Those DAM Goats!

[MarkBC]

A friend forwarded to me some amazing photos.

Maybe they've made the e-mail circulation round more than once, but it's the first time I've seen 'em:




These are "Alpine Ibex" on the face of Diga del Cingino dam in Italy.

I think I've seen video of some kind of mountain goats -- maybe these -- doing incredible stuff on cliffs... Seems like it was Galen Rowell narrating/commenting on the action in that film. As I recall, he was there -- watching them, and said that he'd have trouble scaling with hands the cliff that the goats did using just feet.

Follow-up: I found that these photos were on a November 2010 page of National Geographic "Daily News".

 

[craig333]

Omg, thats incredible. Now why do they feel need to cimib a dam?

 

[Smokecreek1]

Omg, thats incredible. Now why do they feel need to cimib a dam?


Why did the chicken cross the road?

Smoke

 

[MarkBC]

Now why do they feel need to cimib a dam?

In the e-mail that sent me the photos it said that the goats climb up there to lick salt (?) and eat moss and lichen.

 

[Foy]

In the e-mail that sent me the photos it said that the goats climb up there to lick salt (?) and eat moss and lichen.


The dam's facing appears to be clad in quarried stone blocks. It would not be the least bit unusual for the stone, if quarried from sedimentary rock, to have small amounts of evaporite minerals present. You can see just a bit of a white coating dripped down the face in one of the pics. Could be the heat and cool + humidity + some rain causes an evaporite (which halite, or salt, is one) to leach out of the stone, form a crust on the dam's face, and attract the goats.

Whatever the reason, GREAT pics which I've never seen before.

Foy

 

[pods8]

That is cool. Wonder if they ever fall.

 

[MarkBC]

........Could be the heat and cool + humidity + some rain causes an evaporite (which halite, or salt, is one) to leach out of the stone, form a crust on the dam's face, and attract the goats....

Thanks for the insight, Foy -- makes sense!

Wonder if they ever fall.

I bet they do...
A guy I know has a story he might call "When animals screw up": He was sitting in camp somewhere -- Yosemite Valley, I think -- when all of a sudden a squirrel fell from a tree and hit the ground. The squirrel picked himself up and seemed OK, looked around to see if anyone had seen his blunder, and ran off.

Animals do screw up!
And when they screw up in a big way -- like falling down that dam-face -- it leads to what we call "natural selection".