Thanks for posting this picture! It's nice that these guys are finally back on exhibit. Sadly since I have school exams coming up, I won't be able to see them for over a month. Also does the zoo only have males? I can see that all of the ones in the picture have horns.
When I was on the Zoomobile on Friday, they only mentioned them Mouflons being female, and that both genders grow horns.
Even though both genders can grow horns, only the males grow large ones like what is in the picture. Females either grow much smaller horns or have no horns at all.
In theory we have a male. Of the two Mouflon whos names we have one is Penelope and the other is Peter. But who knows how out of date those names are now. And even if it was up to date for those two animals at the closing of Eurasia, they could have died since.
Makes sense to introduce the females first. Let them get used to the others, let the others get used to them. And once everyone is happy hopefully the males take the females led and transition smoother. Its not like the males need to be in the exhibit. If they were to prove too agressive they could be kept off exhibit and just introduced to the females for breeding.
I'm not trying to say that you or the zoomobile announcer is wrong, but in all of my pictures from the zoo when Eurasia was open, the female mouflon do not have horns.
From what I understand, males and female Mouflon do grow horns, although not all females grow horns. I'm guessing you may have pictures of females that never grew horns.
The zoo's website says males have horns, while females may or may not have them. Maybe we just have a group of females right now with them. Toronto Zoo | Mouflon Just thought I would add the page to make things easier for anyone who would like to check. I dont know how many Mouflon we had before Eurasia was closed but could it be possible we have a lot of new animals? Might explain the difference if we had a mix of die off and transfers that resulted in a ton of new animals.
I have seen mouflon in various mexican zoos, where they breed very well. I have seen mouflons at Chapultepec zoo, León zoo, Irapuato zoo and Africam safari park. The animals in the photo certainly do look like males.
