Goats

Goats in the broader sense of the family Bovidae have long been part of the natural history of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, but the records preserved in the Society’s journals reveal that the most significant encounters with wild caprines in the region concerned not the domestic goat but the serow, a goat-antelope of the genus Capricornis that inhabits the steep, forested highlands of South-East Asia. The serow, known locally as kambing gerun or kambing utan (wild goat), has been documented from Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, the Himalayas, China, Tonkin, and Annam, and its taxonomic position has been a matter of sustained scholarly debate from the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth [1, pp. 57–64]. The domestic goat, by contrast, appears in the archival record only as a point of comparison, Marsden noting in 1783 that the domestic species in Sumatra was “in general small, and of light brown colour” [1, p. 57]. The following article surveys what the Society’s literature attests regarding both the wild and domestic forms, with emphasis on the serow, which constitutes the substantive body of evidence.

Taxonomic History and Nomenclature

The first written description of a serow in the region is by William Marsden in his History of Sumatra (1783), where he records the cambing ootan or “goat of the woods,” describing an animal three feet in height and four feet in body length, with horns about six inches long turned back in an arch, a small pointed tail, coarse bristly hair along the ridge of the back, and a large spreading tuft of greyish hair over the shoulder [1, p. 57]. Bechstein, in 1799, based upon this description his Antilope sumatraensis, and Raffles corroborated the occurrence of a serow in Sumatra in 1822, noting that he had kept one for months but found it impossible to tame, and that it finally died from impatience of confinement [1, p. 58].

The first specimen from the mainland of Asia was exhibited before the Zoological Society, London, in January 1832, transmitted by Mr. B. H. Hodgson, British Resident at Katmandoo, Nepal, to Dr. N. Wallich. Hodgson’s detailed description under the name Antilope bubalina noted that the animal was seldom found in herds, that grown males usually lived entirely alone except in the breeding season, and that it tenanted the central region equidistant from the snows and the plains of India [1, pp. 58–59]. This taxon is now recognised as Capricornis sumatraensis subsp. thar Hodgson [1, p. 59].

The first record of a serow inhabiting the Malay Peninsula is by Theodore Cantor in his Catalogue of Mammals inhabiting the Malayan Peninsula and Islands (1846), though his remarks are described by Hanitsch as “disappointingly meagre”: “It appears to be numerous on the Malayan Peninsula, but exceedingly difficult to obtain, as it frequents the steepest hilly localities, and is very shy and active” [1, p. 60]. The Malay Peninsular serow is closely allied to, if not identical with, the Sumatran form, and two geographical races have been described: Capricornis sumatraensis swettenhami Butler and Capricornis sumatraensis robinsoni Pocock [1, p. 60].

The taxonomic confusion surrounding the serow reached its peak in the 1880s and 1890s, when Father Heude, with the help of numerous Catholic missionaries, described no less than 24 species from China and Tonkin alone, specimens deposited in the Sikawei Museum, Shanghai. Sowerby undertook the task of working through this vast collection in 1917 and succeeded in reducing Heude’s 24 species and David’s one species to five valid taxa: C. argyrochaites, C. vidianus, C. milne-edwardsi, C. collasinus, and C. rocherianus [1, pp. 60–61]. Pocock’s 1908 monograph established the genus Capricornis for the serows and described seven geographical races of C. sumatraensis, a framework that remained the standard reference for subsequent comparative work [1, pp. 58].

The Serow from Annam: A Case Study in Taxonomic Uncertainty

The most detailed account of a serow in the Society’s literature is Hanitsch’s 1918 note on a specimen found alive off the Annamese coast in February 1917 [1, pp. 57–65]. Two French gentlemen, Monsieur Louis Chochod and Monsieur Gabriel Saint-Poulof, of Quinhon, Annam, presented to the Raffles Museum the skin and skeleton of the animal, together with photographs of the living animal, careful measurements, and an account of its capture and behaviour in captivity [1, p. 57].

The animal had been picked up in the sea by native fishermen on the morning of 5 February 1917, off the peninsula of Phu’ong Mai (latitude about 13° 30′ N), having apparently fallen from the high cliffs there. It was found alive, tied to a tree and surrounded by onlookers. The animal was uninjured but much frightened, and although it allowed itself to be touched and caressed, its eyes were rolling with terror. M. Saint-Poulof bought the animal from its captors, placed it on a cart, and took it to his house where he photographed it. It continued to make desperate efforts to get free from the rope, drank readily, but refused to feed although offered leaves and grass from the hills, and died three days after [1, p. 57].

The local Annamite name for the animal is con de nui, which signifies “wild horse,” while the French of Indo-China call it moufflon [1, p. 57]. The natives knew nothing definite about its haunts or distribution beyond stating that it lived in the mountains, moved about at night only, was rare, and that only woodcutters and charcoal burners occasionally met with it. Its flesh was regarded as edible but brought ill luck to those who ate it, and its horns were said to have wonderful medicinal properties, with Chinese apothecaries paying high prices for them for treating nervous diseases [1, p. 57].

