History of the domestic sheep exact line of descent between domestic sheep and their wild ancestors is unclear. The most common hypothesis states that "Ovis aries" is descended from the Asiatic ("O. orientalis") species of mouflon. A few breeds of sheep, such as the Castlemilk Moorit from Scotland, were formed through crossbreeding with wild European mouflon. The urial ("O. vignei") was once thought to have been a forebear of domestic sheep, as they occasionally interbreed with mouflon in the Iranian part of their range. However, the urial, argali ("O. ammon"), and snow sheep ("O. nivicola") have a different number of chromosomes than other Ovis species,
European mouflon (in 2005 there were 90,000), the largest population being in the Czech Republic (17,500). The population in Germany was around 15,600 animals in 2010 (c. 20,600 in 2005) living in about 120 groups. In Hungary there are around 10,600 and in Austria about 7,500 mouflon (no herds in Vorarlberg). In the early 1980s, mouflon migrated from France to the Swiss canton of Valais, where there are now two colonies with a population of around 200 animals. The IUCN considers the European mouflon to be 'at risk'. Mouflon have a well-developed vision and can recognize a man at a range of