Bighorn sheep | Habitat, Behavior & Adaptations (2024)

bighorn sheep, (Ovis canadensis), stocky, climbing hoofed mammal of western North America known for its massive curling horns. Bighorns are brown with a white rump patch. Horns are present in both sexes, but they are bigger in males (rams). Six living subspecies are recognized. Males of the Rocky Mountain subspecies have horns averaging more than 1 metre (3.3 feet) long as measured along the outer curvature; a record of 1.33 metres was reported in 1900. Males of this subspecies are nearly 2 metres long and weigh up to 137 kg (300 pounds), though the average is 95 kg (71 kg in females, or ewes). The California bighorn is nearly as large; desert bighorns are smaller.

Bighorns prefer open terrain near rocky refuges to which they can escape when they see predators. Diet consists of grass, sedge, shrubs, and herbs. The sheep live in single-sex groups of 2–12, migrating seasonally 1–32 km (0.6–20 miles) to higher elevations in the spring and summer. In late fall they retreat from heavy snowpack to lower elevations. Each young sheep learns a migratory route by following an older group member. Home ranges are thus inherited.

Before the rutting season, males engage in dramatic battles for dominance. Two rams launch themselves at each other from a few metres’ distance for a clash of horns. Sometimes they begin from a threat-jump, in which the ram rears up on its hind legs before colliding with the opponent. The shock of impact is absorbed by a double layer of bone in the skull. Exhaustion leaves breeding rams vulnerable to malnutrition and predators, but ewes prefer to mate with dominant rams. Young rams cannot compete until their horns have reached full curl at seven or eight years of age. Bighorns can live 20 years or more, but life expectancy may be only six or seven years in populations that are reproducing rapidly.

Ewes have their first lambs at the age of three or four years. The single offspring (rarely twins) weighs 3–5 kg and is born in spring after a gestation of nearly six months. Lambs are weaned before winter, when four to six months old. Malnutrition rather than predation accounts for many lamb deaths, as lactating mothers may reduce milk production in order to store fat against the coming cold. Lambs that gain more weight survive winter better and have higher lifetime reproductive success.

As many as two million bighorn once lived from Canada to northern Mexico. In the 1800s overhunting, habitat loss, and livestock diseases nearly drove the species to extinction. Despite conservation measures, they have not significantly recovered. Of the seven modern subspecies, Audubon’s (Badlands) bighorn is extinct, and the Peninsular bighorn of Baja California, Mexico, and the Mexican bighorn are threatened or endangered. Translocations in the western United States restored the bighorn to some of its former range, but most herds are dangerously small or live in small ranges with no protected corridors for migration, and die-offs from livestock diseases still occur.

Related to the bighorn are the thinhorn, or Dall’s sheep (Ovis dalli), which live in alpine zones of Alaska and western Canada, and the snow sheep of Siberia (O. nivicola). All belong to the family Bovidae, subfamily Caprinae (sheep and goats).