European mouflon introduced into the Mediterranean basin in prehistoric times. According to some zoologists, the European mouflon is not a genuine game species, but a descendant of a very early race of domestic sheep. In fact, there are strong indications that European mouflon came to Corsica and Sardinia only some 7,000 years ago along with Neolithic peoples, since no traces can be found from earlier times. Over the last 200 years, European mouflon have been kept in various places in Europe. Prince Eugene of Savoy kept mouflon in his Viennese wildlife park, some of which were transferred to the Lainz Wildlife Park.
Mouflon domesticated animals, where they have naturalized in the mountainous interiors of these islands over the past few thousand years, giving rise to the subspecies known as European mouflon ("O. orientalis musimon"). On the island of Cyprus, the mouflon or "agrino" became a different and endemic subspecies known as the Cyprus mouflon ("O. o. ophion"). The Cyprus mouflon population contains only about 3,000 animals. They are now rare on the islands, but are classified as feral animals by the IUCN. They were later successfully introduced into continental Europe, including Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, central Italy, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, the