 George Robert Gray noted that it matched a bird illustrated (plate 76) in Jardine and Selby's "Illustrations of Ornithology" which he noted should be called as "Tetraogallus caucasicus" and another illustration plate 141 which was said to be the male of the one in plate 76 was separated based on the geography and given the name of "Tetraogallus himalayensis".The main populations are separated by the Taklamakan desert and the separation has been estimated to have happened after the Pleistocene glaciations (1 mya).The large distribution range is fragmented and these disjunct populations show variations in plumage that have been named as subspecies.