Mountain goats are courting, and it gets kinda rough
Since starting the Goatlandia project in 2020, we haven’t seen snow cover so light in November, up on the withering summer range. In consequence, rut is happening about a thousand feet higher than usual. It’s also, for reasons less obvious, starting sooner.
Normally, when we first see courting billies, they’re 30 to 50 yards away from calmly grazing nannies, staring fixedly and forgetting to eat. I call it the ‘zombie stare.’ Usually nannies don’t tolerate them any closer until the last week or two in November. This year seems different.
Another unique observation: I’ve postulated in earlier slideshows about the rut that billies, at least here in ecologically-favored Goatlandia, almost never actually stab each other. At least I hadn’t seen it in 5 years of intensive observations. Billies are just too big and lethal to engage in the agitated posturing and horn-tossing that’s routine amongst the nursery groups. Last year’s show featured a pair of nanny-cruisin billies, threatening each other, but so slowly and ceremonially that bloodshed seemed unlikely.
Naturally, as soon as I make a claim like that, Jánwu will do something to prove me wrong. Watch the billy-buds, skylined in this video. Each has a generous wad of their crusin-partner’s underwool, flying from his horn tip in the breeze. In antiparallel whirling, which kids start practicing in their first week of life, goats stand head to rump, and force each other into rotations. These guys both fly wool from their left horn, so you can tell which way they whirled. Beta might even have double-scored his bigger, stinkier friend, who has one tuft of dislodged wool over his ribs, and more on his hind leg. Seems like Alpha might be limping, but the big guys often walk like that. I guess I would too if I weighed over 300 pounds and stopped eating for a month.
