- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting an animal that is a fantastic rock climber and lives in the mountains of Europe and Asia.
The Northern chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) is a very small bovid and is a member of the goat-antelope family. In Europe, they spend their summers above the tree line in meadows, at elevations up to at least 3,600 m, and during winter they go to lower elevations, of around 800 m, to live in forests that are mainly dominated by pines. These bovids eat various types of vegetation, including highland grasses, herbs, conifers, barks and needles. Watch the video to learn more about this species!
Special thanks to NatureSpy/Bioterra and the Zoological Society of London for sharing the camera trap videos from the Northern Velebit National Park and the Nature Park Biokovo in Croatia.
Banner image: Image by Manfred Werner via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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Romi Castagnino is Mongabay’s bilingual writer. Find her on Twitter and Instagram: @romi_Castagnino
