Ssh, keep quiet, the dahu is a gentle but very timid animal. To have a chance to glimpse one, you’ll have to venture into our forests and imitate its distinctive call or ‘whistle’. But watch out if you’re behind it, as it may fall when it turns around!

This is because the dahu is an animal unlike any other. A close cousin of the chamois, whose size and silky grey-brown coat it shares, it has a very specific distinguishing feature: to adapt to the sloping terrain of our mountains, the Dahus Rupicapra Vacca Montanes has two legs on one side that are shorter than the others. Unfortunately, what it gains in stability it loses in mobility: due to its unusual anatomy, the dahu always has to move in the same direction without being able to turn around. There are two dahu sub-species, which have longer legs on either the left or right-hand side:

–       The dextrorotary dahu, whose legs are longer on the left-hand side is obliged to turn clockwise.

–       The laevorotary dahu, whose legs are longer on the right-hand side is obliged to turn anti-clockwise.