Three kids, one wall, one rule
- 1906
Three kids over the border
By the early 1800s, hunting had wiped Alpine ibex out across almost all of the Alps. About a hundred survived in one valley, Gran Paradiso in Italy, the king's private hunting ground. Switzerland asked for years to buy a few. The king refused. So in June 1906, three ibex kids, two females and a male, were smuggled over the border. One of them was Bex's ancestor.
- 1906 to 1933
Starting over with almost nothing
Over the next 27 years, 59 kids made the same trip and were raised on baby bottles in a wildlife park in St. Gallen. Today tens of thousands of ibex live across the Alps, and all of them come from that one small group. Bex's family began again in a new country, from almost zero.
- The name
Born above a small town
Bex is short for ibex. It is also a small town in the Swiss Alps, in the canton of Vaud. Bex was born on the slopes above it and named after the place he comes from.
- Age two
He had to leave
Young male ibex leave the herd they grew up in at around two. Nobody asks them. Bex left too, like everyone does, and suddenly had to find his place among strangers.
- One season
He lost every contest
In big groups of males, rank comes down to horn size. Bex was smaller than the rest and lost every contest. For a whole season he kept trying to win by their rules.
- 49 metres
He found his wall
The Cingino dam in northern Italy is a near-vertical wall about 49 metres high. Ibex climb its face to lick minerals off the stones. Heavy adult males don't manage it; lighter, younger ibex do. What made Bex lose on the slope let him climb the wall.
