Vertebrates

Terrestrial Mammals

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(EA-Zoo. A. L. Rand)

TERRESTRIAL MAMMALS

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Cenozoic Migrations	1
Effects of Glaciation on Present Range	3
Habitats	6
Abundance of Individuals	8
Fluctuations in Numbers	9
Bodily Adaptations	9
Food	16
Storage of Food	18
Migration	21
Hibernation	24
Shelter	27
Mammal Interrelationships	30
Mammals in Relation to Man	31
Synopsis of Northern Mammals	35
Insect Eaters: Insectivora	36
Bats: Chiroptera	37
Flesh Eaters or Carnivores: Carnivora	37
Hares, Rabbits, and Pikas: Lagomorpha	39
Rodents: Rodentia	39
Hoofed Mammals: Artiodactyla	41
Bibliography	42

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TERRESTRIAL MAMMALS

        Terrestrial mammals have been able to occupy the North as far as there is

land on which grows the vegetation they, or the animals on which they prey,

feed. The geological history of the land had its part in determining the

course of evolution of the mammals there, and the climate and its effects have

been a filter, determining what animals may invade the area. The rigorous

northern conditions, with widely contrasting seasons, have demanded modifications

in bodily structure and in behavior.

        These same great seasonal changes, sometimes with yearly deviations, have

given a biological situation not yet in balance, so that great changes still may

occur from year to year. The relatively small variety of life in the North has

resulted in the development of some close interrelationships, including the

intimate dependency of man on the other mammals.

       

Cenozoic Migrations

        One of the striking things we see in going from the northern part of the Old

World to that of the New is that the mammals are much the same; familiar types of

shrews, bears, weasel, mink, marten, otter, squirrels, voles, beaver, caribou,

and sheep may be considered different species by the zoologist, but their close

similarity indicates they are closely related and have had a common history.

        This similarity between the mammals of northern North America and of northern

Eurasia certainly indicates a closer land connection in the not-far-distant past,

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a land connection large enough and of long enough duration for the mammalian

forms to develop together. As the differences increase as one goes south, the

connection must have been in the north. Land connections across the Atlantic

have been postulated, but Simpson’s study of the fossil evidence indicates that

a land bridge across the Bering Sea from Alaska to Siberia accords much better

with the evidence and is sufficient to explain both present-day distributions

and those of the past as indicated by fossils. The effects of this land bridge

on various faunas have been traced through geological time from the early Eocene

to the Pleistocene epoch, and is still to be seen today, in the Recent. But it

was not continually in existence. It evidently was interrupted a number of times,

some of the interruptions lasting perhaps for several millions of years. The

latest land bridge was in the Pleistocene. There may even have been some land

connection and some small local migrations between Alaska and Siberia across

the Bering Sea area during the Recent glaciation, whose distance in the past is

probably measurable in tens of thousands of years rather than in millions, as

with some of the former connections.

        Where mammals first originated is still shrouded in mystery. In the early

Eocene the fossil evidence indicates that representatives of all the large groups

were involved in the movements across the Bering Sea between North America and

Eurasia. But later exchanges were of smaller scope and concerned only northern

groups already common to the two continents.

        In the early Eocene the direction of the migration is unknown. In the late

Eocene there are indications that the migration was more from North America to

Eurasia rather than the reverse. After this, though the faunal exchanges involved

migrations in both directions, the evidence indicates that more groups probably

migrated from Eurasia to North America. This later preponderance of an eastward

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migration is correlated with the larger area of the temperate zone Eurasian land

mass compared with that in North America, and the impact on its fauna of aggressive

immigrants from both Africa and Asia, as well as from North America. Thus the

Eurasian fauna was probably better adapted to migrate and survive changing condi–

tions, while the North America fauna, developing in a smaller area and with

aggressive new immigrants affecting it only from Eurasia, had a more tranquil

history.

        The Bering Sea land bridge apparently always had a cold, rigorous climate,

operating with active selectivity and allowing only cold-tolerating animals to use it.

        In the latest epoch, the Pleistocene, the mammal migrants were mostly types

so similar to present-day living forms that they are classified in the same genera.

Some of them that perhaps came from Eurasia to North America are: the hare, pika,

tree squirrel, bear, wolverine, moose, caribou, bison, and sheep. Some that

perhaps migrated from North America to Europe are: the marmot, banded lemming,

brown lemming, red-backed mouse, vole, jumping mouse, and fox.

       

Effects of Glaciation on Present Range

        The ranges now occupied by northern mammals have been occupied only recently,

just since the last ice epoch, their age counted in tens of thousands of years.

Since the last land bridge across the Bering disappeared, glaciers have covered

practically all the arctic and subarctic areas with ice. Mammal life was impossible

on it then as it is today on the ice fields of Greenland and Novaya Zemlya. The

mammals moved southward ahead of the glaciers on both continents, or perhaps in

a few cases remained in isolated ice-free refugia refugia , made into islands by the surrounding ice.

The one in the Yukon-Bering Sea area was probably the largest and best authenticated.

        With the melting and retreat of the ice, the cold-tolerating mammals, which

had survived along the southern fringe, spread northward following the retreating

ice.

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        At the northern edge of the mainland however, the extent of water in summer

and of ice in winter acted as a barrier in preventing some mammals from reaching

the arctic islands. In North America where there is a whole arctic archipelago

this is particularly apparent. Notable among the mammals that have not spread

north of the mainland are the grizzly bear, the ground squirrel, and the cinerous

shrew. The brown lemming, on the other hand, is famous for its mass migrations

which may move over sea ice. One would expect this lemming to be widespread in

the arctic islands, but it seems not yet to have reached Greenland or Ellesmere

Island.

        The caribou, musk ox, banded lemming, and arctic hare as well as the wolf,

arctic fox, weasel, and polar bear have all spread across the ice from island

to island to reach northern Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

        But on Greenland the icecap covering the interior cane to the coast in the

northwest and in the east, and some of the mammals that reached North Greenland

have not been able to get across the icecap and colonize the coastal, ice-free

areas of southern Greenland, notably the banded lemming, the weasel, and the

musk ox.

        The polar bear wanders far over the ice; it is carried by moving ice and

swims long distances, and has been seen swimming at sea 30 kilometers from the

nearest resting place. For such an animal there are few barriers in the Arctic,

so long as food is present, and the polar bear gets much of its food from the sea.

The arctic fox has similar habits; in winter it wanders widely on the sea ice;

it shares in the polar bear’s harvest of food from the sea, as well as snatching

some for itself (small fish or invertebrates); and it also is carried by the

moving ice. Both polar bears and arctic foxes are brought as far south as the

Gulf of St. Lawrence some years by this means, and one arctic fox even reached

Nova Scotia.

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        The arctic here ranges freely over the sea ice, reaching islets 40 kilometers

or more offshore, so it is not surprising to find it, too, in South Greenland.

One would think that the musk ox would also have been able to make the journey,

but for some reason it did not do so. The banded lemming has been found some

kilometers out on the ice, sometimes frozen to death, but it has never reached

South Greenland. Perhaps the journey across the glaciers is too much for it,

although it has been recorded as traveling 57 kilometers over the ice in North

Greenland. The absence of the weasel in South Greenland can be correlated with

the absence of its main prey, this same lemming.

        The colonizing of the north from the south is still going on. In the last

60 years or so , the coyote has spread from south of our area (which is still not ✓

clearly defined) and has now reached the arctic coast, both in the forested

country of the Mackenzie and in the tundra of Alaska. The red for as now

ranged out onto the barrens since our first knowledge of the area, but in recent

years has increased and spread there, to the consternation of some of the trappers

who fear that in some areas it may usurp the place of the more valuable arctic

fox. Recent records indicate that the red fox may become established in Baffin

Island; the wolverine is there, and there are even surprising records of the

ordinarily forest-dwelling lynx reaching southern Baffin Island, evidently

traveling on drifting ice from northern Quebec.

        In the Old World there is no similar archipelago and the islands lying in

the polar sea there are few and scattered. Spitsbergen has been reached by the

polar bear, the arctic fox, and the reindeer, which must have traveled over the

sea ice. Nov a ya Zemlya, much closer to the mainland, has the brown and the banded ✓

lemming, the arctic fox, the polar bear, and the reindeer, according to Gorbundoff.

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Habitats

        In the North there are distinctive types of landscape, each occupied by

mammals peculiar to them. The treeless country north of timber line (the tundra

of E a urasia, the so-called barren grounds of America) that forms a circumpolar ✓

ring around the tops of both continental masses and sends arms w s outhward down ✓

the crests of the mountain masses has its characteristic mammals. The northern

edge of the coniferous belt, the taiga of Eurasia, and the Hudsonian zone forest

of America, composed chiefly of open stands of spruce with thickets of willow

and dwarf birch that forms the second circumpolar belt, also has its character–

istic mammals. The taiga sends northward extensions along the river valleys.

        The treeless country has: ( 1 ) polar deserts, which are the permanent ice

and snow fields (as in Greenland, northern Baffin Island s , and the islands to ✓

the north of it, Nov a ya Zemlya and Spitsbergen), destitute of mammal life except ✓

for wanderers; ( 2 ) desert tundra, where the rocks are nearly devoid of vegetation,

as in large areas of Baffin Island, and mammal life is scanty; and ( 3 ) the grass

and lichen tundra, the main home of the polar mammals such as caribou, musk ox

(North America only), arctic hares, banded and brown lemmings, wolf, arctic fox,

and weasel (called ermine in the Old World). On the tundra near timber line,

locally, are other species that also occur in timbered areas: shrews (genus

Sorex ), brown and grizzly bears, wolverine, red fox, ground squirrels, red-backed

mice, and voles of the genus Microtus ; above timber line in the mountains are

sheep, pika, and marmots.

        The coniferous forest belt does not begin suddenly but changes gradually

through shrubs, such as willows and scattered trees, to forest. Taiga and tundra

also interdigitate, especially where the Mackenzie River valley carries forest

far north in America, and along the north-flowing rivers in Siberia. No more

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do the mammals suddenly change from those of barren ground to those of the forest.

The caribou and the arctic fox, e x s pecially in winter, enter the forest and even ✓

the musk ox, in summer, favors the willow thickets where they are present.

        The T t aiga is richer than the tundra in species of mammals, corresponding ✓

to its richer and more varied plant life. Feeding among the trees, in the air,

are a few bats, especially in the Old World; in the trees live tree squirrels and

flying squirrels and on the ground are moose, varying hare, some voles, chipmunks,

lynx, red fox, mink, marten, sable, and black bears. Several insectivorous shrews

occur; and in the freshwater streams are muskrats (America only), beaver, otter,

and mink, all of which find their headquarters in this forest belt.

        Only a few species range widely in both forest and tundra, among them notably

the wolf and the weasel.

        The increase in the number of species of mammals as one goes from the polar regions

to the tropics is a general phenomenon, and its actuality is well illustrated by

giving in Table I the numbers of land mammals reported from a series of stations

in our area, arranged in a north to south series as far as possible. Note par–

ticularly the great difference between the number of species inhabiting the taiga

and the tundra.

Table I.

Area	Type of country	Land mammals recorded, number of species
Northeast Greenland	Tundra	8
Southern Baffin Island	Tundra	11
Perry River, Queen Maud Gulf	Tundra	14
Mackenzie Delta	Taiga, tundra, and mountain	36
Wood Buffalo Park, Canada	Taiga	44

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Abundance of Individuals

        Although the number of species in the North is limited, the number of indi–

viduals in a certain species may be great. When voles or lemmings are plentiful,

the tundra may be so riddle s d with their burrows and marked by their digging that ✓

it has a tattered appearance. For long stretches the ground may be undermined

with their tunnels and sown with their holes. In walking over the tundra the

tiny rodents may scurry over the ground ahead of one. The vast numbers to which

the brown lemmings attain are best seen when they make one of their irr e gular mass

movements. In the Queen Maud Gulf area, Gavin saw “The sea ice was covered with

a moving mass of lemmings.” He estimated an average density of one lemming to the ✓

square yard, and indicated the movement extended over a 60-mile front and lasted

for 10 days.

        The caribou numbers, when these animals move en masse, are even more striking.

From a rise in the country west of Hudson Bay, sometimes many herds of from 100

to 2,000 animals may be seen at once, and an estimated 20,000 caribou have been

reported in view at one time. Such herds, when forced into a small compass, as at

a river crossing or a pass, may leave the ground as bare mud and dust with hardly

a spot untrampled by their hoofs or with a bit of vegetation showing. Such

aggregations of animals have been the basis of estimates in the past of herds of

“millions” of caribou. David Thompson, Joseph B. Tyrrell, and Vilhjalmur

Stefansson are a mong those who have published large estimates — Thompson up to

three million, Tyrrell and Stefansson “several hundred thousand.”

        In the forest too, sometimes, such species as the varying hare become so

common that many of them may be in sight at one time in every willow and bush

thicket they frequent. Their ravages on the vegetation, the bare stems from which

the bark has been gnawed, and the stems t rimmed in their feeding may be conspicuous

features of the landscape.

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        But not all northern species are numerous. The least weasel, Mustela rixosa ,

though a widespread circumpolar species, seems always rare. Certain voles, such

as those of the genus Phenacomys , and shrews of the genus Microsorex are usually

scarce or rare.

       

Fluctuations in Numbers

        Numbers are an unstable thing in the North. Some years a mammal may be in

swarming abundance; in other years the species may be so scarce that it is

difficult to find a single individual. This is well illustrated by the varying

hare and the lemmings, animals that have become almost classical examples, with

the corresponding fluctuations in numbers of the animals that depend on them

largely for food, the lynx and the arctic fox especially. The ramifications

of the effects of these fluctuations are much more widespread than the prey–

predator relationships, extending as far as the differential growth of certain

vegetations and the prosperity of trappers. There is much evidence to show that

these periods of abundance and scarcity rec o u r with a regular rhythm, and with a ✓

periodicity of different length for some species; notably about four years for

some of the smaller rodents and ten years for some of the larger animals. There

is also evidence for long-term changes in abundance in some of the largest species,

such as the moose and the wolf. Whether or not these have a regular periodicity

is unknown. It used to be though these fluctuations were world wide, but much

recent data indicate they do not synchronize over wide areas, and the animals

may be common in one area while scarce in another but a short distance away

(see “Population Cycles”).

       

Bodily Adaptations

        The severity of northern c onditions has had its effect in directing the ✓

evolution of the animals living under them. No one factor will account for

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everything, but cold, deep snow, and type of cover and food available, as well

as other less tangible factors have molded the bodily form; sometimes one factor

is dominant, sometimes another.

        It has been laid down as a zoological rule (Bergman’s rule) that when closely

related animals occur in warm and cold climates, those from no r thern climates tend ✓

to be larger. This has been correlated with the larger animal having a propor–

tionately smaller body surface to unit of body weight, and so reducing radiation

of heat, an important factor in arctic climates.

        When we examine this for arctic mammals, there are so many exceptions and

contradictions that it seems other factors, probably ecological, have played more

important parts in determining the direction of evolution of arctic mammals.

        First it must be pointed out that both very large and very small mammals

occur in the subarctic forests. In North America the pigmy shrew ( Microsorex Microsorex ) , ✓

less than four inches long, weighing only a few grams and one of the smallest

mammals, and the big brown bear ( Ursus ) and the moose ( Alces ), weighing over

1,000 pounds and among the largest of North American mammals, all occur in the

Subarctic. In the Eurasian Subarctic there is also a tiny shrew, an enormous

bear, and a moose.

        In some species the size is greater in the north than in the south: the

northern short-tailed weasels tend to be larger than more southern ones; the

arctic hare is larger than the more southern varying hare; the northern coyotes

tend to be larger than southern coyotes. But there are many obvious exceptions:

the largest musk ox are not to be found in the north; the southern caribou are

larger than the most northern caribou; the northern wolves are not as large as

some of the more southern ones; the northern chipmunk is a small species. The

tundra shrew is smaller than its closest relative to the south. The common meadow

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mouse or vole of eastern North America in the east shows a decrease in size in

going northward; in the west, going from southern Canada to the Mackenzie Delta

it shows a decrease through northern Alberta and southern Mackenzie, and then

an increase in size farther north. Therefore, it would appear that in gross

size no general rule applies.

        Correlated with a cold climate, appendages tend to be short (Allen’s rule),

presumably an adaptation for the conservation of heat. We see it in the small

ears of the arctic fox as compared with the ears of more southern foxes in both

Eurasia and North America; the shorter ears of the arctic and varying hares as

compared with the long ears of more southern forms such as the jack rabbits.

        The tail, too, has undergone a reduction in the north; it is very short

in the moose, caribou, and musk ox; the lemmings have the tail very much reduced;

the arctic fox has a relatively shorter tail than the red fox; the red squirrel

has a relatively shorter tail than does the more southern gray squirrel. However,

when it comes to a question of feet, which according to Allen’s rule should be

relatively shorter in cold climates, we find other environmental factors have

been more effective. The moose has developed very long legs, presumably for

wading through bogs and deep snow, though the musk ox, living farther north,

does have feet relatively shorter than its more southern relative, the bison.

