Mouflon
species of mammal
The mouflon (Ovis gmelini) or moufflon is a wild sheep native to Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and two separate parts of Turkey.
Thought to be the ancestor of all modern domestic sheep breeds, this wild sheep can also be found in parts of Europe, particularly in Mediterranean islands.
Taxonomy
Ovis gmelini was the scientific name proposed by Edward Blyth in 1841 for wild sheep in the high mountains of Armenia and Iran.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, several wild sheep were described that are considered mouflon subspecies today:
Ovis ophion by Blyth in 1841 for wild sheep in Cyprus;
Ovis laristanica by Nikolai Nasonov in 1909 for wild sheep in Lar in southern Iran;
Ovis orientalis isphahanica by Nasonov in 1910 for wild sheep in the Zagros Mountains.
Subspecies
Five mouflon subspecies are distinguished by MSW3, from west to east:
Anatolian mouflon, O. g. anatolica (Arıhan, 2000), also called ceren once almost extinct population of mouflon that is slowly coming back. Core population lives in the region of Konya, and has been reintroduced to Ankara, Eskişehir, Afyonkarahisar, Karaman, Kahramanmaraş and Kırşehir in its former range. Total population is about 800.
Cyprus mouflon, O. g. ophion (Blyth, 1841): also called agrino (from the Greek Αγρινό); nearly driven to extinction during the 20th century.
“Mouflon” enters the record as species of mammal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mouflon, species and mammal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Mouflon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mouflon, species and mammal provides the most credible route into that argument.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q190294. The Library of Congress control number is sh85087707. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1909, 1910 and 2000.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mouflon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.