The mouflon, spiral-hoofed sheep

The ancestor of the domestic sheep, the mouflon is a wild sheep with a stocky body and thick feet, found in a large number of European countries. The mouflon has a coarse skin, reddish-brown in summer and blackish-brown in winter. The male has two thick horns that spiral backwards (up to 85 cm long). In females, they are short (15 cm) and curved backwards or absent altogether. The Mediterranean mouflon was introduced to our region as part of a wider policy to save the Corsican mouflon and replenish the native big game species, which had all but disappeared by the 1950s.