The adaptations in feet are more pronounced in characters adapted to the physical ✓

aspects of the environment. The long legs of the moose have been mentioned; the

caribou solves the problem of getting over deep snow and soft bog in another way,

by developing “snowshoes.” Its hoofs spread widely when the weight is placed on

them, and serve to keep the animal from sinking deeply into the soft medium. The

same adaptation is also very apparent in the snowshoe rabbit, with its long broad

hind feet which have given it its name, and in the lynx. Although the lynx is

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almost the same size as the bobcat, its nearest relative further south, its

hind feet are almost 10 inches long and disproportionately broad, while the

hind feet of the bobcat are only about 8 inches long and much less bulky.

Another striking peculiarity in foot development peculiar to the Arctic is

in the seasonal development of the foreclaws of the banded lemming. In the

summer they are of normal size, but in winter the nails become greatly enlarged,

the enlargement being shed in the spring. This is usually assumed to be a n

unique adaptation for burrowing in snow, although the brown lemming that does

not have this seems to get along just as well.

        Other ecological adaptations for special environments as in other parts

of the world are also found; the long feet or legs for running (deer); short

broad feet with sharp claws for climbing (squirrels, martens, sable); fringes

on sides of the feet for swimming (muskrat, some shrews); webbed feet for

swimming (otter); and broadened forefeet with stout claws for digging (moles,

marmot, ground squirrel). The spring coat of the Canada porcupine, with spines

which stick into the mouth of a would-be predator and discourage it, is a

striking case of defensive armor, but this type of adaptation is more common

in temperate and tropical climates.

        A prime necessity for an animal living in a cold climate is a heavy coat

of fur for warmth. This we find reaching its highest development in the Sub–

arctic and the Arctic. The hairy covering of many animals tends to consist

of long, coarse, stiff guard hairs, serving to protect the underfur, and the

shorter, denser, finer underfur, furnishing the warmth. In the musk ox these

are strikingly contrasted, where the long guard hairs may reach a length of

24 inches or more, while the underfur is a woolly coat 2 or 3 inches thick,

close to the skin. In the caribou there is not this sharp distinction, the

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insulating effect being achieved by a very dense coat of hair of about uniform

length. The hairs are thicker at the tip than at the base, are hollow and

filled with air, and are so closely spaced they will not lie down. The caribou

skin is universally considered one of the warmest of skins for covering. The

roughness of the pelt and the brittleness of the hair, however, make it un–

suitable for civilized use.

        Our finest furs for the fur trade come from the Arctic and Subarctic.

Many of them are of the weasel and wolf tribe; their sleek, glossy, dense

guard hairs and warm underfur make them especially prized. But some rodents

also provide pelts of note , of which the beaver is the finest. From the north

of North America important animals for the fur trade include the fisher, marten,

lynx, beaver, and arctic fox, which supply the most costly furs, and also the

red fox (whose color phases, the cross and silver, no longer command a fabulous

price since they are being extensively raised on fur farms), wolf, weasel,

squirrel (of secondary importance), otter, mink, and muskrat (a staple fur,

now important for the large number taken). From the northern part of the Old

World come such fur s as sable (related to marten but with finer fur), otter,

lynx, kolinsky or yellow weasel, ermine (the weasel of North America), arctic

fox, red fox, here (a much better fur than that of American hares and used to

simulate arctic fox), burunduk (a chipmunk), baum marten (related to sable),

otter, squirrel (related to the American red squirrel but of finer pelt), and

wolf.

        Not only is the fur coat of northern mammals warmer than that of those

living in warmer climates, but the animals tend to be more completely furred.

The deer of southern climates have bare areas on the nose; these areas are more

fur-covered in the moose and caribou; the same is true of the musk ox.

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        The feet of many northern mammals are also much more heavily furred

than their southern relatives; the bottom s of the feet of the polar bear and ✓

arctic fox in winter are completely covered with fur, and the lemmings and

some of the voles have furry feet.

        A storing-up of fat under the skin as reserve food to carry the animal

over the lean winter period and to serve as insulation against the cold has

often been postulated. There is no doubt that many animals do get fat in the

fruitful days of summer, but the value of this as a factor in overwinter sur–

vival (except in hibernators) is probably overestimated. This is particularly

true of the caribou, in which an old male may have 50 pounds of fat laid down as

a blanket over its hips, just under the skin. Far from being a reserve for

winter, this fat is used as a reserve food for the mating period in the fall,

when for some weeks the male does not eat, and consequently enters the winter

lean and in poor condition.

        That the color assumed by arctic mammals is an adaptation to their

environment has been questioned. Many arctic and subarctic mammals are some

shade of brown, as shrews, voles, some bears, most of the weasel family, and

beaver; the moose and the musk ox are blackish; some voles, the pika, and some

caribou are grayish; [ the ?] brilliant colors are approached in the red-brown of

the red fox, red squirrels, red-backed mice, and banded lemmings. Contrasting

patterns are found in only a few: the stripes of the chipmunk; the spots of

some ground squirrels; the rump patches of sheep; the rump, neck, and flank

markings of some caribou; and the lateral stripes of the wolverine.

        But the striking thing about coloration of arctic mammals is the tendency

of some of the tundra animals to be white. This is apparent in the polar

caribou of both hemispheres. The most northern wolves also tend to be white

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(although the black phase of the red fox, a forest animal, tends to be most

common in the northern edge of its range), and this whiteness reaches its

greatest development in the polar bear, which is white the year round.

        This whiteness is also acquired by another method; a seasonal change so

that the animal is white in winter when the ground is snow-covered, and brown

or gray when the land is not snow-covered. This seasonal color change is

shown by some species of both predatory animals and those that are preyed

upon. The hares of the forest have this double molt; the arctic fox is bluish-

brown in summer and white in winter; the weasels and the banded lemmings (but

not the brown lemming) show this change. With the arctic hare in North America,

while the southern ones become slate-colored in summer, the northern ones stay

white or nearly white the year round.

        The functional value of a white coat to these animals is still being

debated. The first and obvious correlation is that, with the snow changing

the dark background to white, the color-changing food animals are less con–

spicuous to predators; and color-changing predators are less conspicuous to

their prey. This may be true, but white coloration reappears also in antarctic

birds where there are no effective enemies.

        The mammals that change color with the seasons have two molts a year.

But with most arctic mammals there is but a single annual renewing of the fur.

This molt takes place in a short space of time. The fur is often all shed

about the same time, the incoming coat pushing off the old fur over the animal’s

whole body. Before the molt the animal may be covered with a long dense coat;

during the molt the caribou or the arctic fox may present a very ragged appearance,

with great flakes of old fur peeling off. When the molt is first complete and

the incoming hairs still short, the long-haired animals such as the arctic fox

may appear to be much smaller than when they were wearing their winter coat.

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Food

        Mammals all depend on vegetation for their food, but some get this at

first hand while others get it by eating other animals which eat plants.

        On the tundra, the caribou, the musk ox, the hare, and the banded and

brown lemmings are the herbivores, feeding on grasses, leaves, and twigs.

Preying on them are the wolf, the arctic fox, and the weasel. The polar

bear has closer touch with the sea, whence it draws most of its food.

        In and near the taiga with its more varied vegetation, one finds various

types of herbivores: the voles, hares, ground squirrels, marmots, sheep, and

moose grazing and browsing; voles tunneling for roots; some mice, tree squirrels,

and chipmunks favoring seeds and fruits; beaver and porcupine eating much bark

of trees but getting it in quite different ways (the beaver felling the trees

by gnawing through them at the base and then eating the bark, the porcupine

climbing the trees and gnawing off the bark in situ ); and the muskrat and the

moose feeding to some extent on aquatic vegetation. As a natural correlation

the greater the number of herbivores , the more predators there are: the wolf ✓

and weasel; but there is also the red fox feeding on mice and hares; the lynx

preying on the woodland hare; the marten chasing the squirrel in the trees; and

the otter chasing fish in the streams (and it is said to attack beaver and take

muskrats). Here also are shrews, hunting insects and other invertebrates in

the ground cover, and a few bats catching them in the air overhead.

        The bears are special cases in regard to food: they are terrestrial carni–

vores in structure, but the polar bear has invaded the domain of the sea, feed–

ing on fish and on seals; and the black grizzly bears much of the time fill their

stomachs with vegetable material but prefer meat, never losing an opportunity

to secure a meal of it, even if it means eating carrion.

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        Some mammals, such as the musk ox, sheep, voles, and lemmings feed on

much the same types of vegetation in summer and winter. But the caribou

that feeds on grass during the summer turns to lichens for the winter; the

snowshoe rabbit, eating grass and herbs in summer, turns to bark and twigs

in winter; the shrews, insect - eaters in summer when insects are plentiful, ✓

may eat seeds as well in winter; the arctic fox that in summer feeds on

lemmings and birds (and their eggs and young), finding the birds gone and

the lemmings hard to reach under the snow in winter, may go along the beach

picking up whatever appears from the sea or may follow the polar bear for scraps.

        The black and grizzly bears that feed on herbaceous matter (grass, roots,

and horsetail) during the summer change to berries when they are plentiful in

the fall; grizzlies change to fish diets when salmon run in the Pacific streams.

        Adaptations in feeding habits have to be made. The caribou that grazes

may find its food covered by snow and have to dig for it. On some wintering

ranges, caribou have been reported digging pits four feet deep through the snow

to the browse underneath. Legend has it that the caribou digs with the flattened

brow antler, but recent observations indicate it uses its forefeet only.

        Arctic hares, feeding on wind - swept areas, are usually able to push aside ✓

the light layer of snow covering their food by using their noses and scraping

with their forepaws. Sometimes, however, there is a frozen crust over the snow,

and then the behavior of the hare follows a different pattern. The sense of

smell apparently enables it to locate its hidden food, and then over the chosen

spot it hammers the crust with blows of its forepaws. With the crust broken,

the hare may remove the larger pieces with its mouth, and then, with nose and

forepaws, gets at its food in the usual way.

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Storage of Food

        In a country where food is abundant for a short season and scarce or

difficult to get for the rest of the year, a logical development is that of ✓

harvesting the food in the season of plenty and storing it until the season

of scarcity. This we find in many of our mammals, both flesh - eaters and ✓

vegetarians. In some, this storage is a highly developed behavior, and

probably essential for the animal’s winter survival, as with the beaver, pika,

and voles; in others it is more haphazard, and its survival value is probably

not so generally important.

        The meat - eaters are able to store food in the cold climate where it ✓

decays slowly. Bears sometimes bury their surplus from a meal, and even the

polar bear may cut out large blocks of snow with his forepaws and cover the

remains of a seal. Wolves often chew off parts of a large mammal they have

killed and carry the pieces away and bury them. These, however, seem to be

temporary rather than long-range storage.

        The arctic fox, locally at least, makes caches for winter use. In northern

Greenland these foxes lay up stores of little auks or dovekies. They are laid

together in an orderly manner, always with the heads eaten off, all the tails

pointed the same way, and laid in rows or arranged in heaps. Large numbers of

eggs are also collected. In one cache, 27 little auks and 40 eggs were re p c or t d ed. ✓

        The mink stores such food as muskrat, fish, Squirrels, and birds. One

mink cache in a hollow long was found to contain 13 freshly killed muskrats.

Weasels often kill more than they need and this is sometimes considered a

bloodthirsty habit. But it is no more a lust for killing than is the woodsman’s

foresight in providing his larder with meat for the winter. Weasels when

undisturbed [ ?] o not leave their prey scattered about, but carefully store it

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away and, in many cases, bury it. Not only will the weasel carry [ ?]

off prey that it has killed, but will carry off a supply of animals already

dead, as was shown when one rifled a collector’s tent and carried off not

only mice and birds but also chipmunks that had been made into specimens.

This storing instinct of weasels does not seem so definite as that of some

rodents, and it is said much of the stored meat probably decays.

        The vegetarians store a number of types of food; seeds, roots, herbage,

and bark. The store may vary from a mushroom casually stuck in a fork of a

tree by a squirrel to the elaborate cache of cut sticks made by the beaver.

        In the coniferous forests, the tree squirrels become busy in the autumn

cutting down the fresh crop of cones for the seeds which they contain and

caching the cones in little holes dug in the forest floor under a favorite

tree, and here they also deposit quantities of berries. The squirrels, or

a succession of squirrels, use the same feeding and storing place year after

year and a whole heap or mid d en of the cone scales accumulates. These middens ✓

may be conspicuous things, up to 9 feet high and 12 feet across. It is in

this pile of debris that the squirrels bury their winter’s food supply.

        The little chipmunk is also a diligent storer of food. Soon after he

emerges from his winter home in the spring and until he retires in early

winter, he devotes much of his time to gathering and storing away seeds for

food. These are stored in various places - - some in crevi s c es in a rock, ✓

some in his winter home in an underground burrow.

        Several species of voles store roots for winter. On the American tundra,

the root of the plant Hedysarum boreale or “licorice root” is gathered by

voles and stored in underground chambers. These roots are tasty to humans,

and are stored in such quantities that some Eskimos search them out with the

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aid of dogs, and appropriate the store for their own use. Above timber line

in the mountains of the New World, another species of vole excavates chambers

just below the surface of the ground and stores quantities of carefully cleaned

starchy rhizomes of a sedge, individual stores amounting to a double handful

or more apiece. In Asia the same habit prevails with certain voles. In the

lower Kolyma region of Siberia, the a farinaceous root is laid up in large ✓

quantities by voles in their burrows, and here too the local people seek out

these stores as additions to their own food supply. Although these roots

would be present in the ground all winter, the ground would be frozen, and

this source of food would be unavailable to the voles if not gathered before

the freeze-up.

        The pikas that live in rock heaps and talus slopes above timber line

make “haystack” caches. In late summer and early fall, the animals indus–

triously gather the stems, leaves, and flowers of a wide variety of plants

growing in or near their rocky homes. They pile their cuttings into miniature

“haystacks” on shelving rocks, in spaces between rocks, or more rarely under

logs or stumps, where they are exposed to the air but are well protected from

rain by overhanging rocks or logs. These stacks average about the size of a

bushel measure, and, safe under the snow, are the pika’s winter food supply.

        The beaver makes an underwater store of its favorite food, usually of

branches such as aspen or willow. The branches and sticks are cut on the

shore, then pushed, rolled, or dragged to the water. Once afloat, the beaver

grasps the stick in its teeth and lets it float alongside as it swims to the

food pile. This food pile is usually located near the beaver’s lodge, handy

for winter use. The first pieces brought to the store may be forced into the

bottom of the pond to anchor them; on later trips, the beaver dives with its

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load and forces the material into that already there. The final store is

an entangled mass of waterlogged brush and sticks that may reach considerable

size, up to 124 feet in circumference. When the pond freezes over, the

beaver has its food at hand. When it wants to feed, it leaves its house by

its the underwater entrance, swims under the ice to the food pile, detaches a

length of stick, swims back to its the house, and devours the bark from the stick

at its leisure, without having to expose itself to the elements or to it s enemies.

       

Migration

        A yearly seasonal change in environment, a change from a mild growing

season of plenty to one that is severe, with snow and without plant growth,

demands seasonal adaptations in the animals’ behavior. One of the most obvious

is that of migration, when the animal moves from an area with unfavorable con–

ditions to one of more favorable conditions. The question of migration in land

mammals in the Arctic usually directs attention to the caribou and the brown

lemmings with their well-known movements of sorts; perhaps incipient and rudi–

mentary migration are indicated in a number of others. Voles of the genus

Microtus tend to summer in low, wet , places where the growing vegetation on

which they feed is lush; but in winter they may move, perhaps only a matter

of a hundred yards or so, to a drier slope. One effect of this is seen in the

spring when the snow melts, and vole signs completely cover a restricted area

on a slope where they have wintered and eaten all available vegetation. Musk ox,

one of the most stationary of arctic mammals, makes a similar biannual change

of territory, from lowlands in summer to higher land in winter. Perhaps this

is correlated with depth of snow in the lower places being greater than on

wind-swept exposed places. Depth of snow is certainly correlated with movements

of sheep in the Yukon and Alaska mountains, where sheep winter on areas of

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little snowfall or where the wind sweeps away the snow, and spend the summer

spread out over a much wider area. The polar bear, which follows the sea ice,

is scarce or absent in summer where there is no ice, and the female polar

bear that has to leave the sea ice and move to an area of land to hibernate

and to bring forth her young also shows incipient migration.

        The brown lemmings, though their movements in northern Europe, and in

North America to a lesser extent, have been widely publicized, represent a

special case of migration. Periodically, but apparently without regularity,

a population of lemmings may become very dense and then vast numbers of them

move away from the densely populated area. In Norway they may swarm down the

mountains and into the sea; on the Murmansk coast they sometimes swim out to

sea; in Arctic America the most notable accounts are of cases where they cross

the sea ice. The lemmings appear to move continuously in a certain direction,

perhaps determined by slope, the animals going downhill which explains their

going to the ocean. Steadily the movement presses on, as illustrated by

Gavin’s observations on the frozen Queen Maud Gulf: “they were all headed in

an easterly direction. They stopped at nothing. Untold thousands plunged

over the ice into the water of a lead… They perished in large numbers in

these leads, but here and there they found passages up the ice and blindly

continued their journey without deviation and without hesitation.” But these

movements differ from real migration in there being no return. The animals

migrate en masse and perish. Only those few left behind survive to carry on

the species, and start the population building up again to where another mass

emigration occurs.

