In this frosty land — classified as Siberian not by geography but by biome — herders have long judged sheep's health by their hindquarters' heft. The animals evolved exaggerated humps on their posteriors, like those on a camel's back, as bulwarks against unforgiving winters, when grass sleeps under 2-meter blankets of snow.

Humans spent generations selectively breeding this natural trait to its extreme. The now-quaint tradition of tapping their blubbery behinds is a relic of an era when this manual assessment of lipid reserves was a matter of making it through the year — or not.

Yet, this peculiar line between life and death, in this case traced by the shape of a sheep's tail end, is just one of many borderlands that Baihaba straddles.