The Himalayan serow

The serow belongs to the group informally called goat-antelopes, which sit within the subfamily Caprinae alongside goral, takin, ibex and the true goats. It looks like an animal assembled from spare parts — the head of a goat, the ears of a donkey, a coarse dark coat and short backward-curving horns — and it lives on the steepest, most densely wooded slopes it can find, usually between temperate broadleaf and coniferous forest belts. That habitat choice explains why it is so seldom seen: unlike ibex or blue sheep, which feed on open alpine pasture where a surveyor can count them through a telescope, the serow stays inside forest cover and moves alone. Camera-trap and patrol video have therefore become the standard evidence for its presence, and an absence of records for twenty years is not proof of extinction so much as proof of how hard the animal is to detect. This is why a single confirmed video counts as significant conservation news.