The Mongolian (animal) kingdom

When I was writing my previous post about the prevalence of horses in Mongolian folk songs, I realized I hadn’t talked about any of the animals we saw during our sojourn through the countryside.

In general, animals in Mongolia keep to themselves and don’t seem bothered by either cars or humans.  What is especially interesting is that the animals tend to roam quite freely, even if they are part of a particular herder’s herd.  In the first ger camp I stayed in, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (a real flush toilet, a rare commodity in rural Mongolia) and found three horses wandering around amid the gers. Cows can be seen wandering through the streets of just about any villages, and sheep and goats are everywhere. What was really amazing is that we saw two other kinds of animals that usually live in other parts of the country — camels, which are very common in the southern Gobi area, and yaks, which inhabit the mountains further north from where we were.  Here are some of the creatures I caught with my camera along the way:

Sheep and goats tend to hang out together, and take forever to get across the road.

I hear they're easier to ride than the one-hump variety, but I didn't want to try it...

I would have liked to ride one of these, as they're smaller than the horses we usually see in North America

Yak, yak, yak

 

And here's what one looks like up close!