        The caribou is another wanderer whose movements are often called migration

but which really fall in another category. Uncertainty and irregularity are

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are the peculiarities of caribou movements. The general statements that

caribou move toward the arctic coast of Siberia in summer and southward away

from the coast in winter, and that similar movements occur in northern Canada

tell only a part of the story.

        The caribou in summer favors rich grass, but in the long winter it lives

on the abundant lichens (“reindeer moss,” Cladonia ). The moss is slow-growing,

taking perhaps 15 years to recover from severe grazing. (It has been demon–

strated that arctic tundra will support at most 10 caribou per square mile.)

The caribou is extremely gregarious and the herd units sometimes contain 100 to

2,000 head where the animals are plentiful. Thus they graze close-herded. If

they stayed long on an area they would exhaust the grazing for many years. The

only adaptation possible within this animal’s habits is a roving life, during

which it stays but a short time in any place. This is just what has happened.

Most of the caribou are continually moving, summer and winter; the rut takes

place during migration, and even during calving there is only a temporary halt.

        In the special case of caribou, the migration seems to be an adaptation

for conserving the range; the animals return to certain favorite summering

areas where they feed on grasses, but for the rest of the year they wander,

getting a bite here and another there. To do otherwise would unduly deplete

the range. The direction taken in migration seems to be determined in part

by topographical factors; in part by a line of good pastures. This last, of

course, may be determined by former use, as well as by chance, and we find that

caribou may use an area for a number of years and then go elsewhere for a number

of years. The direction may be north and south, as in Siberia and in the main

range in Arctic Canada. The former migration to and from Victoria l Island

to the mainland is a good example. In southern Canada, on the barrens and

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the forest edge, the migration, while north and south, tends to be circular,

perhaps an adaptation to cover more range during the year; with the Yukon-

Tanana herd, it retraces its route hammed in by mountains. In Baffin Island

much of the migration is from the summer range of the grass plains and marshes

of the west to the higher eastern country where lichens are abundant in winter.

In northern Yukon the movement may, in the fall, first be north to the coast,

then east to the Mackenzie River, then south, and west again through a mountain

pass to the range from which they started (some years they don’t use this route

at all). But all guesses may fail, and, as Murie writes, after pronounced

movement caribou are still everywhere and it is difficult to say where they’ve

gone; some caribou seem to winter some years in almost every part of the range,

and some populations, as the present ones on Victoria Island, on Spitsbergen,

and probably many others, do not seem to migrate at all.

        The only clear-cut migration in Arctic-inhabiting mammals is that of the

bats that have ventured into the northern forest. One, at least, the hoary bat,

that has been recorded north to Southampton Island, makes definite migrations

by flying to warmer climates in winter and back again in the summer.

       

Hibernation

        Another way in which northern mammals are adapted to the winter is through

hibernation, spending the winter in a dormant or semidormant state. The hiber–

nating animal typically enters this winter sleep in a fat condition with the

stomach empty. Some bears are said to purge out their intestines with special

foods and then, both in North America and in Eurasia, to eat a quantity of

fibrous material which plugs the intestines and remains in place during the

winter. In its dormant condition, body temperature may drop to a few degrees

above freezing and bodily processes slow down greatly, so that little of the

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accumulated body fat is used as a reserve of food during the winter. Most of

this fat apparently serves as insulation and as a store of food for the

animal when it wakes up in the wpring, when little fresh food is as yet avail–

able. This winter sleep appears not to be continuous even with the most pro–

found hibernators, the formant animal rousing at intervals throughout the

winter. Possibly this is an adaptation to keep it from freezing; for with

waking, bodily processes speed up and body temperature increases. Violent

shivering often accompanies this waking, apparently another heat-inducing

phenomenon.

        While the most profound hibernators such as the marmots and the ground

squirrel go into hibernation in the fall and do not emerge until the spring,

there are other species such as the red squirrel which disappear into their

shelters and remain quiet for longer or shorter periods, a few days or a week

or two, in severe weather. Probably all should be called hibernators, of

varying profundity. Since hibernation is an adaptation for passing over a

period of unfavorable conditions, one might expect it to be commonest in the

Far North. But this is not the case. Hibernation is particularly a phenomenon

of temperate and arid climates; a larger percentage of mammals living in these

climates hibernate than in either arctic or in very warm climates. The following

illustrates the decrease in the number of hibernating mammals as one goes from

the Temperate Zone to the Arctic: In an area in southern Alberta (about latitude

49°), 16 of th d e 55 mammals hibernate; in southern Mackenz i e (about latitude 60°),

9 of the 43 species hibernate; at the Mackenzie Delta on the Arctic Sea, only

5 out of about 36 mammals hibernate; while on the Canadian Arctic Islands, only

1 out of 9 species hibernates (the polar bear), and that only partially.

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        While there is great change in the number of hibernating species, going

from north to south, it is not a habitat difference; polar bears, grizzly

bears, ground squirrels, and marmots hibernate north of the timber line, and

one must go some distance south in the forest before the number of hibernators

increases greatly.

        It is sometimes said that hibernation is impossible in the Arctic because

with permanently frozen ground the animals cannot find a frost-free place to

hibernate. However, this is obviously not the case, as both ground squirrels

and marmots hibernate near the edge of the Arctic Sea; the polar bear is said

to hibernate in snowdrifts; and farther south, the black bears and certain bats

hibernate in resting places where the temperature of their immediate surroundings

goes below freezing.

        A hibernating species usually hibernates for a longer period in the northern

than in the southern part of its range; for example, the black bear in Florida

does not hibernate, in Ontario it goes into hibernation in December, while at

the Mackenzie Delta it goes into hibernation in October. But this does not

hold with the polar bear, which is a partial hibernator in the Hudson Bay area,

but hibernates little, if at all in the northern Greenland.

        The age of the animal, its sex, and its physical condition seem to affest

its hibernation. Where the polar bear hibernates, it is said that more females

than males hibernate, or perhaps only gravid females. Of animals that ordinarily

hibernate, such as the grizzly bears, individuals abroad during the winter

are lean, perhaps not having been able to accumulate sufficient fat to enable

them to go to sleep for the winter.

        The average dates of mammals going into hibernation and emerging from it

in the spring are not sufficiently well known in the Arctic for us to tabulate.

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Data from elsewhere are not applicable, as this varies locally with climate.

In general, the most profound hibernators retire in the fall and are not

seen again until the spring. Those with the longest period of hibernation

are probably the ground squirrels. In the Arctic they have been recorded

abroad from April to December but these are extreme dates and the average

period of activity is probably May to September at most, for farther south

one species is recorded with a hibernation period of 9 months.

        The place of hibernation is usually an underground chamber dug by the

animal and line s d with vegetation, but bears may scratch out only shallow dens, ✓

and polar bears are said to hibernate in snow burrows. The young of the black,

f g rizzly, and brown bears are born while the females are in hibernation, and ✓

suckle and female while she is in a dormant state. Even in the farthest north

where the polar bear hibernates little, the female retires to a snow cave at

the time of the birth of the young and remains there for some time, allowing

the small, weak young to develop somewhat before venturing abroad.

        When hibernators emerge in the spring they are still fat, only a small

part of the fat having been used during the winter sleep, and this store of

fat which served so well as insulation during the winter becomes an important

food reserve for the animal until food becomes plentiful later in the spring.

        The mammals in our area with long hibernating periods include the bats,

bears (especially the black, grizzly, and brown), badgers, skunks, ground

squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, and jumping mice.

       

Shelter

        Despite the severity of the arctic winter, many of the arctic mammals are

active throughout it, with no more than the sheltered side of a hill, some bushes,

or some rocks to break the wind. Among these are the deer, the musk ox, the

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rabbits, and many of the carnivores. Indeed, for some of these grazing

animals the wind is a friend, for it sweeps the snow from their grazing

grounds.

        Many of the mammals that do make tunnels and use shelters apparently do

it as much for escape from their enemies , or for feeding purposes as for ✓

protection from the elements.

        Lemmings live much of their lives in burrows, underground or under the

snow, partly correlated with their feeding, partly with their need of pro–

tection from predators, and partly for shelter from the elements. On low

fertile country in northern Greenland, long stretches are quite undermined by

banded lemming tunnels, and sown with their holes. In the depth of winter the

banded lemmings are rarely found above the surface of the snow, rather carrying

on their winter life in the system of passages between the layer of snow and

the surface of the ground. Here they find their food and make their nests.

Only when spring approaches do they begin to wander over the surface of the

snow and then, sometimes, a frozen crust traps the animals, preventing them

from digging down into the snow again, and they perish.

        Both food and shelter lead the weasel under the snow in the depth of winter

in the Far North. It digs down through the snow to the system of lemming tunnels,

between the snow and the earth, and , following these, preys on the lemmings. It ✓

has been suggested , that the shelter of the snow blanket protecting these animals

from the cold is essential, and a winter with little snow may prove fatal to

many lemmings and weasels.

        The pika of the rocky areas spends most of its life in and about the crevices

of the rocks, only venturing a little distance into the meadows in search of

herbs and grasses and then darting back to shelter. During the winter, with

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its store of food laid by, it does not have to leave the shelter of its rocky

fastness at all. The ground squirrels and the marmots make deep burrow s , about ✓

which their lives center. These may be largely for protection from enemies

in summer, but are also their retreats for the long sleep of winter.

        In the taiga, voles and shrews make tunnels and runways through the soil,

the vegetation, and the snow, and generally live in cracks and crannies; but

tiny shrews may be abroad on the snow even when it is far below zero, as their

lacy tracks show. Tree squirrels make warm nests of twigs and fiber in trees

in the more southern parts of the taiga, but in the north depend more on under–

ground burrows for sleeping places. Muskrats and beaver spend much time in the

water and make burrows with underwater entrances; both make dome-shaped “houses”

in the water, but the beaver with its larger size and requirements make s the

more elaborate system. To ensure that there will be enough water for its needs,

the colony of three to ten animals (typically a beaver family consists of the

two adults, the two or three yearlings, and the several young of the year)

make a dam of sticks, other vegetation, and mud, above which a pond full of

water accumulates. Out in this pond, resting on the bottom, the beaver builds

its house of sticks, which may be six feet or more across, and as many high

above the water. Hollowed out inside, above the water level, is the ne x s t chamber, ✓

with an underwater entrance and exit. In winter, the beaver is completely shut

off from the outside world by his frozen roof and the frozen surface of the pond,

and, if it were not for human trappers, it would be most secure from every enemy

and the elements.

        Mammals which ordinarily do not use shelters in their everyday lives may

make them for the breeding season, as places in which the young are raised. This

is well illustrated by the deep dens of the wolves and foxes.

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Mammal Interrelationships

        In an area where species are few, some close interrelationships between

animals develop, recalling the well-known associations between animals and

plants such as the dependence of the caribou and reindeer on reindeer moss

(lichens) and squirrels on conifer seeds. Wolves follow both caribou and

reindeer herds; the presence of these animals probably makes possible the

presence of wolves on the tundra. The abundance of the arctic fox is so closely

correlated with the abundance of lemmings that the arctic fox increases and

decreases with the increase and decrease in the numbers of lemmings. A natural

check has demonstrated the validity of this: in southern Greenland where there

are no lemmings, the foxes may fluctuate but there is no regular variation in

numbers corresponding to those in the arctic fox in Baffin Island opposite where

lemmings do occur. The patterns in a relationship may vary from place to place,

giving interesting correlations.

        The red fox, in Ungava, seems to depend for food on the lemmings and wolves voles , ✓

with a four-year cycle of abundance; the red fox also has a four-year cycle.

In Ontario, where the fox depends more on the snowshoe rabbit, with a ten-year

cycle of abundance, the fox, too, tends to follow the ten-year cycle of its

favorite prey. The dependence of the lynx abundance on that of the varying hare

has been mentioned under “Fluctuations in Numbers,” p.000.

        The mountain sheep is an animal of the mountains, where it can easily out–

distance the wolf. On level country, the sheep is at a disadvantage and it is

probabl y e that the pressure of wolf predation on mountain sheep has been an ✓

important factor in restricting it to its present habitat in the mountains,

and has perhaps been a factor in its evolution as a mountain animal.

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        Herds of caribou and reindeer attract arctic foxes, both summer and winter,

and, during the fawning season of reindeer at least, the foxes occasionally

attack weak fawns.

        In summer, with lemmings common and easy to secure, the arctic fox lives

bountifully; in winter, with food scarce, the arctic fox may attach themselves

to polar bears and follow them out onto the sea ice, trying to get part of the

meals of the polar bear or taking his leavings, and even eating their badly

digested excrement with voracity. When a polar bear is lying asleep, the

attendant arctic fox may curl up on an ice block nearby.

        On the tundra where some hummock makes a resting place and lookout for

birds of prey, their droppings enrich the soil there and the vegetation s grows

more luxuri eua a ntly, making a good feeding place for lemmings. The same has been ✓

recorded for the mounds at the entrance to arctic fox burrows on the Siberia

tundra. An interesting result is that the carnivores unwittingly provide a

good feeding area for lemmings and attract them to places where they are more

quickly found.

        When lemmings are plentiful, the wolves may prey entirely on them, leaving

the caribou in peace; thus the lemmings may affect caribou numbers.

       

Mammals in Relation to Man

        Advantages . The mammal life of the sea and the land has made human life

possible in the North. While sea mammals and fish have been an important food

source, some of the natives have depended entirely on land mammals, and all

have drawn heavily on them. The mammals, especially the caribou and the moose,

supplied staple meat, although some Indians used hares extensively and one

group became known as : “ Hare Indians.” The meat, killed in abundance when the ✓

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animals were plentiful, was eaten fresh, raw or frozen, or cooked; it was

preserved for future use in caches where the cool climate retarded its dis–

integration; and some was wind-dried (by Eskimos) or smoke-dried (by Indians)

for better preservation. To make a still more nourishing and lasting fare,

dried meat was sometimes pounded and mixed with fat to form pemmican that

would keep for years.

        No part of the animal was wasted; what is often regarded as waste (the

blood, marrow, and intestines) was eaten, and with the caribou even the con–

tents of the paunch. Not only are “game” animals so used, but even foxes,

wolves, ground squirrels, and lemmings may be eaten. Besides eating the

animals themselves, the Eskimos would sometimes seek, with the aid of dogs,

the roots stored by the voles on the American and Eurasian tundra to add these

tasty items to their own fare.

        Not only did the land mammals provide food; they supplied clothing too:

the caribou hide supplied material for warm, light garments, ideal for arctic

winter wear and for which no satisfactory substitute has yet been found. Other

skins were also used, especially polar-bear skins for pants by the Eskimos;

Indians used mooseskin for tanned leather; on occasions an inland mountain–

dwelling Eskimo group might dress completely in sheepskin; skins of marmots

and ground squirrels were also used for jackets and robes, and skins of hares

where woven into robes. The mammals also supplied the material for sewing,

sinews still being the most satisfactory material for sewing skins into clothing.

        The sinews and strips of hide provided material for snares and fish nets;

musk-ox horns were spliced together to form bows, and horn and bone were used

for tipping spears.

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        In Eurasia, the wild reindeer provided the ancestor of the domestic

reindeer, on which an important culture of the Eurasian tundra exists.

        Not only was the land mammal fauna important to the original human in–

habitant, but early traveling white men, explorers, and scientists would have

been unable to make the travels and the studies they did without the caribou

and the musk ox to supply them with meat, and some prospectors in the North

still depend on the country for their meat.

        With the advent of traders and the market for furs, the residents of the

Arctic and Subarctic grew to depend on civilization for many things, such as

flour, tea, tobacco, and weapons of the chase. To pay for them, the fur trade

became important and is still the main support of many northern people and

the main economic productiveness of large areas.

        Disadvantages . While the land mammals are an important scource of support

for the arctic dweller, they affect man adversely at times.

        Unprovoked attacks on man, of course, stand out although they are rela–

tively few in number. Wolves in the New World are not known to attack man

unless the wolf is obviously deranged, though they have been known to kill

sledge dogs wandering too far from camp. In the Old World, however, wolves

have long been a real danger to human life. In Russia, the wolf was man’s

chief enemy in the animal world, and the peasants pronounced a spell on

St. George’s Day as a protection against the wolf. The present-day prejudice

and fear of the wolf in the New World is probably based, in part, upon the very

real fear in which it was held in the Old World.

        Bears are always potentially dangerous and especially so when they have

cubs. Probably a bold front will usually avert an attack, but not always.

Richardson, while saying that grizzly bears usually ran away from man, gave

034      |      Vol_III-0048                                                                                                                  
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one account of a grizzly which molested a party of voyageurs . They “had been

employed all day in tracking a canoe up the Saskatchewan, had seated themselves

in the twilight by a fire, and were busy in preparing their supper when a large

grizzly bear sprang over their canoe…and seizing one of the party by the

shoulders carried him off.” One of the men followed and rescued the bear’s

victim by shooting the bear. The polar bear has been known to come to the

edge of the ice and watch an approaching boat full of hunters with the apparent

intention of throwing itself in among the hunters; the polar bear has been

recorded as stalking humans and killing them apparently for food. However, it

has been suggested that many cases of polar bears approaching humans are the

result of curiosity.

