Chapter two
Habitat & Range
The yak's address is a punchline in every good sense: it lives on the roof of the world, higher than any other mammal its size is willing to call home.
The high country
Wild yaks hold the Tibetan Plateau — the Changtang in particular — plus fringe ranges in Ladakh and northern Nepal. Domestic yaks are more widely traveled: across China's Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Xinjiang, and Tibet, and through Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, and the high valleys of Central Asia. Wherever they are, the recipe is the same: treeless, windswept grassland above 3,000 meters.
How high is high?
| Elevation | What lives there |
|---|---|
| 0–2,000 m | Most of the world's cattle are perfectly happy here |
| 3,000 m | Domestic yak territory begins in earnest |
| 4,000–5,000 m | Prime yak country — the summer sweet spot |
| 5,500 m and beyond | Where wild yaks retreat in winter to find wind-scoured grass |
At 5,000 meters the air holds about half the oxygen it does at the seaside. Humans acclimatizing to that height get headaches and can die of it; the yak simply lives there, with the oversized lungs and oxygen-hungry blood described in Yak Biology.
Winter asks everything
A plateau winter is not "cold" so much as "anticold": months of −30 to −40 °C nights, hurricane-force winds, and grass buried under snow. The yak manages by not losing what it has:
- The three-layer coat sheds wind and seals in body heat.
- With no sweat to evaporate, almost no heat is wasted on cooling.
- Pawing through a few centimeters of snow for sedge is a yak parlor game.
What a yak eats
Grass, sedge, and herbs — the plateau's short, dense carpet. Yaks graze in the cool hours around dawn and dusk, rest through the midday wind, and in winter trade fresh growth for whatever the wind uncovers, plus lichen and moss when they must. Snow often doubles as the water supply.
Sharing that short summer feast are the plateau's other heavyweights: kiang (wild ass), Tibetan antelope, blue sheep — and, on the wild yak's calves, the predators. Wolves and snow leopards take a share, which is one reason wild yak cows form tight defensive herds, as the comparison page describes.
Winter also explains the single most important thing a yak does for its people: burning its dung is often the only fuel for hundreds of kilometers. That story continues in Yaks & People.