Tour: Animal and its image

When it comes to this representative of the fauna, there is often a certain misunderstanding of the question. The fact is that in a number of authoritative sources it is asserted that the tour is an extinct animal. And then there is information about the area of its modern habitat. But everything is easily explained when it becomes clear that the same name denotes completely different kinds of animals.

Ancestor of domestic animals

A sad historical fact is that the beast that Vladimir Vysotsky mentioned in his early song: "Whether a buffalo, a bull, or a tour" is an animal really extinct. This fact is established and documented in a number of historical sources. The last tour on Earth was lost in 1627. Until then, a small herd was kept in the royal hunting grounds near Warsaw. It is this circumstance that made it possible to determine with such accuracy the date of disappearance of the relic ancestor of modern cattle from the face of the earth. All domestic animals of this species have come from this, now not existing in nature wild ox. But today the tour is presented only in the expositions of some zoological museums in the form of reconstructed skeletons and skulls. But even such remains provide quite a clear idea of how this animal looked in reality. He looked very impressive.

What do we know about the tour?

Studying bone remains and preserved graphic images, we can conclude that the tour - an animal that grows just under two meters and weighs about eight hundred kilograms. The range of its habitat covered the entire middle belt of the continent Eurasia from the Iberian Peninsula to the Pacific Ocean. It was a powerful, muscular animal with large and sharp horns, dominating other fauna. If you exclude a man, then he had practically no natural enemies in nature. The disappearance of this species resulted in both a hunt for it and a catastrophic decline in the relict forests, which are its natural habitat. Currently, the tour is an animal, rather, a mythological one. Its image is present both on medieval heraldry, and on the arms of some modern states and autonomous territories. The image of a wild bull, or tour, is widely represented in the folklore and mythology of many peoples of Europe and Asia.

Spanish Bulls

In the preserved in the immutability from the time of the early Middle Ages the ritual of the Spanish bullfight, in addition to the bullfighter, the main character is the bull. Historically, of all the representatives of large horned animals , the Spanish bull most of all retained the features of the relict tour. At present, even a series of biological experiments aimed at the revival and restoration of the natural population of the tour are carried out. It is planned to apply gene technologies and clone the tour using DNA molecules isolated from its bone remains . It is premature to speak about the results of this bold project, but it can not be ruled out that in the near future mankind is waiting for sensational news from the sphere of zoology.

Mountain tour

And the other horned representative of the fauna was much more fortunate. In any case, there is no direct threat of extermination for him. The point here is a simple coincidence of names. Just like the relic bull that disappeared from the face of the earth, in zoology is called the whole genus of mountain goats, of which there are a total of eight species. So it's a completely different tour. The animal, whose photo is adorned with many textbooks of zoology, lives on steep, hard-to-reach mountain slopes. And, despite the poaching of him, he does not intend to die for the time being. Inhabit the mountain goats in many regions of Eurasia and northern Africa. They differ in unpretentiousness in food and ability to survive in the most difficult natural conditions. By the ability to move with great speed on an almost steep surface with them, no one can compare.

On the slopes of the Caucasus

On the territory of the Russian Federation mountain goats also have their authorized representatives. The Caucasian tour is widely known. The animal lives in the hard-to-reach part of the region, mainly in the area of the Russian-Georgian border, and has two varieties: the West Caucasian and the East Caucasian. Sometimes it is called the Caucasian mountain goat. In recent years, there have been alarming trends in the existence of these species. Their population has noticeably decreased, and this fact requires the adoption of vigorous legal measures aimed at protecting animals from poaching extermination. However, due to the complexity of the situation in many regions of the Caucasus, in practice, it is not so easy to implement environmental protection measures. It is not enough to write a vanishing animal into the International Red Book, it is also necessary to provide a real regime for its protection.