        Any large strong mammal may be dangerous at close quarters, but only two

others need mention here. the musk ox has been recorded as making unprovoked

attacks on men, and the bull moose, in the rutting season, occasionally attacks

man.

        Where supplies of food are put down in caches for future use, the destruct–

tion of these caches can be extremely serious. On the tundra, polar bears may

do this. They may enter huts, break up boxes, smash cans of meat and eat the

contents, and even drag away the stovepipe. The arctic fox is also a per–

sistent robber of meat caches, squeezing through almost incredibly small

crevices between the stones covering the cache, and the unfortunate travelers

have returned to find their meat supply gone.

        On the barrens and in the forest, the wolverine is universally known as

the worst and most persistent robber of caches, cabins, and trap lines. If a

wolverine has time to work undisturbed, there are few caches he cannot enter;

he rolls away heavy stones and logs; he gnaws through fixed timbers; he climbs

035      |      Vol_III-0049                                                                                                                  
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to elevated caches and excavates buried once. He eats what he can and carries

away not only food but articles he cannot use, such as guns and spyglasses.

Although he is very destructive and very difficult to catch, some northern

dwellers have come to consider a certain amount of wolverine predation as

inevitable, and, like the annoyance of mosquitoes, take this as a matter of

course.

        Black bears in the forest country have a deservedly bed name for destroying

unattended camps, breaking open and ravaging cabins, and smashing canoes, doing

much more damage than the mere rifling of the stores would necessitate. Trappers,

returning to their trap lines in the fall, have had their plans seriously upset

by finding a black bear has paid their outfit a visit.

        The smaller beasts, shrews, mice, and small carnivores, may all levy toll

on man’s stores. Generally, because of their smaller size, these activities

tend to be more annoying than serious, although red-backed voles have removed

40 pounds of rolled oats in a 3-week period, and squirrels, in addition to

eating delicacies, may take buttons off underwear or chew up clothing for nests.

        The only poisonous item in the land mammals of the North is the liver of

the polar bear. It has a probable excessive amount of vitamin A, which may

cause violent sickness when eaten by humans.

       

SYNOPSIS OF NORTHERN MAMMALS

        As stated previously, from the northern Arctic southward, the number of

species tends to increase. Each species has its own tolerance and its own

requirements; the environmental conditions change gradually from tundra to

forest, from northern forest to southern forest. Some mammals have their

headquarters in one or other of the habitats. Others, more common elsewhere,

037      |      Vol_III-0050                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Rand: Terrestrial Mammals

ranging into northern Europe, they barely get north into our area.)

       

Bats: Chiroptera

        These flying mammals are chiefly found in the tropics, where species and

individuals swarm. Insect-eating species would find an abundance of food in

the mosquitoes of the arctic summer, and some more northern species hibernate

or m o i grate. Bats are nocturnal and the lack of darkness in the North may re–

strict their northward range. In America they are rare (genus Myotis ) or

accidental in our area. However, in Eurasia at least one species (genus Eptesicus )

ranges to the arctic coast in the west and onto the tundra in Siberia.

       

Flesh- E aters or Carnivores: Carnivora

        Bears (Family Ursidae) . The white polar bear (genus Thalarctos ), drawing

much of its sustenance from the Arctic Sea, is circumpolar in distribution. The

brown bears of Europe and Alaska and the grizzlies of western North America

(genus Ursus ) range commonly on the barrens and the forest. The black bear of

North America (genus Ursus or Euarctos ) is a forest bear and ranges to the

timber line.

        Wolves and Relatives (Family Canidae) . The wolf (genus Canis ), of both

tundra and taiga, is circumpolar. The arctic fox (genus Alopex ), a true polar

animal among those ranging farthest north, is also circumpolar in distribution.

And the red fox (genus ( Vulpes ), very similar in Eurasia and America though ✓

sometimes considered as different species, is a widespread forest animal extend–

ing its range onto the edge of the tundra. In the New World, the coyote ( Canis

latrans ), a more southern animal of open forests and plains, has in recent years

extended its range greatly into our area and now reaches the arctic coast in

the west. In Eurasia, the red dogs (genus Cuon ) of Asia are more southern,

though ranging north to the Amur district of Siberia.

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        Cats and Relatives (Family Felidae) . Only the lynx (genus Lynx ), one

species in America and one in Asia, are truly boreal. They are animals of the

taiga ranging into the neighboring tundra in years when they are plentiful. In

America, the puma ( Felis Felis concolor ) strays north almost to our area; in Asia,

the tiger ( Felis tigris ) ranges north only to about the latitude of Lake Baikal.

        Weasels and Relatives (Family Mustelidae) . Two species of weasels (genus

Mustela ) are circumpolar: the least weasel and the short-tailed weasel or ermine.

In North America, there is the mink (genus Mustela ) which extends north to timber

line; in Eurasia the kolinsky or yellow weasel, a large brownish weasel (as fur

it ranks just below the mink) extends from the Sea of Okhotsk to European U.S.S.R.

in the forest area; in Europe, the European mink ranges north to the Arctic Sea.

        In the New World there are one or two species of marten (genus Martes ); in the ✓

Old World there are two; the sable, ranging from Kamchatka to European U.S.S.R.,

and the pine marten of northern Europe. All are closely related and are largely

geographical representatives. In North America another close relative, the

fisher, barely extends north into our area.

        The European badger (genus Meles ) ranges north to reach the Arctic Sea at

the White Sea; the American badger (genus Taxidea ) is more southern.

        In North America, the otter (genus Lutra ) of the waterways is a rare

animal of the streams of the forest taiga, extending north to the Mackenzie

Delta; in Eurasia, related species occur.

        The wolverine (genus Gulo ) is a circumpolar species group (or two closely

related species), more typical of the taiga but wandering commonly into the

barrens.

        The skunk (genus Mephitis ) is a New World group with one species, the

striped skun i k , barely intruding into the southern part of our area. ✓

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Hares, Rabbits, and Pikas: Lagomorpha

        Hares and Rabbits (family Leporidae) (family Leporidae) . The arctic hares of North Americ [ ?] a ✓ ✓

and the snow hares of Eurasia are all closely related animals (genus Lepus )

of the tundra. In North America, there is also the varying hare or snowshoe

rabbit (genus Lepus ) of widespread distribution in the taiga.

        Pikas or Rock Rabbits (Family Ochotonidae) . These small relatives of the

hares (genus Ochotona ) occur in both Eurasia and America. In the New World they

are confined to the mountains of the west; they also occur in the mountains of

Europe and Asia, and north to northern Siberia where they extend nearly to sea

level and the Arctic Sea.

       

Rodents: Rodentia

        Squirrels and Relatives (Family Sciuridae) . Tree squirrels (genus Sciurus )

are common important taiga animals, ranging north to the limit of trees. They

are represented in America by the red squirrel and in Eurasia by the common

squirrel. A flying squirrel (genus Glaucomys ) inhabits the American taiga, and

a distantly related species (genus Pteromys ) occurs in that of Eurasia, going

north of the Arctic Circle.

        Chipmunks (genus Eutamias ) are small, active, terrestrial squirrels with

stripes. In America, one species ranges northward into the western part of our

area; in Eurasia, a related species ranges north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia.

        In America one species of ground squirrels (genus Citellus ) occurs in the Western Arctic; ✓

in Eurasia related species (called suslik ) range well north in Siberia.

        Marmots (genus Marmota ), in America called woodchucks or ground hogs inhabit

the meadows and open forests and extend into our area in the west. The hoary

marmot ranges, in Alaska, north to the mountains facing the Arctic Sea, and in

Siberia and Kamchatka. Other species occur eastward into the mountains of Europe,

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        Beaver (Family Castoridae) . Related species (genus Castor ) occur in

the streams of the taiga of Eurasia and America.

        Voles and Relatives (Family Cricetidae) . This family of rodents contains

two subfamilies: the Microtinae (voles and lemmings) and Cricetinae (wood m mice).

The voles and lemmings, small vegetarians, have two circumpolar speci al e s groups ✓

on the tundra: the banded lemming (genus Dicrostonyx ) that changes to a white

winter coat, and the brown lemming (genus Lemmus ) that does not. Other voles,

of the genera Microtus and Clethrionomys (meadow mice or voles, bank voles,

water voles, red-backed voles, etc.) and related forms are plentiful as to

species and individuals in the taiga and spread out onto the tundra of both

the Old and the New Worlds. The most striking of these is the huge (for the

group) muskrat (genus Ondatra ) of the American taiga, which has been introduced

into parts of Eurasia.

        The white-footed mice (genus Peromyscus ) of America range through much of

the taiga, and a pack rat (genus Neotoma ) ranges in the mountains of the west.

In Eurasia their place is taken by the distantly related wood mice (genus Apodemus ),

which tend to be more southern.

        Jumping Mice (Family Zapodiae) . In America one species intrudes into the

Mackenzie (genus Zapus ); related species in Eurasia are more southern, restricted

to the Chinese area.

        American Porcupines (Family Erethizontidae) . The Canada porcupine (genus

Erethizon ), a forest animal, ranges north to the limit of trees. It is a member

of a New World group with headquarters in the American tropics. In the Old World,

the porcupines, belonging to quite another group (family Hystricidae) do not range

as far N north as our area.

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Hoofed Mammals: Artiodactyla

        Deer (Family Cervidae) . Caribou and reindeer of several species (genus

Rangifer ) are the chief deer of the circumpolar tundra and range into the

taiga; the circumpolar species group Alces , called moose in America and elk in

Eurasia, is restricted to the taiga.

        In the New World the mule deer (genus Odocoileus ) intrudes into the southern

edge of the taiga; in the Old World the musk deer (genus Moschus ) extends north

almost to the Arctic Circle.

        Sheep and Relatives (Family Bovidae) . Mountain sheep (genus Ovis ), in

America, occur only in the west above the timber line; in Kamchatka and the

mountains of Siberia are related species.

        Bison of America (genus Bison ), which still exist under protection, used

to extend into the southern part of our area; in Europe the related European

bison or aurochs (wisent) is about extinct.

        The musk ox (genus Ovibos ) is an animal of the American tundra, with no

living Eurasian representative. The mountain goat of western American mountains

(genus Oreamnos ) occurs only in the southern part of our area; its relatives are

in the mountains of central Asia and Europe.

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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anderson, R.M. “Mammals and Birds,” Bethane, W.C. ed., Canada’s

Western Northland , Ottawa, Patenaud e , 1937, pp.97-122. ✓

2. ----. “Mammif e è res de la Province de Qu e é bec,” Soc. Provancher, Quebec. ✓

Rapport Annuel, 1939, pp.37-111.

3. Anthony, H.E. Field Book of North American Mammals . N.Y., Putnam, 1928.

4. Brehm, A.E. Brehms Thierleben, Allgemeine Kunde des Thierreichs.

Vol. 1. Die S a ä ugethiere. Pts.1-2 . Grosse Ausg. 2. ✓

umgearb. und verm. Aufl. Leipzig, Verlag des

Bibliographischen Institut e s , 1876-77. ✓

5. Hesse, Richard, Alee, W.C. and Schmidt, K.P. Ecological Animal Geography .

N. Y., Wiley; Lond., Chapman & Hall, 1937.

6. Kobelt, Wilhelm. Die Verbreitung der Tierwelt . Leipzig, Tauchnitz, 1902.

7. Miller, G.S. Catalogue of the Mammals of Western Europe (Europe Exclusive

of Russia) in the Collection of the British Museum . Lond.,

The Museum, 1912.

8. Ognev, S.I. Zveri S SSR i Prilezhashchikh Stran; Zveri Vostochnoi Evropy i ✓

Severnoi Azii . (The Mammals of Russia (USSR) and Adjacent

Countries; the Mammals of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia.)

Moscow, Akademii Nauk, S SSR, 1928-40. Vols.1-4. ✓

9. Rand, A.L. Mammals of Yukon, Canada . Ottawa, Cloutier, 1945. Nat.Mus.Can.

Bull . 100.

10. Sclater, W.L. and Sclater, P.L. The Geography of Mammals . Lond., Paul,

Trench, Trübner, 1899.

11. Seton, E.T. Lives of Game Animals . N.Y., Doubleday, 1925-28. Vols.1-4.

12. Simpson, G.G. “Holarctic mammalian faunas and continental relationships

during the Cenozoic,” Geol.Soc.Amer. Bull . vol.58, pp.613-88,

1947.

13. Tate, G.H.H. Mammals of Eastern Asia , N.Y., Macmillan, 1947.

14. Winge, Herlaf. “Gr o ø nlands Pattedyr,” Medd.Grønland , vol.21, pp.319-521, ✓

1902.

       

A. L. Rand

Amphibians

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0056                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Karl P. Schmidt)

AMPHIBIANS

       

PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS

        With the manuscript of this article, the author submitted one photograph

for possible use as illustration. Because of the high cost of reproducing

as halftones in the printed volume, only a small proportion of the photo–

graphs submitted by contributors to Encyclopedia Arctica can be used, at

most one or two with each paper; in some cases none. The number and selection

must be determined later by the publisher and editors of Encyclopedia Arctica .

Meantime all photographs are being held at The Stefansson Library.

001      |      Vol_III-0057                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Karl P. Schmidt)

       

AMPHIBIANS

        Amphibians and reptiles whose body temperature fluctuates with that of

the environment must be able to hibernate safe from frost. Complete freezing,

i.e., freezing of the heart, kills them. It appears that the extremities of

cold-hardy frogs and salamanders may freeze without permanent injury; and it

is likely that the freezing point of the body fluids, concentrated by the freez–

ing of the extremities, is well below 0°C. Thus, north of the line of perma–

nently frozen subsoil, amphibians find no safe refuge, except in hot spring s . ✓

Cold hardiness in amphibians requires that the development of the eggs, de–

posited in water, may take place at or near the freezing point.

        Among amphibians, only two species of frogs range into the Subarctic in

the Western Hemisphere. Both of these reach Great Bear Lake, which is crossed

by the Arctic Circle. These are: Pseudacris migrita septentrionalis , the northern

swamp tree frog, and Rana sylvatica latiremis , the northern wood frog. These

forms are characterized by the shortness of their legs, and they merge with a

uniform gradient of increasing leg length (a geographic cline) into the related

forms at the south. Thus the establishment of a southern limit for the northern

subspecies is entirely arbitrary. In a broad sense the swamp tree frog ranges

south to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and the wood frog to Arkansas.

        The swamp tree frog does not appear to be known from Alaska or from Labrador.

002      |      Vol_III-0058                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Schmidt: Amphibians

The wood frog ranges to the Yukon and Mackenzie deltas and has been recorded

also from the Labrador coast at Jack Lane Bay, at about latitude 56° N.; it is ✓

still abundant at Fort Chimo, Ungava Bay, north of 58°.

        The Rocky Mountain toad, Bufo boreas boreas , reaches southern Alaska and

the Peace River district of Alberta. A northern race of the American toad,

Bufo terrestris copei , reaches Hudson Bay, as do the mink frog, Rana septentrionalis ,

and the leopard frog, Rand pipiens .

        The Old World amphibians that range to the 60th parallel or farther north

include several species of salamanders and frogs and toads.

       

Salamanders

        Hynobius keyserlingii , a salamander with no vernacular name, is found from

the northern Urals to Kamchatka, ranging north of the Arctic Circle at Verkhoiansk.

        Triturus cristatus cristatus , the crested newt, inhabits central Europe and

goes as far no r th as 60° N. in Scandinavia and Soviet Russia. ✓ ✓

        Triturus vulgaris vulgaris , the common European newt, ranges through central

and northern Europe, north to 63° N. in Scandinavia.

       

Frogs and Toads

        Bufo bufo bufo , the common European toad, ranges throughout northern Europe

and Asia, north to the 60th parallel; the eastern limits are unknown.

        Rana arvalis arvalis , the moor frog, inhabits northern Europe and Asia,

north to the Arctic Circle. Another subspecies, Rarvalis issaltschikovi , has

been described from Archangel.

        Rana ridibunda ridibunda , the common European pond frog, is found in central

Europe and north to th t e 60th parallel in Soviet Russia. ✓

003      |      Vol_III-0059                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Schmidt: Amphibians

        Rana temporaria temporaria , the European grass frog, ranges through

central and northern Europe and across Asia to Kamchatka, north to North Cape

in Scandinavia, and to Verkho l i ansk in Siberia. ✓

        Of the Old World frogs, the grass frog is by far the most abundant northern

species, ranging well beyond the Arctic Circle. This species is directly related

to the American wood frog.

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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Boulenger, G.A. The Tailless Batrachia of Europe . London, Ray Society,

1898.

2. Hildebrand, Henry. “Notes on Rana sylvatica in the Labrador Peninsula,”

Copeia , 1949.