Hanitsch’s morphological analysis proved inconclusive. The skull measurements (basal length 220 mm, zygomatic width 114 mm, nasal width 31 mm) placed the Annamite form nearest to C. s. rodoni from Chamba, yet it differed by being narrower across the premaxillae, zygoma, and posterior palate, by its longer but narrower nasals, and by its greater height at the frontals [1, p. 63]. Externally, the specimen’s rufous forehead, shaggy coat, and black breast distinguished it from rodoni (which has a white breast) and from jamrachi (which has a coal-black forehead and short coat), leaving it unassigned among Pocock’s seven races [1, p. 63]. Nor did Sowerby’s revision provide a satisfactory conclusion: by locality the animal ought to be C. rocherianus from Along Bay, Tonkin, but that species is distinguished by creamy-white stockings, which the Annamite specimen lacked. Hanitsch noted that Mr. Kloss, working on the mammals of Siam, had serow skins with brown legs that he considered to come under milne-edwardsi or vidianus, making it possible that the Annamite serow belonged to one of these two species, but concluded that “more material and much more study will be required before this question can be settled satisfactorily” [1, p. 64].

Distribution, Behaviour, and Local Knowledge

The archival records attest to the serow’s presence across a wide but poorly defined range. French sportsmen stated that it occurred along the coast of central Annam, on a small island opposite Tourane called “Ile aux moufflons,” on the islands of the Bay of Along, and in the neighbourhood of Ninh-Binh, Tonkin [1, p. 57]. In the Malay Peninsula, the Raffles Museum held two pairs of horns, one from Tanjong Rambutan, Perak, and the other from Chankat Mandai, Ulu Kinta, both presented by Mr. E. M. Schwabe in 1905 [1, p. 60]. A Sumatran specimen from Lebong Tandai, near Benkoelen, was presented in August 1917 by Messrs. P. Jansen and C. J. Brooks, who reported that the animal seemed common in the neighbourhood, as Brooks had once seen a number of serow skins at a native auction at Tijroep [1, p. 58].

The most unusual record of a wild caprine in the region is a brief note by Henry Norman in 1906, recording the capture of an adult male wild goat (Nemorhaedus sumatrensis var. swettenhami) on the flat coastal plain of Selangor in April 1905. The animal was taken alive at Batu, Kuala Langat district, where the surrounding terrain is entirely flat and the nearest high hill, Jugra, is some sixteen miles away, and wild goats had not previously been reported from that hill. Norman speculated that the animal may have been driven from the interior by a rival and wandered down to the coast, where it was caught by the penghulu’s dogs. The goat was kept in captivity and was becoming tame [2, p. 279]. This single record, while not establishing a pattern of coastal occurrence, illustrates the species’ capacity for unusual dispersal and the difficulty of predicting its distribution from terrain alone.

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on goats and serows spans from the earliest natural history observations of the late eighteenth century to the taxonomic revisions of the 1910s, reflecting a shift from descriptive natural history to systematic zoology. Marsden’s 1783 account and Raffles’s 1822 observations established the basic facts of the serow’s presence in Sumatra, while Hodgson’s 1832 description extended the known range to the Himalayas [1, pp. 57–59]. Cantor’s 1846 catalogue confirmed its presence on the Malay Peninsula, though in only a single sentence [1, p. 60]. The period from the 1880s to the 1910s saw an intensification of taxonomic work, driven by the accumulation of specimens from missionary collections in China and Tonkin, the establishment of the Raffles Museum as a regional repository, and the publication of Pocock’s 1908 monograph, which provided the framework of seven geographical races against which all subsequent specimens were measured [1, pp. 58].

The Hanitsch note of 1918 exemplifies both the strengths and the limitations of this tradition. The Raffles Museum, as the principal natural history repository for the Straits Settlements, received specimens from across the Malay world and Indochina, making it a natural venue for comparative zoological work [1, p. 57]. Yet the taxonomic authority remained largely in London-based hands, with Pocock and Sowerby providing the classificatory frameworks that Hanitsch applied to his material [1, pp. 60]. The unresolved status of the Annamite serow, with its failure to fit neatly into any of the seven races or the five Sowerby species, underscores the fragmentary nature of the evidence: a single skull, a single skin, and a set of photographs could not resolve a question that required, as Hanitsch acknowledged, “a much larger series of skulls” [1, p. 63]. The Norman note of 1906, by contrast, represents the other end of the spectrum—a single field observation, recorded in a few lines, that nonetheless contributed a data point to the understanding of the species’ behavioural flexibility [2, p. 279]. Together, these records illustrate how the Society’s journals served as a conduit for natural history knowledge from the peripheries of the colonial world to the centres of taxonomic authority, while simultaneously revealing the persistent gaps in our understanding of even a well-studied group of animals.

MBRAS Sources

• Hanitsch R (1918). On a serow from Annam. JSBRAS 78: 59–65
• H. Norman and H.N. Ridley (1906). Note on the wild goat of the Malay Peninsula. JSBRAS 45: 279

References

1. Hanitsch R (1918). On a serow from Annam JSBRAS 78: 59–65.
2. H. Norman and H.N. Ridley (1906). Note on the wild goat of the Malay Peninsula JSBRAS 45: 279.