, where it lives between roughly 2,500 and 5,000 metres and trades altitude for the seasons.
Two things matter when you first see a tahr in New Zealand.
The first is that the bulls are unmistakable. A mature bull tahr looks like nothing else on the planet. It is short and stocky, perhaps the size of a small red stag in body but built closer to the ground, and it carries a thick, blonde-to-near-black mane that runs from the back of the neck and falls almost three quarters down the body in winter. The horns curl back, down and inwards in a tight spiral. People sometimes call a good bull "the lion of the mountain," which is sentimental but not far off.
The second is that nannies look completely different — smaller, lighter coloured, no mane, much shorter horns. From a distance you can mistake a nanny group for chamois until you focus a scope on them and notice the heavier build and the soft padding of their hooves on bare rock.
A few quick facts to anchor your mental picture:
- An adult bull in New Zealand commonly weighs around 100–135 kg (220–300 lb). Some sources put bigger NZ-bred bulls higher than that. They are notably heavier than their Himalayan cousins because the alpine forage here is good.
- Nannies are roughly half the body weight of bulls.
- Tahr can live to 14 or 15 years; one captive animal is on record at 22.
- Their hooves are extraordinary. The outer rim is hard keratin, the inner pad is rubbery and soft. They climb rock the way a climber in approach shoes climbs slabs.
In their native range, tahr are listed as Near Threatened. In New Zealand they are abundant — abundant enough that they are simultaneously a hunted big-game animal and a managed pest, depending on which Act of Parliament you are reading. We will come back to that contradiction in chapter twelve.