3. Mertens, Robert, and Müller, Lorenz. “Die Amphibien und Reptilien

Europas,” [ ?] Senckenbergische Naturf.Ges. Abbandl .

no.451, pp.1-56, 1940.

4. Patch, C.L. “Notes on northern woodfrogs,” Copeia , 1949.

5. Schmidt, K.P. “A geographic variation gradient in frogs,” Field Mus.

Nat.Hist. Zool.Ser . vol.20, pp.377-82, 1938.

6. Werner, Franz. “Die nordlichsten Reptilien und Batrachier,” Fauna

Arct ., Jena, vol.4, pp.527-44, 1906.

       

Karl P. Schmidt

Reptiles

001      |      Vol_III-0061                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Karl P. Schmidt)

REPTILES

        Reptiles in northern climates like amphibians must be able to hibernate

safe from frost or at least from severe frost. It is likely that their north–

ward range can extend only slightly beyond the line of permanently frozen sub–

soil. No reptile appears to range much beyond the 50th parallel in North

America. In the Old World, however, no less than six species range north of

latitude 60° N. and some of these pass the Arctic Circle.

        Two of the northern species, the lizard known as the blindworm and the

European viper, hibernate in aggregations, and some of these overwintering

groups are mixed lots of the two species, no doubt with occasional representa–

tives of the smooth snake and perhaps of other species present.

        There is an evident advantage of viviparity for breeding in the North, the

gravid mother being enabled to follow the sun and thus maintain herself and her

developing young at a higher temperature than is available for eggs deposited

in the ground. This appears to be correlated with the fact that the two species

that range well beyond the Arctic Circle, the mountain lizard and the viper,

produce living young, as does the blindworm, which ranges nearly as far north.

        The scientific and common names of the northernmost reptiles, and their

approximate distributions are given below.

       

Lizards

        Lacerta agilis agilis , the sand or fence lizard, inhabits central Europe

northward beyond 60° N. in Sweden, Finland, and western Soviet Russia.

002      |      Vol_III-0062                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Schmidt: Reptiles of the Arctic Region

        Lacerta vivipara , the mountain or viviparous lizard, is found throughout

central Europe across northern Asia to Sakhalin Island, north to North Cape in

the Scandinavian Peninsula and to the Arctic Sea in Soviet Russia.

        Anguis fragilis , the blindworm or Blindschleiche , is found in Europe,

north to the Arctic Circle in Sweden and Finland.

       

Snakes

        Natrix natrix natrix , the common European water snake, is found in central

and northern Europe to central Asia, northward in Sweden and Finland to 64° N.

        Coronella austriaca austriaca , the smooth snake, exists in Europe, north

to 63° N. in Norway, and north to 64° N. in Sweden.

        Vipera berus berus , the common European viper, is located in central and

northern Europe and across northern Asia to Sakhalin Island, and north beyond

the Arctic Circle in the Scandinavian Peninsula.

003      |      Vol_III-0063                                                                                                                  
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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Hecht, Günther. “Zur Kenntnis der Nordgrenzen der mitteleuropäischen

Reptilian,” Berlin. Univ. Zool.Mus. Mitt . Vol.14,

pp. 501-95, 1929. Text fig. 1-15, pl. 3.

       

Karl P. Schmidt

Caribou and Reindeer

Caribou

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0064                                                                                                                  
(EA-Zoo. A. W. F. Banfield)

CARIBOU

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Status of Geographical Herds	2
Barren Ground Caribou	2
Alaska Peninsula Caribou	3
Osborn Caribou	3
Stone Caribou	4
Ungava Caribou	4
Polar Caribou	5
Western Woodland Caribou	6
Eastern Woodland Caribou	7
Newfoundland Caribou	7
General Aspects	7
Range	7
Physical Characteristics	8
Habits	9
Disease s	12 —
Enemies	13
Bibliography	16

001      |      Vol_III-0065                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(A. W. F. Banfield)

       

CARIBOU

        When the prairies of western North America were first explored by white

men, they supported vast herds of bison, which formed the basis of the economy

of the Indian tribes. By 1890, with the advance of agriculture, ranching, and

the transcontinental railway, the bison had been reduced from its millions to

the verge of extinction.

        The first explorers to the arctic grasslands of North America also found

innumerable herds of another big-game species — the caribou (Rangifer arc–

tious). They, too, provided she l ter, clothing, and food for the native popu–

lations of Eskimos and Indians. The bison has been extirpated from its mid–

continental plains habitat with the exception of a few herds in national

parks, but the caribou still roams the arctic prairies in numbers roughly

comparable to primitive conditions, largely because its domain has not yet

been fully exploited by civilization.

        The caribou is still the cornerstone of the economy in large areas of

northern North America. It serves primarily as a staple source of food. The

hides supply arctic clothing, beddings, and shelter; other parts, such as

the antlers and sinews, are utilized. Residents of isolated inland settle–

ments in northern Canada and Alaska, both native and white, are largely de–

pendent on the caribou for their continued existence in remote areas.

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EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

        The recent increased interest in northern development in Alaska and

Canada has drawn attention to the precarious state of many bands of caribou.

In the past decade (1940-49), improved northern transportation facilities

and renewed interest in the Arctic have made possible the collection and

publication of data on mammal distribution. It is now possible to take stock

of this important natural resource more accurately than at any previous time.

The present status of North American caribou has been reported by Banfield (3).

        The present classification of the genus Rangifer in North America is

generally considered unsatisfactory because of the scarcity of representative

specimens. The most generally accepted classifications are those of Anderson

(1) and Murie (15). They in turn have accepted the work of Jacobi (9). Within

the area covered by this Encyclopedia, nine seven races of four ✓ species are recog- ][Ok FB?] Au. O.K?

nized. The present status of these races is discussed below.

       

Status of Geographical Herds

][Ok FB?]?

        Barren Ground Caribou ( Rangifer arcticus arcticus ). This race, which is

by far the most numerous, includes the several large herds of continental

arctic prairie caribou of the Mackenzie and Keewatin Districts of the Northwest

Territories. Basing his calculation on the carrying capacity of the land,

Anderson (2), in 1938, estimated a population of approximately 3,000,000 ani–

mals. A recent preliminary aerial survey (1949) has indicated that, though

present numbers are probably less than this estimate, primitive abundance in

the central portion of their range is still undiminished.

        The nomadic migrations of these caribou during the past ten years have

brought them in winter well into the northern portions of the p P rairie p P rovinces

and west to the Mackenzie River valley. In the northeast section of their

003      |      Vol_III-0067                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

range, caribou have been greatly reduced in numbers by heavy hunting pressure

of the Eskimos. Over large areas, caribou are reduced to small nomadic bands

which no longer carry out the characteristic summer migrations to and from

the lower arctic islands and peninsulas. According to Manning (12), scattered

bands are still to be found on Melville Peninsula. Caribou are still fairly

plentiful along the arctic coast, from the mouth of the Back River west to

the Horton River. Gavin (7) relates that in the Perry River area large num–

bers appear in the early summer and bear their fawns on small coastal islands.

In recent summers, caribou have occurred in increasing numbers on the Kent

Peninsula and a few have crossed to Victoria Island. On that island, however,

only a few individuals are regularly observed.

        According to Manning (12), the population of the species on Southampton

Island has been similarly reduced to isolated bands. Nearly Coates Island,

which has no resident native population, supports a fairly large herd of

caribou from which numbers are taken from time to time by journeying Eskimos.

        The caribou population on Baffin Island is found chiefly along the western

coast, bordering Foxe Basin. The Eskimo population is largely distributed on

the eastern and southern shores of the island. Movement of Eskimos to the

western coast to utilize these remaining herds has been intentionally dis–

couraged.

        Alaska Peninsula Caribou ( Rangifer arcticus granti ). This race of caribou

occurs, according to Murie (15), from Unimak Island east to Port Heiden and

Becharof Lake.

        Osborn Caribou ( Rangifer arcticus osborni ). The Alaska Highway has not

only increased our knowledge of the distribution of this race of caribou in

northern British Columbia and southern Yukon Territory, but has greatly increased

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EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

its vulnerability to hunters. It seems that these caribou are restricted to

isolated bands inhabiting alpine ranges. The seasonal movements of this race

are altitudinal or local in nature.

        In western Yukon Territory this race of caribou occurs, according to

C. H. D. Clarke, in the Kluane Reserve area, from Donjek River north to the

White River, where their range is occasionally overrun by winter incursions

of Stone caribou. To the east, bands occur in central Yukon, along the Canol

Road to the Macmillan Pass (17). S am ma ll bands occur on the Mackenzie District —

side of the pass, along the Keele River. An aerial reconnaissance of the

upper Nahanni River, in early 1948, indicated a moderately numerous caribou

population.

        Stone Caribou ( Rangifer arcticus stonei ). This is the migratory caribou

of the Alaska mainland and arctic coast, east to the Mackenzie River delta.

According to Murie (15), there are several separate herds in the following

areas: Alaska range, arctic coast , and Yukon-Tanana region. Dufresne (5), in

1942, estimated a population of about 4 5 00,000 caribou in Alaska. More recent

reports suggest a decrease in this number.

        There are at present two centers of abundance in the Yukon Territory,

Canada. The northern herds are found on the plains between the mountains

and the arctic coast during the summer. During autumn they migrate south

through the Mackenzie Mountains, west of Aklavik and Fort McPherson, to the

upper Porcupine and Peel rivers. In recent years these herds have shown only

a gradual decline in numbers. In the second center of abundance, west of

Dawson, numbers have been greatly reduced. The Yukon River crossings at Forty - mile,

Dawson, and Stewart are no longer in frequent use.

        Ungava Caribou ( Rangifer caboti ). Migratory caribou were formerly

005      |      Vol_III-0069                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

abundant on the unforested lands of the Ungava Peninsula and were an important

natural resource for the Eskimos. If the peninsula is considered as a whole,

a gradual decrease in numbers has occurred (13). In several areas the decrease

was comparatively rapid, due in part to emigration. Recent fluctuations in

local populations are believed to be caused by local movements of small herds.

        Large forest fires during the latter part of the nineteenth century have

been generally blamed for the decrease in population. Using information ob–

tained by aerial reconnaissance, Manning (11) estimated, however, that only 8

per cent of the caribou lichens were destroyed by fires in the wooded area.

In excellent winter caribou range bordering the treeless country, he saw prac–

tically no sign of fires.

        The present range of the Ungava caribou seems to have two fbci of abundance.

On the east side of Hudson Bay, caribou are to be found in small numbers in an

area that extends from the headwaters of the Povungnituk River south to the

Seal lakes, and includes the headwaters of the Larch and Leaf rivers. Bands

also occur in an area that includes the vicinity of the Quebec-Labrador boun–

dary at latitude 56° to 57° N., part of the George River basin, and the upper

Whale River basin.

        Polar Caribou ( Rangifer pearyi ). The range of this small white caribou

is restricted to the northern arctic islands. It has suffered less human

interference than any other species of caribou. It was previously thought

it was to be present in considerable numbers over most of its range. Recent explora–

tions, however, have indicated that much of this territory is unsuited for

caribou range because of the lack of vegetation on mountains and the presence

of extensive icecaps.

        Polar caribou are reported from Banks Island and no r thern Victoria Island,

006      |      Vol_III-0070                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

but the center of abundance seems to be on the islands north of Lancaster

Sound. They occur in some numbers on Prince Patrick and Melville Islands.

On Ellesmere Island, caribou occur in small numbers on the small erosion

plains at the heads of the numerous fjords.

        Caribou also are reported from the northwestern coast of Greenland as

far north as the Thule area, but they are practically extinct there now.

Distribution along the west coast ranges from Upernivik District southward

to the Frederikshaab District.

        Along Greenland’s northeast coast, caribou have entirely disappeared, — Au: oK? [Ok FB?]

although they were frequent there in former days, notably around Scoresby

Sound, where the Ryder Expedition (1891-92) encountered numerous herds. The

Danmark Expedition (1906-08) found traces of caribou (old, castoff antlers

and ex c rements) as far north as Holm Land (80° 24 w ′ N.), and the First Thule —

Expedition (1912) found similar remains as far north as Adam Biering Land

and Vildt Land, at the head of Independence Fjord, southern edge of Peary

Land. The finds of the Thule Expedition have been confirmed by the Danish

Peary Land Expedition (1948-50), as indicated by a preliminary account of its

geographic work given by Fristrup (6). The account states specifically that

caribou formerly inhabited Peary Land. So far, no traces of caribou have

been found in upper Peary Land, that is along its northern shores (10).

        Peary, who hunted caribou both on Ellesmere Island and in the Thule

District of northwest Greenland, found that the Greenland specimens differed

somewhat from those on the Canadian side of the Smith Sound route. “I have

seen many winter coats of the Greenland Caribou and they are pronouncedly

darker than the Ellesmere specimens” (16).

        Western Woodland Caribou (Rangifer caribou sylvestris). The main centers

007      |      Vol_III-0071                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

of abundance of the woodland caribou are south of the region treated in this

Encyclopedia. In the Mackenzie River valley of the Northwest Territories,

woodland caribou occur in small isolated bands. They have suffered from range

destruction by forest fires. Heavy hunting pressure has further restricted

their range to areas remote from settlements and river routes. They are to

be found in the western half of Wood Buffalo Park. A recent aerial reconnais–

sance (1949) has indicated a population of caribou south from the Liard River

to the British Columbia boundary. They are also known from the Trout Lake

area, west of Fort Providence. East of the Mackenzie River they are reported

in the Horn Mountains, the Fish Lake area, and the Willow Lake area.

        Eastern Woodland Caribou ( Rangifer caribou caribou ). The eastern woodland

caribou has suffered habitat destruction by agriculture, lumbering, and forest

fires. Its range in North America is no longer continuous, the species having

been reduced to isolated herds. In Labrador, the woodland caribou are reported

from the Cartwright area, the upper Hamilton River valley, and in the Mealy Au: oK? [Ok FB?]

Mountains to the south. In Quebec, there are scattered herds north of the

Gulf of St. Lawrence and in the Rupert River drainage. The discovery of large

deposits of iron ore on the Quebec-Labrador boundary constitutes a new threat

to the survival of caribou in the Ungava Peninsula. A herd occurs in the Gasp e é

Peninsula and in 1949 the population of this herd was estimated at 1,500.

        Newfoundland Caribou ( Rangifer caribou terra n enovae ). In the 25,000-

square-mile caribou range in Newfoundland, and estimated number of 15,000 caribou

was reported in 1949. There has been no decrease noted in recent years. The

annual kill by residents is less than 300 animals.

       

General Aspects

        Range . The range of caribou, in general, is farther north than that of

008      |      Vol_III-0072                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

Any other member of the deer family (Cervidae) and extends to the northern

limits of land, except that they now appear to be extinct in Peary Land.

The range of the genus Rangifer Rangifer , like that of the wolf, is circumpolar. The

members of the genus in Europe and Asia have been called reindeer; but

recently the tendency, in North America at least, is to restrict the designa–

tion reindeer to the various domestic subspecies, using caribou for the wild

animals.

        Physical Characteristics . The caribou is specially adapted to its

northern habitat. The pelage is thick and long and the muzzle is furred.

Another northern deer, the moose ( Alces Americana ), overcomes the difficulty

of deep snow with its long legs. The caribou, moderately long legged, has

little deep snow to contend with north of the tree line. When the caribou

run, the hooves click. If a large herd of caribou is passing by, this

“click-click” noise is loud and distinct.

        In fresh autumn coat the caribou are cinnamon-brown with a white neck,

“beard,” and a lateral stripe across the shoulder and along the flank. The

abdomen, rump, tail, nose, and a ring above the ho f o fs are also white. The

legs, chest, and lower flanks are darker brown. By late spring the old coat

is much worn and has become pale-buff in color. At a distance the caribou

then appear almost white. A new dark pelage grows during the summer months.

        There is considerable range in the size of caribou in different parts

of northern North America. Differences of size are among the characteristics

that form the basis for separation of the caribou into several races. The

Alaskan races are the largest, while the polar caribou ( Rangifer pearyi ) is

the smallest. Murie (15) states that the average live weight of six Alaskan

males in 366 pounds. The average dressed weight of eighteen males was 247

009      |      Vol_III-0073                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

pounds. The females are much smaller. The average total length of male cari–

bou from the interior of Alaska is about 78 inches and the average height of

shoulder is about 46 inches.

        Both sexes carry antlers; those of the bucks are much larger than those

of the does. Each antler consists of a main beam which sweeps back and out

from the burr. Close to the burr are two tines which point forward. The

first, which grows medially forward over the face, is called the brow tine.

The two opposite brow tines grow close together and usually one is dominant

and palmate in form. The second tine on the beam is called the bez tine. It,

also, is generally palmate and grows anteriorly. Beyond these two tines the

beam turns sharply up and gives rise posteriorly to the a number of terminal

tines. There is great variation in antler formation; some are palmate,

others more digitate. It is a general characteristic that the beams of cari–

bou ( Rangifer arcticus ) are circular in cross section while those of the wood–

land caribou ( R. caribou ) are generally flattened. The bucks grow and shed

their antlers much earlier than the does.

