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Several species of wild sheep and goats live on the grasslands and adjacent mountains. Markhors and turs, both goats, range from Spain to India and northward into Mongolia and Siberia. The tahr, a goatlike animal, is found in the high Himalayas. Goats differ from sheep in that they have beards, feet with scent glands, convex foreheads, and a definite odor among the males.
Some of the world's most unusual mammals live in the mountains which separate central Asia from India. One of the best known is the giant panda, once considered a member of the raccoon family and now thought to be related to bears. This animal lives on a diet consisting mainly of bamboo shoots. For unknown reasons the bamboo is dying, which threatens the pandas' future. The Chinese government has commissioned a team of biologists to study the situation. Although giant pandas have rarely reproduced in western zoos, a number of babies have been born in the Beijing zoo through natural conception, and artificial insemination has recently been successful.
The giant panda shares its bamboo forest with the lesser panda. This animal looks like a raccoon but is related to the giant panda.
Central Asia is isolated from India and Burma by the Himalaya mountain range, the highest mountains on earth. The area is so remote that little is known about the behavior of many of its animals. It is the home of a collie-sized gazelle, several species of wild sheep, and a member of the cow family, the yak. The yak is also domesticated and has been a beast of burden and supplier of milk, wool and fuel for many centuries.
One of the most beautiful of all Himalayan animals is the snow leopard, or ounce. Its fur is in great demand and poaching has placed it in grave danger of extinction.
The snow leopard's main prey is the bharal, or blue sheep, which lives in the Himalayas and other high mountains in eastern Asia.
As one moves south from the high country, the character of the land and its animals change. Rugged mountains give way to forested foothills. This country is the northern edge of the sloth bear's range which also includes other parts of India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Termites are a part of the sloth bear's diet, and it sucks them in by a "vacuuming" process. The bear rips open the termites' nest with its claws, then blows away the dirt and dust, and starts sucking. Its lips protrude; its nostrils close to keep out dirt.
Beyond the foothills, seasonal forests give way to semi-arid plains and desert in India. Axis deer, nilgai (India's largest antelope) and blackbuck live here. In the Gir Forest is the last remnant population of the lions which once roamed from the Atlantic through the Near East and into Asia. But lions have been gone from most of this range for many centuries and exist today only in a protected reserve in the tiny Gir Forest in western India, where a few hundred individuals survive.
Where one finds lions and other predators, scavengers will also be found. In India they include striped hyenas, foxes, dholes (wild dogs), and Indian white-backed vultures. These animals perform a vital function in the balance of nature, cleaning up carrion left by the hunters, thus helping to prevent the spread of disease.
Still farther south lies India's tropical forest, actually two of them — a rain forest and a seasonally deciduous forest. They are home to a large variety of monkeys, mainly of two groups — the short-tailed, stout-bodied macaques, which are primarily terrestrial, and the long-tailed, slender-bodied arboreal langurs.
The macaques include the rhesus monkey of India, sacred to the Hindus, and critical to science. The existence of the Rh blood factor was first demonstrated in rhesus monkeys, and a rhesus was the first living being shot into space in the United States' space program. In Europe, the only wild monkeys are the Barbary apes, actually macaques, of Gibraltar. Legend has it that when these animals disappear — there are approximately 30 of them — Britain's reign over the Rock will come to an end.
The second large group of Asian monkeys, the lan-gurs, are also called leaf-eating monkeys. There are more than a dozen species, among which the douc langur is considered to be one of the most beautiful of all monkeys. The word "douc" means "monkey" in Vietnamese.
Three of the surviving five species of rhinoceroses live in southeastern Asia. Two, the Sumatran and Javan rhinos, could be extinct in the wild. The third, the Indian rhino, exists in small numbers in Assam. Because of the heavy folds of skin and the bumps, called tubercules, on its hips and shoulders, this rhino appears to be wearing a suit of armor.
The Chinese believe that rhino blood, urine, and horn (which is not a true horn at all, but is composed of hair-like material) have medicinal and aphrodisiacal powers. This superstition has resulted in heavy poaching of rhinos, placing them in grave danger.
Among the better-known snakes of southeastern Asia are the Indian and king cobras and the pythons. A king cobra can measure 3.5 m (12 ft) or more. It feeds mainly on other snakes. The closely related Indian, or Asian, cobra is appreciably smaller. The pythons are non-venomous constrictors. Contrary to popular belief they do not crush their victims to death but, through constriction, cause death through suffocation.
Southeastern Asia is the home of some of the showiest of all birds — the pheasants. Although native to Asia, they have been introduced elsewhere and now are among the most widely distributed of birds. One of the most widespread is the ringneck pheasant. An old legend claims that ringnecks were introduced into Greece by Jason, famous for his quest of the golden fleece. Ringnecks were brought to the United States in the mid-1800's and are now game birds. Several species of pheasants are exhibited at the Zoo, two of them roaming freely on the grounds.
The first is the blue peafowl. The male, called a peacock, is the traditional symbol of vanity and false pride because of its almost constant displaying and strutting. The peafowl has been semi-domesticated for ages. A Greek myth relates how the bird got the eye-like spots on its tail. The peacock was a favored pet of Juno, wife of Jupiter. She became angry at her one-hundred-eyed servant, Argus, because of a misdeed on his part. To punish him and to make sure the world remembered his offense, she snatched out his hundred eyes and scattered them on the tail of her pet peacock. There they remain to this day.
The other pheasant that wanders the Zoo grounds is the junglefowl. It looks much like a domestic chicken — understandably since it is the chicken's ancestor.
Anthropologists think the chicken was first domesticated about 4000 B.C. as a fighting bird. Evidence suggests that the first chickens in the New World came with Polynesian sailors. The most ornamental of all domestic chickens are the long-tailed birds bred by the Japanese, some having tail feathers 6 m (20 ft) long.
The hot, humid rain forests of southeastern Asia hold a profusion of wildlife, much of it arboreal. Among these tree dwellers, primates reign, and within this group, the anthropoid — manlike — apes are royalty. Two of earth's four kinds of manlike apes live in southeastern Asia.
The smallest and most agile of these are the gibbons and siamangs. These apes are light-bodied, long-armed and have long, slender hands. Their generic name, Hylobates, means "tree dweller." They are truly champion acrobats, swinging hand over hand and leaping more than 9 m (30 ft) from one branch to the next. On large branches they usually walk upright, holding their arms aloft for balance. Gibbons live in family groups of two to six animals within well defined territories. Their morning whooping, often heard at the Zoo, is a territorial call to warn off other gibbons. The second anthropoid of southeastern Asia is the slow, retiring orangutan. Its name means "old man of the forest," and the orang does seem the most human of the apes. Unlike the gibbon, it is a loner. The species used to be widespread throughout the islands of southeastern Asia but extinction came early on all but Borneo and Sumatra. If we read the evidence correctly, prehistoric man hunted orangutans for food and could have been partly responsible for their disappearance from most of the range. Today fewer than 5,000 individuals remain, and despite strenuous efforts to save them, their numbers continue to drop. The forests they need are falling to the ax, so if the species survives, it will be in zoos and wildlife reserves.
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