Fun facts about the Yak

Fun facts about the Yak

1. In Tibetan, these animals are referred to as gyag (meaning male yak) and nak (meaning female yak)-we simplify it by calling the animal, whether male or female, ‘yak.’

2. The yak is a very strong sturdy animal. They have humped shoulders with short legs and rounded hooves. They have thick, shaggy fur that is short on their backs and longer on the sides and have woolly undercoats on their chests, flanks, and thighs. Both males and females have horns though the males’ tend to be larger and curve outward on the ends. The males are larger in size than females. Domestic Yaks are smaller than Wild Yaks.

3. Domestic Yaks may live up to over 20 years.

4. Domestic Yaks can withstand very low temperatures and are very important to nomadic tribes of the region because they are so surefooted on steep mountain trails.

5. They graze in the early morning and evening and sleep for the rest of the day, and may spend days in the same pasture as they do not like to move about too much. During a severe blizzard, a Yak will turn its tail into the storm and remain motionless for hours.

6. They will make frequent grunting noises, giving them the name “grunting ox.”

7. The calf is able to walk within ten minutes of birth and the pair will rejoin the herd.

8. Domestic Yaks are herbivores, grazing primarily on low-lying grasses, shrubs, herbs, and cushion plants found on the Tibetan plateau. They will also  consume lichens and mosses. Yak drink frequently in the summer and will eat snow in the winter.

9. Lichens is a fungus, that grows, resulting in a composite organism that 

characteristically forms a crust-like or branching growth on rocks or tree trunks.

10. A yak lives on treeless uplands, which are hills, mountains and plateaus between 3,200meters, which is 10,500 feet, and roughly 5,400 meters.

11. The yak stays in high areas with snow during the warmer months of August and September.

12. They live in some parts of Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and China. They live in parts of India too, but they mostly live in Mongolia and China.

13. The yak grazes on grasses, herbs and lichens. They use their horns to dig under the snow for food. Their horns are 20~40 inches long! Wow! That’s about the size of two of your keyboards!

14. A yak can weigh up to about 1,200 kilograms or 2,400 pounds, and have a head and body length of 3-3.4 meters.

15. The soft underhair of the yak can be combed out in the spring. This very fine hair is called Cashmere and can be blended with silk, or can be easily trimmed.

16. Most domestic yaks have black-brown, dense, woolly, and extremely shaggy coats. The wild yak has a black-brown coat with patches of white. 

17. They have horns that grow up to 20 inches long on females, and 40 inches on males. The curved horns grow out from the sides of their heads and curve upwards.

18. Their bodies can grow up to 11 feet in length and their tails can grow up to 24 inches and are very bushy. 

19. The males' weight is usually 670-1,210 pounds. The female’s weigh about a third as much.

20. The female yak will be pregnant for about eight months and give birth to one calf every other year. Their babies are born around June. Female calves stay with the herd, but the bulls move away after three years to join a bachelor herd. A Bachelor herd is a gathering of male animals.

21. Hunters kill wild yaks for the cashmere. They kill them, and bring them to the factory. A lot of people wear cashmere in the winter.

22. Wild yaks might have been domesticated more than 4,000 years ago.

23. Yaks are used in travel and as draft animals.

24. They are also valued for their milk, meat, and wool. 

25. Domestic yaks, can reproduce with other varieties of domestic cattle.

26. The yak, to the people of the Himalayas, was what the reindeer was to Laps.\

27. Anywhere a man could walk, a yak could be ridden.

28. Yaks are high-altitude creatures, adapted to the highland plateaus of the Himalayas when no other large beast of burden will thrive; where horses and cattle and camels died, yaks flourished.

29. Even Tibetan ponies, which can live above 1400 feet in altitude, are small and do not bear as much cargo as a yak will.

30. Yaks have some of the strongest odors of any domesticated animal, often 

described as a combination of cow manure and wet dog 

31. The yak’s digestive system allows food to digest at a temperature of 104 degrees F, keeping it warm even in extremely cold conditions 32. Due to its large lung capacity, yaks can survive in the Himalayas at an altitude as high as 20,000 feet, which is the highest elevation of any mammal’s habitat 

33. Yak milk is pink.