Lincoln Park Zoo acquires 2 brother takins
The Lincoln Park Zoo announced Thursday that it is now home to two takin brothers.
A takin (rhymes with "rockin") is a hoofed animal native to the Eastern Himalayas. The San Diego Zoo describes takins as having "horns like a wildebeest, a nose like a moose, a tail like a bear, and a body like a bison." The Lincoln Park Zoo compares the animals' horns to handlebar mustaches above their ears.
Takins are from the goat-antelope, or Caprinae, subfamily — which also includes sheep, goats, musk oxen, and chamois. Takins are most closely related to sheep, specifically the Barbary sheep of North Africa, the San Diego Zoo said.
Takins measure 5 to 7 feet in length and 3 to 4 feet tall.
At the Lincoln Park Zoo, the pair of takin brothers that have just arrived, 3-year-old Porter and 2-year-old Taiyang, came to Chicago from the Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Indiana, where they were born.
"Takins are such a fun and unique animal to see, and we're excited to welcome these two brothers to their new home here at Lincoln Park Zoo," zoo Curator Dan Boehm said in a news release. "We're quickly getting to know their personalities and have been impressed already with how quickly they've settled into their habitat."
The Lincoln Par Zoo said Porter and Taiyang will soon get to use a brand-new climbing structure the zoo had built for them — mimicking the mountains in their natural habitat.
Sichuan takins' native range is within the mountainous bamboo forests of central China, the Lincoln Park Zoo said. They form herds of up to 100 individual animals in the spring and summer, and then pare down to smaller groups or go solo when it's colder, the zoo said.
Takins have adaptations that allow them to thrive in bot low and high elevations that they migrate between. Their skin secretes an oily substance that waterproofs their coat, their large sinus cavities warm up the air they breathe, and their short legs and split hooves keep them stable as they climb the steep mountains of the Himalayas to find some vegetation and chow down, the zoo said.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has named Sichuan takins a vulnerable species — with their wild numbers having fallen due to overhunting and loss of habitat .But they are also a first-class national protected animal in China, the zoo said.
