Part One

Goats and sheep both belong to the tribe Caprini of the family Bovidae in the sub-order Ruminantia of the order Artiodactyla (Zeuner, 1963; Epstein, 1971; Corbet, 1978; Corbet & Hill, 1980; Ryder, 1984). They are typical cloven-hoofed ruminants of relatively small size. The tribe Caprini is comprised of five genera. Two of these genera, Capra and Hemitragus, are true goats; one genus, Ovis, is the sheep; and there are two genera -Ammotragus and Pseudois -of goat-like sheep or sheeplike goats. The Barbary sheep or aoudad, Ammotragus lervia (Figure 1), is confined to the Sahara and the bharal or blue sheep, Pseudois nayaur, to the Himalayas: neither of these have been domesticated and neither will hybridize with true sheep of the genus Ovis. Fertile offspring by male Barbary sheep out of female domestic goats are known, however. According to latest taxonomic opinion the two genera of true goats are divided into three species of Hemitragus or tahrs, and six of Capra. All the tahrs have the same chromosome number (2n=48). Most of the Capra species are interfertile although for some pairs no crosses are recorded: all the species examined (bezoar, ibex and markhor) have the same number of chromosomes (2n=60).