Mouflon scientific literature as separate species, "Ovis musimon" and "Ovis orientalis". The mouflons are also sometimes treated as a subspecies of the domestic sheep, "Ovis aries", named with the same subspecific epithet as above: "O. a. musimon", "O. a. ophion", etc. Based on comparison of mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences, three groups of sheep ("Ovis") have been identified: Pachyceriforms of Siberia (snow sheep) and North America (bighorn and Dall sheep), Argaliforms (argali) of Central Asia, and Moufloniforms (urial, mouflon, and domestic sheep) of Eurasia. However, a comparison of the mitochondrial DNA control region (CR) found that two subspecies of urial, "Ovis
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