Goats and Sheep Are Brawling in the Rockies. Blame Glacial Melt

This story originally appeared on The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In one corner, there is the agile climber with steak-knife-like horns. In the other is America’s largest wild sheep. They are locked in one-sided combat in the mountains of the US West, scientists have found, in a battle over resources uncovered by the region’s vanishing glaciers.

In study sites across a 1,500-mile span of the Rocky Mountains, scientists have documented mountain goats and bighorn sheep competing over mineral deposits among the rocks, at elevations of up to 14,000 feet.

These contests, never previously outlined in detail, show that two of the US’s heftiest native mammals are involved

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