Ibex Insist Dam Wall Is a Perfectly Normal Place for a Snack

A herd of ibex has defended its decision to spend Thursday afternoon standing on the face of a steep stone dam, fifty metres above a mountain valley, licking the wall. The animals, eleven adults and three kids, were spotted from a hiking trail at around two o'clock. Several of them were balanced on ledges narrower than a paperback book. One was scratching its ear with a back leg at the time.

A hiker who stopped to watch said she had assumed at first that the ibex were stuck. She had been preparing to call somebody when a young male strolled diagonally across the wall, paused to lick a particularly interesting stone and then carried on to the top, where he lay down and appeared to fall asleep. At that point, she said, she stopped worrying about the ibex and started worrying about herself.

A senior member of the herd, a large male with horns almost as long as he is tall, said the fuss was unnecessary. The dam, he explained, is simply a cliff with better minerals. The stones have a pleasant salty coating that is hard to find anywhere else on the mountain, and the herd has been visiting for years. He added that he did not understand why humans build such a delicious wall and then only use it for holding water.

The kids, who are only a few months old, have been following their mothers up the wall since early summer. Asked whether this was safe, one mother pointed out that her kid had climbed the dam before it could reliably climb onto a rock by the path. She described the path as much more dangerous, because of all the people stopping suddenly to take photographs.

Local walkers have been asked not to shout encouragement, as it breaks the herd's concentration, and not to shout warnings either, because the ibex find them patronising. The herd intends to return tomorrow. The young male who fell asleep at the top has requested that nobody wakes him before four.

The story is invented, but only barely. In the Italian Alps, Alpine ibex really have been photographed climbing the almost vertical face of the Cingino Dam, standing on tiny ledges and licking the stones. Plant-eating animals often need more salt and minerals than their food provides, and the stone surface of the dam carries mineral salts that the ibex seem to find irresistible. Females and young are often the most frequent climbers.

The ibex manage it thanks to their remarkable hooves. Each hoof is split in two, so the halves can spread and pinch onto an edge, and each half has a hard outer rim for catching small ledges and a softer, slightly rubbery pad underneath that grips like the sole of a climbing shoe. Combined with superb balance and a lifetime spent on steep mountainsides, that makes a dam wall less of a challenge than it looks. Watching from below, it is hard not to feel that the ibex are right, and the rest of us are simply bad at walls.