        Habits . Caribou possess a keen sense of smell and rely largely on this

sense for warning of danger. Their eyesight is fair. They notice movements

quickly but can easily be stalked upwind. The normal reaction when they are

suspicious of danger is to circle to a position downwind from the object of

curiosity. They do not seem to associate noise with danger. Caribou are well

known for their insatiable curiosity. When alarmed they flee, but usually

soon pause to look over their shoulders at the intruder. In large numbers

they seem even more curious and bolder and sometimes may be approached closely.

        Caribou are strong swimmers and readily cross large bodies of water in

migration. In the water they float with the back and rump above the surface.

010      |      Vol_III-0074                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

It is suggested by Clarke (4) that the sound of running water attracts caribou

to shallow crossings.

        The caribou uses a variety of gaits. It seems to be a restless animal

by nature. While slowly feeding along a ridge, it will suddenly break into

an easy trot, only to resume a walk again after a few seconds. When alarmed,

the caribou trots with head held high and legs thrown loosely forward and out.

This gait can be changed to a fast pace with which the caribou covers great

distances with seemingly little effort. When fully alarmed, the caribou will

break into a gallop, but this gait is never maintained for a long period.

        During the summer the bucks put on considerable back fat before the rutting

season, which takes place during the autumn. Murie (14) observed small bands

of does, each with a buck in charge, during the period September 14 to October

7. When the rut is on, the big bucks hard the does, spar with opponents, and

often neglect to eat. This means that they enter the winter in poor condition.

In Alaska the fawns are born between May 15 and June 15. They are reddish in

color, with a black muzzle and dorsal line, and lack the spots of other fawns

of the deer family. This coat fades to a buff color in July. A little later

this coat is lost and fawns take on a darker coat similar to that of the adults.

        The fawns are precocious and soon follow their mothers. Within a few days

they can run as fast as the does, and by midsummer they are grazing for them–

selves. The caribou does are solicitous mothers and seldom desert their young

when in trouble.

        During the short arctic summer, when the herds are on the open lands

beyond the tree line, their food consists chiefly of green forage. During

this season, the caribou seem to feed chiefly by browsing — stripping the

leaves from the shrub willows ( Salix sp.), birth ( Betula glandulosa ), and

011      |      Vol_III-0075                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

bilberry ( Vaccinium uliginosum). They also graze on the grasses and sedges

in the arctic swales. Typical plants utilized are: bent reed grass ( Cala–

magrostis sp.), bluegrass ( Pea sp.), sedges (Carex sp.), and cotton grass

(Erøophorum sp.). In late summer, mushrooms are eaten when found.

        During the winter, lichens assume the major role in the caribou diet.

The caribou easily paw through the snow to secure the ground vegetation. Some

of the more important lichens are: Cladonia , Cetraria , Usnea , and Alectoria .

Dried grasses, the leaves and twigs of many heaths, such as bearberry (Arcto–

staphylos sp.) and crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), and the twigs of shrubs, such

as willow ( Salix sp.) and aspen ( Populus tremuloides ), are also eaten.

        Local movements seem to be governed by the food supply and the avail–

ability of routes of travel. The lichens which from the major portion of

the winter diet of caribou may take as long as fifteen to twenty years to

recover from heavy utilization. Long migrations are a common characteristic

of the caribou in North America. Along the routes the terrain is covered with

parallel trails which the caribous follow in single file.

        The populations of aborigines have learned to depend on these seasonal

movements for their supplies of meat and clothing. Many theories have been

advanced to explain to movements of the caribou. Marie (14) states that

the migrations are probably due to several factors. There is the midsummer

search for fresh feeding grounds, then the change from the grassy summer

ranges to the winter lichen range. Coupled with these factors, the rutting

activity stimulates movements in the autumn and the animals retrace ancestral

routes through habit. In the spring there is a tendency to leave the forest

because of the desire for a change to a grass diet and the urgency of the ap–

proaching fawning season.

012      |      Vol_III-0076                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

        Disease s . Caribou are subject to a variety of parasitic diseases. The

most extensive parasitic condition of the caribou herds is that caused by the

warble fly (Oedemagena tarandi). The warble fly is a large orange-and-black

beelike fly which deposits its eggs on the hair of caribou during the summer.

The larvae hatch, bore through the skin, and, by autumn, have moved to the

back region. Here they become encapsulated under the skin, with small breathing

holes through the skin. By May, the larvae are about three-quarters of an

inch long. When mature, they enlarge the breathing holes and squirm through,

dropping to the ground, where they pupate. From the pupae the adult flies

emerge early in the summer. The effect of a heavy infection of warble larvae

is to render the hide useless for clothing during a large part of the year.

        A second parasitic fly which attacks caribou is the nostril fly (Cophe-

[u: for trompe??][?] Hadwen(1922) gives both for reindeer I dont know! FR nemyia nasalis). This is a large, dark fly. The larvae are deposited in the

nostrils during the summer by the adult fly, which is viviparous. These

migrate backward and lodge in the nasopharyngeal region. By early spring

they have become much enlarged and form tight clusters in the throats of the

animals. Caribou are often observed coughing and sneezing at this period,

probably because of the discomfort due to the presence of these larvae. The

larvae detach themselves and drop out early in the summer, to pupate on the

ground, where they develop into adult flies.

        In the Arctic, there is a close association between many of the large

mammals, including man, through a predator-prey relationship. Several para–

sitic flatworms seem to have taken advantage of this close relationship to

complete their complicated life histories. Thus the tapeworms ( Taenia hy–

datigena, T. krabbei, and Echinococcus granulosus), which occur as adults in

the intestines of wolves, coyotes, and domestic dogs, appear as larval bladder-

worms in the livers, lungs, and muscle of caribou. The predators become

013      |      Vol_III-0077                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

parasitized by feeding on the infected caribou which had previously become

parasitized by eating eggs of the tapeworms washed out of wolf or other f a eces

onto the vegetation.

        The close relationship of natives to both caribou and their domestic dogs

has introduced the possibility of a secondary cycle, including man, which is

distinct from the natural caribou-wolf-caribou cycle.

        Several other diseases have been observed among caribou. Hadwen (8) (7a)

recorded an infestation of a protozoan of the Sarcosporidia order. Murie (14)

reported findings skulls showing necrosis of the jawbones. It seems very likely

that caribou suffer from a disease similar to necrotic stomatitis.

        There is some loss of life due to accidents. Waterfalls and rapids

take a natural toll during migrations. Clarke (4) reported the findings of

more than 500 carcasses at the foot of a falls on the Hanbury River in the

Northwest Territories.

        Enemies . With the exception of man, the wolf is the most important preda–

tor of caribous throughout the greater portion of their range. In recent years

North American caribou have undergone serious reductions in range and popula–

tions. In several cases, the ranges are no longer continuous and the isolated

herds are vulnerable to extirpation.

        It is popularly believed that wolf predation has been the major factor

in the caribou decrease. This view, when subjected to critical analysis, can–

not be maintained. In many areas the decrease in caribou started before any

local influx of or increase in wolves. It seems significant that the Barren-

Ground caribou, which has had less contact with civilized man than the majority

of other races, still occurs in numbers comparable to those found under prim–

itive conditions, in spite of the presence of a relatively uncontrolled wolf

014      |      Vol_III-0078                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

population. It should also be remembered that caribou and wolves shared

the same arctic ranges for countless years before the arrival of European

man, yet the latter found caribou there in abundance.

        Wolves take their greatest toll of caribou during the winter months, when

they follow the migrating herds. During the summer months there is less wolf

pressure on caribou because of the presence of other forms of prey, such as

waterfowl and other nesting birds on the grasslands, ground squirrels ( Citel –

lus parryii ), and the young of other mammals, such as arctic hares ( Lepus

arcticus ), arctic foxes ( Alopex sp.), and lemmings ( Lemmus sp.). These animals

act as buffer species between the wolf and the caribou. Au: OK? Ok FB

        The second period when the caribous is particularly vulnerable to predation

is during the fawning season. During the first week of their lives, caribou

fawns are most vulnerable to the attacks of wolves ( Canis lupus ), as well as

coyotes ( Canis latrans ), lynx ( Lynx canadensis ), and golden eagles ( Aquila

chrysaëtos ). There are doubtful claims that the wolverine ( Gulo luscus ) preys

on fawns and extremely doubtful ones that the grizzly bear ( Ursus sp.) does too.

Although all these predators, but not including the wolf, manage to capture a

few fawns at this season, these animals are so few in numbers and local in

distribution as to have little effect on the survival of the caribou herds as

a whole. Observations of grizzly bears and golden eagles hunting newborn fawns

are given by A. Murie (14) and observations concerning the relation of the lynx

to the caribou are given by O.J. Murie (15). Clarke (4) has estimated that a

single wolf kills, on the average, twelve caribou per year, but that would be

for sections where the wolf has many sorts of provender. In the Far North,

where the caribou is practically the only food available through two-thirds of

the year, the rate would be higher.

015      |      Vol_III-0079                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

        Since the writings of Darwin, the theory of the survival of the fittest

has achieved wide acceptance. In removing the less-fleet caribou, which are

usually the aged, sick, or injured animals, the predator benefits the species

by improving the stock. When wounded or aged animals are commonly observed

hobbling in the rear of a migrating herd of caribou, one can justifiably con–

clued that the wolf pressure is not excessive.

        Harper (8) has pointed out the interesting fact that the Queen Charlotte

Island and Spitsbergen were the only areas where the caribou did not share

their range with the wolf. The races of caribou inhabiting these areas were

the runts of the tribe. The Queen Charlotte Islands caribou ( Rangifer arcticus

dawsoni ) is believed to be extinct. In achieved this status without the as–

sistance of the wolf.

016      |      Vol_III-0080                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Caribou

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anderson, R.M. Catalogue of Canadian Recent Mammals . Ottawa, 1946.

Nat. Mus. Can. Bull . 102. Biological Ser . no.31.

2. ----. “The present status and distribution of the big game mammals of

Canada,” North American Wildlife Conference, 3d.

Baltimore, 1938. Trans . pp.390-406.

3. Banfield, A.W.F. “The present status of North American caribou,”

North American Wildlife Conference, 14th, Washington,

1949. Trans . pp.447-91.

4. Clarke, C.H.D. A Biological Investigation of the Thelon Game Sanctuary .

(Ottawa, Patenaude, 1940.) Nat.Mus.Can. Bull . No.96.

Biological Ser . No.25.

5. Dufresne, Frank. Mammals and Birds of Alaska . Wash.,G.P.O., 1942.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serv. Circ . No.3.

6. Fristrup, Børge. “A preliminary account of geographical work of the

Danish Peary Land Expedition,” Geogr.Tidsskr . vol.49,

pp.41-66, 1948/49.

7. Gavin, Angus. “Notes on mammals observed in the Perry River district,

Queen Maud Sea,” J.Mammal . vol.26, no.4, pp.226-30, 1945.

7a. Hadwen, Seymour, and Palmer, L.J. Reindeer in Alaska . Wash.,G.P.O., 1922,

p.68. U.S. Dept.Agric. Bull . no.1089

8. Harper, Francis. Land of the Caribou . Natural History Magazine, 1949.

Manuscript. 18(5): 224-231, 239 vol. 18,no.5, pp. 224-231, 239, 1949.

9. Jacobi, Arnold. “Das Rentier, eine Zoologische monographie der Gattung

Rangifer,” Zoologischer Anz . B.96. Erganzungaband . 1931.

10. Jensen, Ad.S. “The fauna of Greenland,” Greenland. Commission for the

Direction of the Geological and Geographical Investiga–

tions in Greenland. Greenland, Vol.1. The Discovery

of Greenland, Exploration and Nature of the Country .

Editors: M. Vahl (and others). Copenhagen, Reitzel;

Lond., Milford, 1928, pp.320-23.

11. Manning, T.H. “Bird and mammal notes from the east side of Hudson Bay,”

Canad.Field Nat . vol.60, no.4, pp.71-85, 1946.

017      |      Vol_III-0081                                                                                                                  
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12. ----. “Notes on the coastal districts of the eastern barren-grounds and

Melville peninsula from Igloolik to Cape Fullerton,”

Canad.Geogr.J . vol.26, pp.84-105, 1943.

13. ----. “Preliminary report on a background study of the caribou,” Quebec.

Assoc. for the Protection of Game and Fish. Annual Report

vol.80, pp.20-21, 1948.

14. Murie, Adolph. The Wolves of Mount McKinley . Wash.,G.P.O., 1944. U.S.

National Park Service. Fauna of the National Parks of the

United States. Fauna Series no.5.

15. Murie, O.J. Alaska-Yukon Caribou . Wash.,G.P.O., 1935. U.S. Biological

Survey. North American Fauna no.54.

16. Peary, R.E. Nearest the Pole . Lond., Hutchinson, 1907.

17. Rand, A.L. Mammal Investigations on the Canol Road, Yukon and Northwest

Territories, 1944 Territories, 1944 . Ottawa, 1945. Nat.Mus.Can. Bull . 99.

Biological Ser . No.28.

       

A. F W . W F . Banfield

Economic Zoology of Caribou

001      |      Vol_III-0082                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Olaus J. Murie)

ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY OF CARIBOU

        From early times, throughout the world, venison has been a favored

food for primitive people. Not only have the members of the deer family

served as food for man, ancient and modern, but they have contributed

importantly to the diet of large carnivores. Probably in adjustment to

this ecological state of affairs, the deer of the world have developed

characteristics such as speed, alertness, large [ ?] size, or fecundity,

or combinations of these, to meet the hazards of their environment.

        In their special adaptations, the caribou of the Arctic and Subarctic

are unique in several respects. In response to the rigors of their climate

they have developed an unusually warm cost of hair, with hairiness extending

even over the nose. Instead of the trim feet of southern deer, they grew

rounded hoofs that spread when necessary, the better to walk on snow or boggy

ground. They respond to cold with heavy layers of fat. And they exist

in large herds. Incidentally, for some reason, the females bear antlers,

and even the fawns grow spike antlers in the first summer.

        Some fo of these are the very zoological attributes that have been such a

boon to man in the Arctic. The caribou skin makes warm clothing; the

excessive fat is a godsend to fat-hungry man in the winter cold; and the

fact that caribou run in herds, and normally are numerous, makes it possible

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to depend on them as a source of food. I say this as a general rule, having

in mind that not always have the herds been dependable in specific instances!

        To begin with, the north country of America was people s d by two principal

groups, The Eskimos were primarily a coastal people, finding much of their

subsistence in the sea, though taking advantage of the caribou and other

land animals at every opportunity. In exceptional instances Eskimo groups

live d inland, away from the sea. The North American Indian was a man of the

forested country (and the southern plains and deserts). There was accordingly

a different human eco p l ogy for the coastal Eskimo and the Indian of the

northern forest. The two peoples were not entirely exclusive of each other,

and their interests clashed, with some hostility, at the borders of their

natural territories.

        For both of these ethnic groups the caribou had an economic significance

in many respects similar to that of the bison for the Plains Indian farther

south. Both animals traveled in herds, wore numerous, and furnished an

important source of food, clothing, and shelter.

        With the crude weapons at first available to them both Eskimos and

Indiana found it necessary to summon great ingenuity to capture the animals.

The bow and arrow were, of course, standard equipment for stalking game.

Among the Eskimos, at least, this had its drawbacks in open country, but

by various ruses, taking advantage of the animal’s temporary curiosity,

or its grazing habits, or some local topographic features, the hun g t er

was able to get within bow-shot of caribou.

        But driving was a favorite method. The process has been described in

several variations, but essentially the plan was as follows. The hunters

would choose an area frequented by caribou, such as a migration route, and

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there two lines of cairns were placed, consisting of rocks, piles of turf,

perhaps topped with sticks and even with a piece of garment that would

flutter. These lines would converge on a narrow defile, or the shore of a

lake. As the animals wandered between the two “wings” of the trap, hesi–

tating to approach those prominent objects on either side, women and

children might appear from behind the cairns the animals had already passed.

As the caribou moved on, urged from behind, more people appeared, until the

animals came into the narrows where concealed hunters had an opportunity to shoot,

or into the water where hunters in kayaks would dart out after them and

spear the swimming animals. Large numbers were sometimes killed by this

method.

        In various localities snare fences were built. In northwestern Alaska

it is reported that snares were sometimes simply placed in gaps between

willows, where caribou were accustomed to pass. But in interior Alaska, in

the Tenana and upper Yukon region, long pole fences were erected across

well-known migration routes, sometimes extending for several miles. At

intervals there was a gap in the fence, in which was place a twisted raw–

hide snare. As late as 1921 I saw some of these snare fences still in good

repair, the poles and posts being held firmly with willow withes. One of

these led directly to the old corral, where the animals were at one time

thus guided into a definite trap. When thus enclosed they were shot by

arrows, or sometimes speared through the bars with a knife fastened at

the end of a pole.

        In this general area there were also lookouts for spying migratory

g herds. One of these was a platform built high in a spruce, with the limbs

cleared away for an unobstructed view. Another, more elaborate structure,

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was built of poles tied with willows, in the form of a huge stepladder with

a platform on top.

