Yakety yak or the Wild and the not so Wild Yak in Tibet

 

Yak near Rongbuk monastery / Mt. Everest base camp

“Take out the papers and the trash

Or you don't get no spendin' cash

If you don't scrub that kitchen floor

You ain't gonna rock and roll no more

Yakety yak (Don't talk back)”

The Coasters

The wild yak is a large wild bovid, native to the Himalayas and called scientifically Bos mutus; it is the ancestor of the domestic yak, which is called Bos grunniens. Yakety yak, yakety yak – just that we don’t get too serious. I don’t think that we saw Bos mutus but only Bos grunniens as Bos mutus is a species with an estimation of only 10,000 animals left in 2008 (look for details in the Wikipedia article). Too bad, I’d say, as this gene pool could be important in the future. For the gold haired subspecies, known as the Wild Golden Yak (金丝野牦牛), the situation is even worse as with an estimated population of 170 left in the wild, it is considered an endangered species.

The wild yak roams in the treeless uplands between 3,000 and 5,500 m (9,800 and 18,000 ft), where it lives on grasses and sedges, herbs, shrubs, mosses, and even lichen (artic ruminants like the reindeer live on lichens during winter!).

Crossing the wild waters

 

A fight in the grasslands

 

 

More likely to a dzo - interbred between yak and cattle

 

 

Dzo or yak - bulls, no doubt about that

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_yak

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