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Capra hircus cretica
SCI designates the Kri-Kri's hunted on the Mediterranean Islands, mainly in Greece, as "Indigenous." Those in Croatia on the island of Dugi Otok, were originally accepted as indigenous, but hybridization has resulted in these animals being classified as feral goats (hybrids). All other Kri-Kri hunted in Europe, namely in estates on the mainland are defined by SCI as "Non-Indigenous."
Bezoar (Sp), Bezoarziege, Pasang (G), Chèvre à bézoard, Pasang, Egagre (F).
Called wild goat by biologists, who consider it the ancestor of the domestic goat and not a true ibex; however, it is commonly called an ibex by hunters and local residents worldwide.
DESCRIPTION The kri-kri has a light brownish coat with a darker band around its neck. It has two horns that sweep back from the head. In the wild they are shy and avoid humans, resting during the day. The animal can leap some distance or climb seemingly sheer cliffs. Callouses develop on the knees and sometimes on the chest. Males are characterized by large, scimitar-shaped, laterally compressed horns. The front edge is a sharp keel with a number of bold, sharp-edged, widely separated knobs. The female has short, slender horns and no beard; it is colored brownish-tan at all seasons, with a dark stripe from eye to muzzle.
DISTRIBUTION & TAXONOMIC NOTES Indigenous European populations are found only on islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The Cretan ibex or agrimi is a feral goat inhabiting the Eastern Mediterranean, previously considered a subspecies of wild goat. The kri-kri today is found only in Greece: specifically on Crete and on three small islands off its coast (Dia, Thodorou, and Agii Pantes); as well as on the island of Sapientza (Messenian Oinousses) and Atlanti off the southwestern coast of Peloponnese, where it was brought in great numbers in order to protect the species from extinction. It, and the introduced population on the Aegean island of Theodorou, are believed to be of reasonably pure stock. Those from the Aegean islands of Dia, Agii Pantes, Erimomilos, Samothrake, Gioura and others are thought to be bezoar x domestic goat hybrids. Some authorities state that bezoar ibexes were never evident on the European mainland, not even as fossils, while others think they may have survived in Bulgaria until about 1891. As molecular analyses demonstrate, the kri-kri is not, as previously thought, a distinct subspecies of wild goat. Rather, it is a feral domestic goat, derived from the first stocks of goats domesticated in the Levant and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean around 8000-7500 BCE. Therefore, it represents a nearly ten-thousand-year-old "snapshot" of the first domestication of goats.
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