        Snare fences were reported also by Lowe (3) near Boulder Creek, in

Copper River Valley, and a reindeer herder reported snare fences formerly

built by Eskimos in the lower Kuskokwim River region. In 1920 at least five

caribou were caught in snare fences near Tanana Crossing; in this case old aban–

doned telegraph line was used for snares. As late as 1926 rawhide snares

were still being used on the Old Crew River, in norther n Yukon Territory,

mostly by the old men or hunters lacking ammunition. MacFarlan d e (4) speaking

of woodland caribou of the Northwest Territories, remarks that at one time

Indians used twisted rawhide snares to capture them, and that the Indians

near Fort Anderson, on Anderson River, obtained a few of the barren ground

caribou in the same manner. Similar snare fences were used in parts of

Alaska to capture moose.

        These we d r e the primitive methods by which the Eskimos and Indians

supplied their needs. The meat was a staple, obtainable at certain seasons

in quantity. Seals, walrus, fish, and rabbits were the other more or less

dependable food resources of these northern people.

        The caribou meat was eaten fresh or dried. The contents of the rumen,

rich with lichen remains, were eaten fresh or, when possible, frozen and

stored for future use. The colon was relished, and it may be significant

that this is also sought out by certain carnivores. The marrow of the bones

was greatly enjoyed, and of course the quantity of fat which the caribou

accumulates in the fall is a prize in the North. I have never found caribou

meat tough, and a large fat bull is excellent eating. The meat has a high

water content and some of us who drove dogs found that twice as much caribou

meat was required by a sled dog as compared with mou n tain sheep meat. (The

latter was fed to dogs only in real emergency.)

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        Caribou skins were universally used for clothing — warm park [ ?] s,

leggings, moccasins, mittens, and other miscellaneous a d r ticles. In the

Hudson Bay country I found that moose-hide moccasins were somewhat warmer

in the cold dry snow but that caribou-hide moccasins were better moisture

repellents when the weather was somewhat warmer and the snow was damp. In

Hudson Bay, also, the Indians used the unborn caribou fawns for food, and

made light caps the bags from their skins. Caribou rawhide, or babiche,

was used for the wea b v ing of snowshoes, and hides were used for tents.

Caribou antlers were used for many handy tools. Possibly no other northern

animals has produced a greater variety of economic uses for the original

inhabitants of the North. Add to this the fact that this hardy deer inhabited

some of the most “barren” portions of the Arctic, and it will be realized T w hat

an important animal this proved to be in arctic economy.

        Stefansson (11) has given us a dramatic example of some of the bleakness

of the surroundings in which you might find caribou in the northern fringes

of its range. He had reached Isachsen Land with two of his companions

seriously ill. “I walked that day twenty miles across one of the very few

stretches of entirely barren land that I have seen in the Arctic. Underfoot

was gravel without a blade of grass.” Yet next morning (in a more favorable

grazing area) he came on a band of caribou, which saved the day for his party.

Here was a group of men, exploring some of the northern fringes of our con–

tinent, reaching into the polar sea, where one might expect little life to

be found. Yet there were caribou.

        Caribou are not always dependable, or predictable, and Indians have on

occasion suffered hardship through the un d c ertainties and vagaries of caribou

movements. They are erratic travelers and while generally they follow

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established routes, they may be slow in arriving, they may veer away from

a former course, or they may not go as far as in former years.

        In the early spring of 1921 I reached Tanana Crossing, in Alaska, and

found that the Indians were having a difficult time. They were awaiting

the caribou herds which come back over the Alaska Range to drop their fawns

in the Tanana River country. Fish were scarce and I was having great diffi–

culty in obtaining food for my dogs. Finally, on April 28, the caribou same —

long lines of them leading down the snowy slopes into the valley of the Tanana.

The Indian village came to life and soon caribou meat was hung to dry on

numerous racks, something like fourteen or fifteen per family. It is often

famine or feast in caribou country.

        With the coming of the whi l te man in the North, and his rifle and trade

goods, the caribou-man ecology changed. For the explorer, the whaler, the

trader, and particularly the pioneer trapper and prospector, caribou meat

became a staple food. Hunting became easier. The native people relinquished

their primitive methods and accepted firearms, and they were able to kill

more game. They killed more than they needed, and found it profitable to

supply the white men. The annals of the North are filled with accounts of

barter in caribou meat and skins. In the enthusiasm over the new hunting

facilities, many animals were wasted.

        E. W. Nelson (6) writing of the Bering Sea coast of Alaska, said:

“When the Americans first obtained control of the Territory firearms were

unknown among the natives, and when the natives first obtained guns they

kept the traders supplied with meat at the rate of two charges of powder and

ball for a dear. One winter, just preceding the transfer of the Territory, an

enormous herd of Reindeer [caribou[ passed so near St. Michaels that a

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6-pounder loaded with buckshot was fired at them, killing and wounding a

number of them.”

        Speaking of Alaska Peninsula and adjacent coasts, he says further”

“In the summer of 1880 one men from Point Barrow took about five hundred

skins, and many others took nearly as large a number. Only a few stragglers

now remain on the Kaviak Peninsula and in the country between the Yukon and

Kuskokwim Rivers.”

        Again: “When Mr. Dall came down the Yukon in the spring of 1867, he

saw over four thousands skins of reindeer fawns hanging up in a village near

Anvik, and at present scarcely half a dozen deer, old and young, are [ ?] r t aken

yearly in that district.

        “The skins taken in summer are valued at about one dollar each among the

fur traders, who buy them in one part of the country and trade them for furs

in other parts.”

        James Wickersham (12) writes of interior Alaska in 1900: “Captain

Farnsworth, then in command at Fort Egbert, had established a hunting camp

on the divide between Mission creek on Forty Mile river, about fifty miles

from Eagle, and had sent hunters and a squad of soldiers there to kill

caribou for the post.” Mr. Wickersham mentions seeing fifty caribou hung

on racks.

        Osgood (7) reports that in the fall of 1901, in east central Alaska, a

white man killed 62 caribou in one day, and immediately afterward a party of

Indians killed 42. Next day a hunter killed 7 cripples in that vicinity and

followed the bloody trail of the herd for some miles.

        Edward A. Preble (8) referring to the report of A. J. Stone, says:

“He considers that the animals are fast being exterminated in that quarter

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[east of the Mackenzie River delta], principally on account of the demand

for meat at the trading posts, and at the wintering places of the whalers

along the Arctic coast.”

        MacFarlane (4) commented: “In the course of the company’s five year

occupation of Fort Anderson, we received considerable quantities of venison

and many skins of the Barren Ground reindeer from the Eskimos and Indians

who reported thereto for purposes of trade.”

        In 1917, at Fort Chimo, Ungava Bay, I learned that the Naskapi Indians

would occasionally bring some caribou meat to the trading post, th r ough these

animals had already become extremely scarce on the Labrador Peninsula. Our

party had crossed through the interior without seeing one. Three years later,

in interior Alaska, I found that mountain sheep, moose, and caribou were

being sold to the construction camps along the route of the government Alaska

Railroad. At the restaurants in the towns one could order moose or caribou

from the menu. A number of years previously professional hunters had been

supplying caribou to the local markets, and one of these men gave me many

details of their hunting technique.

        Originally the numbers of caribou were more or less in adjustment with

their environment, which included the scattered human population using

primitive weapons. When the white pioneers came into the North — explorers,

whalers, traders, prospectors, trappers, adventurous souls with that innate

urge to experience what lies beyond — bringing with them more lethal weapons

and a large market for game, the drain on the caribou herds became greater

than their population dynamics could withstand. Still later came the more

permanent settlements, with increase of white population. Today even a

grater influx of people is taking place, with roads, railways, and aircraft.

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Thus the original prospect in northern lands has virtually disappeared.

Industrial civilization is reaching northward, with modern convenience and

huge demand on natural resources.

        It must be kept in mind that during the early pioneer period the caribou

served on important purpose. W ti it hout the caribou — a herd animal existing

in large numbers — with its potential for abundant meat and materials for

clothing and similar necessities, life in the North would have been much

more difficult. Even today, in much of the territory, caribou contribute

importantly to the personal economy of many people — Eskimos, Indians, and

whites.

        However, no longer does the supply appear inexhaustible. The caribou

have completely disappeared from many areas, such as the extensive portions

of Alaska bordering on Bering Sea, and the area east of the Mackenzie River

delta. The woodland caribou has disappeared from former ranges in northern

states and parts of lower Canada, and they have become extremely rare on the

Labrador Peninsula. In many other areas they are reduced in numbers.

        In Siberia and northern Europe the reindeer was domesticated long ag l o,

so extensively that in parts of their former range wild reindeer are scarce

or no longer exists. The North American caribou were never domesticated.

But with the disappearance of the wild caribou in the areas bordering on

Bering Sea, domestic reindeer from the Old World were substituted, together

with Lapp herders to instruct the Eskimos. In many ways this was a help to

the Eskimo, but there is much confusion about the project. Proper reindeer hording

requires a nomadic life.

        Consider, for example, the natural feeding habits of caribou. In my

study of the Alaska-Yukon caribou (5) some years ago, I came to the following

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conclusions: “…the fact that the caribou do not linger in any one locality,

but are nearly always on the move, keeps them distributed over a wide territory

and tends to preserve their winter food.”

        Studies conducted by the U.S. Biological Survey in the nineteen twenty’s

indicated that the lichen growth, so beneficial for caribou and domestic

reindeer, once it is destroyed requires about as long to recover as does a

destroyed forest. These considerations led me to suggest further in my

published report (5):

        “Apparently each species adopts a particular migratory habit to suit

its food requirements. In the case of the caribou the need appears to be an

avoidance of concentration, and the need for greater dispersal of the caribou

has been met by greater restlessness, resulting in a greater and more varied

migration. Throughout its circumpolar range, the caribou normally seeks

lichens for winter forage, and throughout its entire range it is a wanderer.

These two facts appear to be related, and in the absence of any other solution

it seems reasonable to conclude that the caribou’s peculiar taste has made the

species the restless wanderer that it is.”

        It may prove to be a fact that the Alaskan reindeer ranges are overgrazed.

Certain white owners undertook to raise domestic reindeer for market, and

since commercial enterprise naturally requires large quantity for profit,

such operations no doubt provided an additional impact on the native caribou

herds and the original range.

        It is axiomatic that a reindeer industry and wild caribou herds cannot

occupy the same area. The migratory caribou draw with them on their journey

sizable numbers of reindeer that are thus lost to the owner. For this reason,

in reindeer territory it has been the custom to attempt to eliminate any

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stray caribou that come into the range of the domestic animals.

        At one of the sessions of the International Technical Conference on the

Protection of Nature, meeting at Lake Success under the auspices of UNESCO

in the summer of 1949, a Canadian delegate introduced the subject of preserv–

ing some of the Canadian species of caribou, particularly those of the

Labrador Peninsula. There has been consideration of substituting the domestic

reindeer. To meet this difficulty some considerations of caribou biology may

be worth while.

        There has been the belief that the North American caribou, being migratory,

cannot be domesticated. Yet I have seen a caribou calf, pretty well grown

when it was captured in the fall, so thoroughly tamed in less than two weeks

that it would follow its owner about like a dog. An elk calf, caught when

a few days old in the highly migratory Jackson Hole elk herd in Wyoming,

grew up perfectly tame and, although up to more than four years of age it

had perfect freedom and in winter mingled with the wintering wild elk, it

never showed any desire to migrate.

        In areas where native caribou have been reduced to dangerous levels,

experiments would be worth while to raise a herd of the animals native to

that area, rather than replacing the remnant with the domestic reindeer.

It is entirely possible that the native caribou could be given sufficient

domestication for controlled herding as in the case of domestic reindeer.

Such a procedure would tend to insure the perpetuation of the native stock,

a serious consideration among the many people, scientists as well as other

groups of conservationists, whose aims are typified by those of the

International Union for the Protection of Nature. Under such a plan escapes

from the domestic herd would find their own kind, and there would be the

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hope of restoring the original wild population.

        Wolves, disease, and perhaps other factors have always been a drain on

the caribou herds. These cannot be ignored. But the most critical of all

factors, as we have found in modern game management, is the destruction of

habitat. In the future, if it is our decision to retain the caribou, there

must be such land-use planning that proper range, extensive range, may be

designated for caribou. The more intensive types of land use could well be

segregated into the more favorable areas. The caribou ranges thus preserved

could be dedicated to multiple use, of the kinds not incompatible with the

needs of caribou. Such uses would be the wilderness type of recreation

(which is being given so much attention today among conservationists), certain

field sports, scientific studies, particularly in ecology, preservation of

other wildlife that shares similar habitat, and like categories.

        By proper planning and suitable regulations, caribou may still be an

economic asset to many people, and of great recreation value as well.

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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Boas, Franz. “The Central Eskimo,” U.S. Bureau of Ethnology. Annual

Report , 6th, 1884-’85. Wash., G.P.O., 1888, pp.409-669.

2. Jenness, Diamond. “The life of the Copper Eskimos,” Canadian Arctic

Expedition, 1913-1918. Report, vol.12, pt.A, pp.1-277, 1922.

3. Lowe, P.G. “From Valdez Inlet to Belle Isle, on the Yukon,” Glen, E.F.,

and Abercrombie, W.R. Reports of Explorations in the

Territory of Alaska (Cooks Inlet, Sushitna, Copper, and

Tanana Rivers) 1898 . Wash., G.P.O., 1899, pp.353-87.

U.S. War Dept. Adjutant General’s Office. Doc . no.102.

Military Intelligence Div. Publ . no.25.

4. MacFarlan d e Roderick. Notes on Mammals Collected and Observed in the

Northern Mackenzie River District, Northwest Territories of

Canada, with Remarks on Explorers and Explorations of the

Far North . Wash., G.P.O., 1905, U.S.Nat.Mus. no.1405.

5. Murie, O.J. Alaska-Yukon Caribou. Wash., U.S. Dept.Agriculture, Bur. of

Biological Survey, 1935. North American Fauna no.54.

6. Nelson, E.W. Report upon Natural History Collections Made in Alaska

between the Years 1877 and 1881. Wash., G.P.O., 1887.

U.S. Army. Signal Service. Arctic Series of Publications no.3.

7. Osgood, W.H. Biological Investigations in Alaska and Yukon Territory .

Wash., G.P.O., 1909. North American Fauna .no.30.

8. Preble, E.A. A Biological Investigation of the Athabaska-Mackenzie Region .

Wash., G.P.O., 1909. North American Fauna no.27.

9. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. The Friendly Arctic . N.Y., Macmillan, 1921.

10. ----. Hunters of the Great North. N.Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1922.

11. ----. My Life with the Eskimo . N.Y., Macmillan, 1913.

12. Wickersham, James. Old Yukon. Wash., Washington Law Book Co., 1938.

       

Olaus J. Murie

Reindeer Herding in Canada

001      |      Vol_III-0095                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Richard Finnie)

REINDEER HERDING IN CANADA

        The first successful experiment in reindeer husbandry in Canada began

in the spring of 1935, when 2,370 animals from Alaska were delivered to a

reserve at the east side of the Mackenzie Delta. Despite many difficulties

and setbacks, the reindeer steadily increased and, by 1947, numbered 6,400,

even though between 3,000 and 4,000 had be slaughtered for food and

clothing during the intervening years, and still others had strayed away.

        In 1908, Dr. Wilfred Grenfell established 250 Lapland reindeer at

St. Anthony in northern Newfoundland; within ten years they had increased

to 1,200 but had begun scattering for lack of attention. In 1918, all that

were still available, 126, were given to the Canadian Government and moved

to the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, near St. Augustin, Quebec.

At first they multiplied, but here again inadequate care took its toll and,

in 1923, the 145 remaining were shifted to Anticosti Island and liberated.

There they were stricken with disease and, by 1941, only 9 were left.

        This was not the first attempt to introduce reindeer into Canada.

Back in 1911, the Department of the Interior had bought 40 breeding does,

6 stags, and4 geldings (to be trained as draft animals) from the Grenfell

herd at St. Anthony, and had shipped them to Fort Smith, Northwest Territories.

The journey was a hard one for them: by boat to Quebac k , by train to Edmonton,

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by wagon to Athabaska Landing, and by scow to the Fort Smith vicinity.

Fifteen died on the way from injuries or lack of suitable food. By the

fall of 1913, only three were left, one having been killed by dogs, the

rest having taken to the woods when tormented by flies or having succumbed

to some undiagnosed malady.

        In 1918, the same year that the ill-starved experiment was being under–

taken in Quebec, Vilhjalmur Stefansson returned from five years in the

Arctic with the conviction that there lay an opportunity to develop a vast

new source of wealth with domesticated reindeer and musk oxen. He set about

trying to induce the Federal Government to go in for reindeer breeding as a

public enterprise. The Right Honorable Arthur Meighen, who was then Minister

of the Interior, soon became sufficiently interested to arrange the appoint–

ment, in May 1919, of a Royal Commission to investigate the possibilities

as outlined by Stefansson in an address before both Houses of Parliament.

