What do yaks look like

Breakfast of peacemakers: The Dalai Lama starts each morning with tsamba, flour made from toasted barley that is often added to salted tea that has been mixed together with yak butter—a traditional and popular meal in Tibet. Grass-fed meat: Though Tibetan Buddhists typically minimize their meat consumption, nomads have long survived harsh conditions on high-protein yak meat, sometimes even consuming fresh meat raw. Preserved yak meat—aka jerky—comes in handy on long treks, and is popular among tourists.

Outsiders also flock to storefronts across Tibet hawking yak dumplings and even yak burgers. Bio-fuel hazard: For centuries, Tibetans have fired their stoves with cakes of dried yak dung.

The effects of black carbon are particularly disastrous in the Himalaya, where the climate is warming at a rate of three to five times faster than global trends. Body check: Each summer, yaks shed their downy undercoat, and Tibetan nomads comb out and process the soft, cashmere-like fiber. The courser outer hair makes its way into ropes, tents, and even theatrical wigs while yak hide becomes bags and boots.

Yaks are primarily found throughout the Himalaya region of southern Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau, and as far north as Russia and Mongolia. Yaks are herbivores. Their diet consists mainly of grasses, herbs, wild flowers, mosses, tubers, and lichens. Yaks are kept primarily for their meat, milk, fiber, and as beasts of burden transporting goods or pulling plows for local farmers and traders, and climbing and trekking expeditions. Their droppings are also used as fuel.

In some cultures, yak racing and yak polo are forms of sport and entertainment. Yaks are considered to be very gentle animals. Domestic yaks are considered livestock and, although they live in close association with humans, they are rarely kept as pets. Yaks are cattle and, as such, their care requirements are very similar to those of other domestic cattle. Yaks are gregarious animals, and sometimes form herds of up to animals, although most herds are much smaller, at about 10 — 20 individuals.

These herds often only comprise the females and their young, though adult males may sometimes travel with the herd. Most often, however, the males are solitary, or form small bachelor herds. When the conditions are cold, for example at night and in snowstorms, yaks protect themselves from the cold by huddling together, and positioning the calves in the center, where it is warmer.

It is one of the warmest, silkiest, and softest natural fibers. It is as soft as, and much more sustainable than, cashmere, which causes overgrazing. Yak down is a sustainable, renewable fiber and is extremely rare. Each yak only produces about a kilogram 2. The only dog sweaters handmade from the down of these magnificent beasts are our Happiness Hugs.

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