Desert Bighorn Sheep

Desert bighorn are built for country with almost no water in it — a subspecies adapted to the dry mountain ranges of the intermountain West, the southwestern U.S., and northwestern Mexico, able to go long stretches between drinks. Compared to Rocky Mountain bighorn, they run stockier but somewhat smaller, with horns that spread flatter and wider rather than curling tight. Those horns are the whole story during the rut: rams slam them together head-on in contests that settle rank by size and mass, and growing a full curl takes seven or eight years. What really sets them apart underfoot is the hooves — concave and elastic, gripping rock in a way that lets a bighorn move across steep, broken terrain with startling speed.