Yaks Use Highest, Steepest Parts of the World for No-Boys-Allowed Meetings

It's hard for humans to tell what wild yaks are doing up there. Living high in the Tibetan Plateau, the rare ungulates are not easy to find. When scientists managed to track some down, they saw that females are hanging out in huge groups with no males allowed. And, though no one knows why, the females prefer habitat that's higher and steeper than where the boys play. Currently rebounding from poaching, wild yaks—which, male and female, look a bit like bison wearing skirts—are still endangered. Yet without knowing much about where or how yaks live, conservationists can't be sure of the best ways to protect them. So University of Montana biologist Joel Berger and his colleagues traveled to Tibet in late 2012 and went looking for yaks. The researchers crisscrossed the Kekexili National Nature Reserve, a protected area of the Tibetan Plateau with an altitude ranging from 4,300 to 6,900 ...