Day: August 22, 2016

There are thought to be over 80,000 species of fauna within Turkey whilst the number of species in Europe numbers approximately 60,000. As in the case of flora Turkey is the original homeland of many well-known species. The pheasant, fallow deer and domestic sheep to name a few. Today many of the national parks and countryside are still rich with wildlife such as brown bears, wild boar, lynx, wolves and leopards as well as over 4,000 types of bird. The diversity of fauna in Turkey is even greater than that of wild plants. While the number of species throughout Europe as a whole is around 60,000, in Turkey they number over 80,000. If subspecies are also counted, then this number rises to over a hundred thousand. The fallow deer, now common in Europe was introduced from Turkey in the 17th century. Fallow deer originate from the Taurus Mountains between Antalya and Adana. The pheasant, a staple of the British countryside, comes an area on the Black Sea coast. The Latin name is Phasianus colchicus. "colchicus" derives from Colchis, an ancient kingdom which stretched along the Black Sea coast, now in modern day Georgia.  The domestic sheep is a descendant of the wild sheep, Ovis musimon anatolica, as the Latin name indicates, a native of Anatolia. The Anatolian leopard is now critically endangered in Turkey, once spread throughout the Aegean and Western areas of Turkey, it is now thought to be found only in pockets of the Pontic Mountain range. To the East their territory merges with that of the Caucasian leopard. In 2013, in Diyarbakir, a shepherd shot and killed an Anatolian leopard that was attacking his brother. This was the last known sighting for over 30 years. The tiger is another creature whose original homeland was Anatolia, a little known fact reflected in the name tiger itself , which comes from the Latin name Felis Tigris,