Mouflon birth of an exotic animal such as the mouflon. If cloning of the mouflon can proceed successfully, it has the potential to reduce strain on the number of living specimens. Mouflon The mouflon ("Ovis orientalis orientalis" group) is a subspecies group of the wild sheep ("Ovis orientalis"). Populations of "O. orientalis" can be partitioned into the mouflons ("orientalis" group) and the urials ("vignei" group). The mouflon is thought to be the ancestor for all modern domestic sheep breeds. The wild sheep of Corsica were locally called "mufro" (male) and "mufra" (female). The French naturalist Buffon (1707–1788) rendered this in French
Dmitry Belyayev (zoologist) also been of great interest to Darwin. It was recognized that domesticated animals differ in several ways from their wild counterparts, but it was not known what principle of selection had guided the Neolithic farmers who had first domesticated these species thousands of years ago. Belyayev's hypothesis was that "all domesticated species had been selected for a single criterion: tameness." Belyayev further theorized that this attribute "had dragged along with it most of the other features that distinguish domestic animals from their wild forebears, like droopy ears, patches of white in the fur and changes in skull shape." In other