Those massive curling horns for which the bighorn are famous are mainly used to secure breeding rights to a particular female. At around 7 to 8 years, a ram's horns may curl fully around, spanning over 30 inches across and weighing up to 40 pounds.

During breeding season, he and another male will face off some distance away, and reach speeds of up to 20 miles per hour before colliding head-on with an earth-shaking crash. How is it that the winner and loser alike aren't brain damaged? The sheep's skull is heavy and double-layered, with struts of supporting bone structure. The skull is attached to the spine by heavy cords of tendon to keep everything in place. The horns themselves grow throughout their lives, but stop once a year during breeding season, creating growth rings that indicate the age of the animal. Often males will rub off the tips of their horns on rocks to prevent them from interfering with their vision. This is called "brooming," because of the way it frays the ends of the horns.

The other astonishing characteristic of the desert bighorn is their aptitude for leaping from ledge to ledge and climbing nearly vertical walls of rock. They have elastic cushioning pads on the bottoms of their hooves that absorb impact and provide grip on smooth rock surfaces. A bighorn can leap across gaps up to 20 feet wide and can run up to 30 miles per hour on the flat. 

Like all desert animals, the bighorn needs to be able to maximize the limited options for nutrition in their world. Like other sheep, they have a complex digestive system, putting food through nine stages of digestion, regurgitation and chewing, wringing every last nutrient out of the succulents, grasses, leaves, weeds and twigs that make up the bulk of their diets. In the winter the bighorn can range far from water, getting most of what they need from impromptu puddles and their food, but in the summer they'll need to drink from a reliable water source every couple of days. 

This complex digestive system is the only vulnerability that the bighorn have to human influence in the Grand Canyon.

They tend to ingest bits of garbage like food wrappers or pieces of plastic tarp left behind by careless hikers, rafters and campers, causing potentially fatal havoc in their digestive tracts - another of the countless reasons to practice "Leave No Trace" methods of exploring the Canyon.

Article by Sarah Horton

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