They like to eat grass that grows in the meadows on the Alps. Due to their thick coat, ibexes are well-suited to the cold winters on the mountains. They can even slow down their heart rate to conserve energy!
In the summer, however, their thick coat can be too warm. To avoid the sun and stay cool, ibexes tend to eat at night in the summertime.
For hundreds of years, humans hunted ibexes for their meat. By the year 1800, almost all of them were gone. In Switzerland, they were extinct! There were only about 100 ibexes left, all of them living in Italy. To help save the ibex, Italy created a hunting reserve called Grand Paradiso. That helped the ibexes survive and grow in number. Today, they live in Switzerland once more! There are more than 20,000 ibexes living in the Alps now.
