Kiang

About this species

Size

Withers 132–142cm; body 182–214cm; tail 32–45cm

Weight

Males 350–400kg; females 250–300kg

Diet

Grasses and sedges, especially Stipa; shrubs, herbs and dug-up roots when grass is scarce

Habitat

Montane grassland and shrubland on the Tibetan Plateau

Range

Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in India, northern Pakistan and Nepal, and the Tibetan Plateau

The kiang is the largest of the wild asses, standing 132–142 cm at the withers with a body of 182–214 cm. The coat is a rich chestnut, darker brown in winter and sleek reddish brown in late summer after the woolly fur moults, and the legs, underparts, muzzle tip and insides of the ears are white. A broad dark chocolate stripe runs from the mane to the tail, which ends in a blackish-brown tuft. Males weigh 350–400 kg and females 250–300 kg (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives on the Tibetan Plateau, including Ladakh, and in the Himalaya from northern Pakistan, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in India to Qinghai, Gansu, southern Xinjiang and Sichuan in China. It is a grazer, eating grasses and sedges, especially Stipa, and in winter or in arid margins it also eats shrubs, herbs and roots dug from the ground. It drinks at waterholes when it can, but these are rare, so it probably gets most of its water from plants or from snow (Wikipedia, general species account).

Description: Wildlife of India guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)