I love it when wildlife smiles for the cameraa
This little bighorn lamb was curious about me, pulled across the road with my window down and a big tube sticking out from my face. Though it looks like it's smiling, it's just drawn back its lips for second, snowing the incisors in its lower jaw. Many bovines, including members of the sheep family, have lower teeth only in front. They clamp forage between their lower incisors and the hard upper jaw to pull it into their mouths and chew it with upper and lower molars in the back.
The eponymous bighorn sheep at Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area (Lovell, WY) are pretty comfortable with being photographed alongside the road. The sheep were a source of good meat to the indigenous people of the area but were extirpated from this side (west) of the river in the 1800s when hunters of European heritage also hunted them. By the 1970s some sheep had returned on their own and conservation efforts and habitat restoration helped restore the population to a healthy level.
I love it when wildlife smiles for the cameraa
This little bighorn lamb was curious about me, pulled across the road with my window down and a big tube sticking out from my face. Though it looks like it's smiling, it's just drawn back its lips for second, snowing the incisors in its lower jaw. Many bovines, including members of the sheep family, have lower teeth only in front. They clamp forage between their lower incisors and the hard upper jaw to pull it into their mouths and chew it with upper and lower molars in the back.
The eponymous bighorn sheep at Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area (Lovell, WY) are pretty comfortable with being photographed alongside the road. The sheep were a source of good meat to the indigenous people of the area but were extirpated from this side (west) of the river in the 1800s when hunters of European heritage also hunted them. By the 1970s some sheep had returned on their own and conservation efforts and habitat restoration helped restore the population to a healthy level.