Sulaiman Markhor | Online Record Book Preview

Capra falconeri jerdoni

Markor de Sulaiman (Sp), Sulaiman Schraubenzeige (G), Markhor du Sulaiman (F). Also called Sulaiman (or Suleiman) straight-horned markhor. Jerdoni is for British surgeon and naturalist T. C. Jerdon.

DESCRIPTION (male) Shoulder height 35-36 inches (89-91 cm). Weight perhaps 150 pounds (68 kg).

A smaller markhor with a comparatively short body. The coat is short, coarse and thick in winter, short and smooth in summer. The male's ruff is much shorter and less conspicuous than in the northern races. The horns are straight, forming two to three complete spiral turns that can have either a tight twist resembling a corkscrew or a more open twist of the Kabul type. The Sulaiman markhor was first given subspecific status on the basis of its tightly spiralling horns. Paradoxically, such horns appear to be in the minority in most of its range. Schaller found that 100 percent of the markhors he examined from Gadabar Ghan had open spirals, as did 89 percent from Toba-Kakar and 65 percent from around Quetta. He was unable to distinguish an open-spiraled Sulaiman horn from a normally straight, open-spiraled Kabul horn. He also found a very small percentage of Sulaiman markhors with slightly flaring horns somewhat similar to those from Kashmir. In colonial times it was customary to measure these horns in a straight line; however, SCI measures them around the spiral along the keel that begins at the back of the base. Mature Sulaiman markhor females have 6-7-inch (15-18 cm) horns showing one twist.

HABITAT Desert mountains not usually higher than 10,000 feet (3,000 m), but offering some of the more difficult and dangerous hunting for mountain game in the world. Stockley wrote that the ground this animal lived on was particularly bad, the rock being crumbly and rotten as well as steep. He felt it was only this that had saved the animal from extermination by local tribesmen.

DISTRIBUTION Pakistan, south of the Gumal River, mainly in the Sulaiman range and the Torghar hills of the Toba-Kakar range (District Zhob), and in the Takatu Hills (District Quetta).

STATUS Listed as endangered by the USF&WS (1976) and the IUCN and on Appendix I of CITES (1975).