Bighorn sheep
Amazing fact
Young bighorn sheep learn migration routes and suitable habitats from adults in their group.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
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An illustration based on the real animal.
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Young bighorn sheep learn migration routes and suitable habitats from adults in their group.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Bighorn sheep
- Scientific name
- Ovis canadensis
- Japanese name
- ビッグホーン
- Group
- Land mammals
- Class
- Mammalia
- Order
- Artiodactyla
- Family
- Bovidae
- Genus
- Ovis
A wild sheep that lives on steep mountains and cliffs in dry regions from western Canada to northern Mexico.
Males fight by clashing head to head. Their skulls are strongly built to protect the head in these battles.
It zigzags up and down cliff faces with ease, using narrow rock ledges as footholds and bouncing from ledge to ledge.
How the Bighorn sheep lives
They feed at intervals during the day and are mainly active in daylight. Many populations use uplands in summer and gather in sheltered valleys in winter. Adult males spend most of the year in groups separate from females and young.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity WebBasic data
- Size
- 150–180 cmUniversity of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
- Weight
- 53–127 kgUniversity of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
- Lifespan
- up to 19 years in the wild, 6–15 years in the wildUniversity of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
- Active
- By day (diurnal)University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
- Range
- Western Canada, western United States and northern Mexico環境省
Where the Bighorn sheep has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- ビッグホーン
- 简体中文
- 大角羊
- 繁體中文
- 大角羊
- 한국어
- 큰뿔양
- Español
- Borrego cimarrón
- Français
- Mouflon D'Amérique
- Deutsch
- Dickhornschaf
- Português (Brasil)
- Carneiro-selvagem
- Italiano
- Bighorn
- العربية
- كبش الجبال الصخرية
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Domba bertanduk besar
- Tiếng Việt
- Cừu núi bắc Mỹ sừng lớn
- Русский
- Толсторог
- Türkçe
- Amerika yaban koyunu
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 環境省 — ワシントン条約と種の保存法 ビッグホーンChecked: 2026-11-04
- University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web — Ovis canadensisChecked: 2026-11-04
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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