The commission consisted of J. G. Rutherford, Railway Commissioner (chairman);

James S. McLean, manager of the Harris Abattoir Co., Toronto; James B. Harkin,

Commissioner of Dominion Parks; and Dr. Stefansson. During the next year the

commission questioned 35 expert witnesses and finally brought in a favorable

report. In March 1920, Stefansson withdrew from the commission, partly

because he felt that he was prejudiced and partly because of a new idea he

had: that a reindeer industry might be expedited with private backing.

        In October 1919, Stefansson opened negotiations with the Hudson’s Bay

Company. He next made formal application to the Department of the Interior

to lease grazing rights over a large area of southern Baffin Island for a

fifty-year period, with the privilege of transferring it if granted. Meanwhile

the Hudson’s Bay Company agreed to support his reindeer venture, and later

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a musk ox venture, too, should he be granted his lease.

        The lease was formally signed on June 11, 1920, giving Stefansson

exclusive rights for reindeer grazing over 113,900 square miles of southern

Baffin Island for 30 years. The Hudson’s Bay Reindeer Company was incorporated

and to it Stefansson transferred his lease, in consideration for which he

was retained solely in an advisory capacity.

        Stefansson’s plan was to buy a selected herd of a thousand reindeer

in northern Norway and ship them to Baffin Island, and he recommended Storker

T. Storkerson, a member of his Canadian Arctic Expedition, as permanent

manager. Storkerson, a Norwegian, visited the prospective grazing grounds

during the summer of 1920, was well pleased, and the following winter

journeyed to London to report to the head of the Hudson’s Bay Company with

the expectation that he would now have the responsibility of selecting and

buying the breeding stock in Norway. This was denied him, however, and he

at once resigned in protest.

        This was the beginning of a chain of misfortune s that led to disaster.

The Hudson’s Bay Company’s supply vessel ( Nascopie , which was sent to Norway

to fetch the reindeer, had space for only 687 animals, 60 of which died or

were lost before the herd was loaded. Rough weather en route took another

77, so that only 550 remained to be put ashore at Amadjuak Bay, Baffin Island.

No accommodation for the Lapp herders who were employed had be d e n provided,

nor had provision been made to receive the deer; so while the herders were

trying to erect dwellings, the herd dispersed. A year later, in June 1922,

there were 210 reindeer left, including new calves. The Lapps departed for

home and were replaced by local Eskimos who had not yet acquired enough

experience as herders. By 1925, the entire herd had vanished.

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        However, the sanguine report of the Royal Commission upon the possibilities

of the reindeer industry in the arctic and subarctic regions, published in

1922, was not forgotten.

        The report recommended that a number of experimental herds be estab–

lished in the most suitable locations. It was believed that the development

of such herds would provide reliable and economical food and clothing supplies

for the natives, both Indians and Eskimos, and guard against actual starvation

due to failure to find wild game. The commissioners added that the herds

might become a food source also for white men engaged in developing the

natural resources of the country, and lay the foundation for a future commer–

cial meat industry.

        The Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch, Department of the Interior,

which had been created in 1921, made further inquiries about reindeer

herding, especially in Alaska. This was intensified by the rapidly changing

economy of Canadian Eskimos. Nearly all had acquired rifles with which they

were decimating the d c aribou and altering their migration routes; and al were

turning more and more to the trapping of white foxes. It was feared that

fluctuations in the numbers of fur bearers and the uncertainties of the fur

market might seriously affect the natives.

        The Government observed that similar conditions had prevailed in Alaska

forty years earlier, and that the natives’ lot had been improved by the

introduction of domestic reindeer from Siberia. The original herd of 1,280

animals introduced between 1891 and 1902 had increased to more than 750,000.

In addition more than 200,000 had been slaughtered to supply meat and

clothing. Two-thirds of the Alaskan reindeer were nor owned by natives.

        It was the desire of the Canadian Government to promote the introduction

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EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

of an industry which the natives could develop rather than to establish

a government industry, and it was decided, before incurring the expenses

involved in introducing reindeer, to have a thorough investigation made.

This was to cover the country between the Alaska-Yukon boundary on the west,

the Coppermine River on the east, Great Bear Lake on the south, and the

Arctic Sea on the north.

        It was to be a general botanical reconnaissance with special reference

to reindeer pasture, carrying capacity, and other general conditions of

importance to a future reindeer industry. Since in Alaska the reindeer

industry had become such a success, it was considered that previous to the

field work in Canada the investigators should, with the permission of the

United States Government, spend a season in Alaska to make an exhaustive

study of the reindeer industry and its effect on the country and people.

        Chosen for this assignment were two brothers, A. Erling P orsild, a

trained botanist, and R. T. Porsild, a zoologist, both of whom had spent

many years in North Greenland, were experienced arctic travelers, and could

speak the Eskimo language. The investigation lasted from May 1926 to

November 1928, during which the Porsilds traveled 15,000 miles by dog team,

canoe, motorboat, and on foot. They returned with 15,000 herbarium

specimens of vascular plants and nearly 5,000 specimens of cryptogams, plus

some zoological specimens and many photographs.

        In his report, Erling Porsild indicated a half-dozen sections he

considered suitable for reindeer pasture: ( 1 ) the arctic coast from the

Alaska-Yukon boundary eastward, including Herschel Island, to the Mackenzie

Delta; ( 2 ) the Mackenzie Delta and its islands; ( 3 ) the arctic coast and

hinterland from the Mackenzie River to Cape Bathurst; ( 4 ) the plains north

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EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

of Great Bear Lake; ( 5 ) the Dease Valley; and ( 6 ) the Dismal Lakes and

Kendall River valleys.

        In summing up, Porsild estimated that there was a total of 15,000

square miles of grazing land in the coastal area from the Alaska-Yukon

boundary to Cape Bathurst and from the mouth of the Anderson River to

Point Separation at the south end of the Mackenzie Delta. Allowing 40

acres per head for this type of country, he considered that it would have

a year-round carrying capacity of 250,000 reindeer. The pasturable country

north and east of Great Bear Lake comprised 38,000 square miles which he

believed would support 300,000 reindeer, giving each one 60 acres. (In 1930,

he made a grazing survey of the central Keewatin District, west of Hudson

Bay between Churchill and Chesterfield Inlet, ascertaining that, while the

greater part must be classified as summer pasture only, it still contained

suitable reindeer ranching areas exceeding those of the Mackenzie District,

along the coast from Nelson River north to Dawson Inlet.)

        On the basis of the Porsild report, the Canadian Government proceeded

to acquire the breeding stock for establishment in the Mackenzie Delta. By

an Order in Council of May 1, 1929, the Minister of the Interior was authorized

to purchase from Lomen Brothers, Nome, Alaska, 3,000 head of adult reindeer.

Under the terms of a contract subsequently made, Lomen Brothers agreed to

furnish this number of the largest and sturdiest animals in their possession,

with a proper proportion of bucks and does, and to deliver them at the

Mackenzie Delta in the spring of 1931.

        In the fall of 1929, Erling Porsild went to Nome to represent the

Government in the selection of the herd and the beginning of the drive,

while his brother was given charge of arrangements for the reception of the

007      |      Vol_III-0101                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

of the reindeer in the Mackenzie Delta. In December, 2,890 does and 307

bucks were selected in the Buckland Valley, and to these were added about

250 steers for food and draft purposes. Lomen Brothers placed Andrew Bahr,

a veteran Lapp herder, in charge of the drive, assisted by other Lapps and

several Eskimos.

        The drive got under way in December 1929. After the initial effort

of detaching the selected animals from the main herd, many unforeseen

difficulties were encountered. At first many of the deer broke away and

were not recovered. Blizzards, intense cold, and depredations of wolves,

the distraction of wild caribou, and the stampeding of the reindeer, all

impeded progress along the 1,500-mile route. The trek continued, however,

with losses being recouped in some measure each fawning season. The deer

reached Canadian territory in 193 8 38 , but an unsuccessful attempt to get them

across the Mackenzie Delta in the winter of 1933-34 delayed delivery until

March 1935.

        The number of deer delivered was 2,370, consisting of 1,498 does of

all ages, 3 2 89 bulls, 322 male fawns, and 261 steers. Only a fifth of these

were original stock from the Buckland Valley herd in Alaska.

        Long before the trek ended, a corral had been constructed at Kittigazuit

on the mainland just east of the Mackenzie Delta, while headquarters for the

reindeer staff was established, with dwellings and warehouse, about 40 miles

inland at the foot of the Caribou Hills along the East Channel of the delta,

70 miles by water from Aklavik.

        In 1931, three Lapp herders and their families were brought from Norway

to assist in controlling the herd upon its arrival and in training the local

Eskimos. These men joined the herd during the winter of 1932-33, for the

last stage of the drive.

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EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

        In December 1933, the Government officially created a reindeer reserve

comprising about 6,600 square miles, including both summer and winter ranges,

immediately east of the Mackenzie Delta. Two years later this area was

photographed from the air, and the resulting maps proved invaluable to the

herders in their travels and in the selection of fresh grazing grounds.

        During the first summer on the reserve, the herd grazed in the coastal

area in the vicinity of the corral at Kittigazuit, where a roundup was held

in midsummer. A count then made showed that there was an increase of 800

healthy fawns. In early winter the herd was moved inlan t d to the environs of

the main station, where the plateau extending back from the river carries a

good cover of reindeer moss for winter feeding. The following spring the

reindeer were taken to Richards Island, adjoining the Kittigazuit range.

The island proved wholly satisfactory for summer grazing and has been used thus

ever since. Here a corral with holding pens and a lead fence was constructed

for the annual roundup.

        When alarmed, the reindeer from into a compact body and begin to circle.

Herds consistently move clockwise or counterclockwise, according to the

tendency of the parent herds. The Canadian deer mill counterclockwise, as

do their Alaskan forebears, and this peculiarity has to be taken into considera–

tion in the construction of corrals and holding pens.

        The roundup procedure is to count all the deer, mark all that have not

previously been marked (with a V-shaped notch cut in the right ear), and check

the sexes, enumerating does, fawns, and yearlings. Bulls over four years old

are castrated. All diseased or maimed animals are killed at once, while old

does and surplus bucks (a proportion of 10% of the latter is maintained)

are selected for slaughter later in the year.

009      |      Vol_III-0103                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

        The handling of the reindeer at roundup time and on other occasions

tends to prevent them from becoming wild and intractable. Some of the

mature steers in the herd are broken to harness for transporting supplies

and firewood, moving camp, and the like.

        Of fine grain and classed between beef and mutton, reindeer meat is

palatable, nourishing, easily digested, and free from gamy flavor. The

skin, with hair intact, is unsurpassed for cold-weather bedding and clothing.

Contrary to the practice in Norway, the milking of Canadian reindeer has

not yet been attempted to any extent, although the milk is among the richest

kinds known, with a butterfat content of 2 3 2 %.

        In the summer of 1939, an inspection of the Canadian reindeer was made

by Dr. Seymour Hadwen, Director of Pathology and Bacteriology, Ontario

Research Foundation, Toronto, and formerly Chief Veterinarian and Parasi–

tologist of the United States Bureau of Biological Survey. He reported the

herd to be in excellent condition and practically free from disease and

parasitism, and was struck by the fertility of the deer as shown by the

bearing of fawns by some of the does only one year old. He noted that there

had been a gradual increase in the dressed weight of slaughtered steers.

Some carcasses now weighed as much as 200 pounds, and the average was 167

as against 150 in 1935. The dressed weight of the aged does was about 135

pounds. He concluded that the excellent range and favorable climate, as well

as good management, were responsible for the development of large and

vigorous stock.

        The Canadian deer are allowed to graze freely over an area of several

square miles, the herders watching for straying individuals — which, after

a winter storm, sometimes have to be tracked some distance and returned to

010      |      Vol_III-0104                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

safety. On the semiannual drive between summer and winter grazing grounds,

the main herd covers about 75 miles in easy stages. Reindeer moss ( Cladonia

rangiferina ) is the principal food in winter, and although it is eaten to

some extent in summer too, it is not nearly so nourishing as the grasses,

willows, and other shrubs that are then available. If overgrazed, the moss

may take many years to recover, but the other food renews itself annually.

A system of rotating the winter grazing areas guards against moss depletion.

        Like all other northern land mammals the reindeer are harassed by flies

in summer, but by moving them 15 to 20 miles away from an area at the time

warble-fly grubs emerge from the hides and drop on the the ground, the herders

are able to minimize reinfestation.

        There was steady though unspectacular growth in the size of the herd,

the official totals at roundup time being 2,980, including 815 fawns, in 1935;

3,750, including 936 fawns, in 1936; 4,092, including 1,181 fawns, in 1937;

4,631, including 1,281 fawns, in 1938.

        In December 1938, about 950 deer were separated from the main herd and

transferred to a location in the vicinity of the Anderson River. This became

the nucleus of a new herd under the management of Eskimos under government

supervision, and the following yea d r it had increased to 1,196. A roundup,

in August 1940, showed that the new herd numbered 1,559 animals, including

448 fawns. Meanwhile, the main herd on Richards Island and grown by 1940

to 5,076, including 1,486 fawns, despite the reduction in 1938.

        The training of young natives as herders proceeded, and a second

subsidiary herd was started in 1940. To qualify as independent herders the

Eskimos had to serve as apprentices for three years, then they received the

deer under a lending arrangement subject to the return of a similar number

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EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

of animals as the herds increased.

        Both the training program and the industry itself suffered a serious

setback in 1944, when the custodians of the native herds, together with

their families and a white supervisor, lost their lives in the wreck of

a schooner in a storm off the arctic coast. The native herds became

scattered, and all the animals that could be recovered were maintained as a

government unit in the Anderson River area.

        The reindeer industry in northwestern Canada is still in its infancy,

and the main concern is to train young natives as herders and at the same

time build up new breeding stock. Still, there has been available for dis–

posal each year a number of surplus animals, chiefly steers and old does.

About 300 deer in the main herd have been slaughtered annually for food and

clothing. The slaughtering operations have been conducted for the most part

in the late autumn and early winter, the meat being distributed mainly to the

mission hospitals and residential schools in the Mackenzie Delta. The remainder of the meat goes far relief and camp purposes, with a limited quality for local sale.

        Fawn skins which become available at the annual roundup, usually from

injured or defective animals, are turned into parkas and other clothing for

the herders. Experiments in tanning have been carried on with hides from

mature animals. Some of the skins of adult reindeer killed for food have

been shipped as far as the Canadian Eastern Arctic, when caribou were scarce,

to be used for bedding and the making of winter clothing.

        In the spring the main herd is moved from the winter range to the

coastal area, where fawning occurs between the first of April and early

June. This interlude is followed by the driving of the deer over the ice

to the northern part of Richards Island, where the winds help to lessen the

scourge of flies. Later the deer are shifted gradually toward the corralling

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EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

grounds. The roundup is usually held during the last week of July, and,

if the winter is favorable, finishes within four or five days. Afterward

the herd grazes over the summer range until it is once more assembled for

the annual slaughter of surplus stock.

        All herders share in an annual bonus of fifty cents per head. Two men

are usually on duty concurrently, each having a dog to help him, for a

period of 24 hours, at the end of which time they are relieved. Under

ordinary conditions the herder’s life is fairly placid, but it [ ?] becomes

strenuous during emergencies such as storms, or the threat of wolves; and

when the herd must be transferred from one range to another, or rounded up.

        Two of the Lapp herders returned to Norway in 1936 and 1938, but the

third has remained. In the first years of the building up of the herd all

of the Eskimos employed or apprenticed belonged to the Mackenzie Delta, but,

with the placing of native herds farther east, young Coronation Gulf Eskimos

were encouraged to take training.

        The Canadian reindeer industry was beset with problems from the first,

of which the most formidable were not with the deer themselves but rather

with people. While capable white men can be found to act as supervisors,

it is always hard to maintain a full complement of native herders and

apprentices.

        This difficulty was anticipated as long ago as 1920 by Dr. Diamond

Jenness, Chief of the Division of Anthropology, National Museum of Canada,

when he appeared before the Royal Commission and stated that he was not

sure that it would be an easy task to convert the Eskimos into efficient

herders. He pointed out that while they were intelligent and trustworthy,

they had always been hunters and fishermen, and as long as caribou and fish

013      |      Vol_III-0107                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Finnie: Reindeer Herding

and seal were plentiful they might not readily turn to herding. If game

became scarce, however, he thought that they would develop into herders as

Eskimos had done in Alaska.

        He did not mention the further complication of fur trapping which in

those days was still a minor occupation of the Eskimos. In succeeding

years the Mackenzie Delta Eskimos, particularly, trapped white foxes almost

to the exclusion of hunting, and a number of them became comparatively

wealthy. Such people have been reluctant to forego opportunities to make

quick profits with foxes in favor of long-term investment in reindeer herds.

        Familiar complaints of native herds are that they are onerously tied

down to their deer, with no time for trapping or even putting up enough

dog feed, and that they are obliged to hire other Eskimos to help them but

lack the means to pay them. To cap the climax, from their point of view,

the number of deer they may slaughter is rigidly restricted. The principles

of conservation are hard for them to grasp.

        { The successful continuation and expansion of the reindeer industry will

therefore depend on the employment of an ample number of keen and competent

white supervisors, careful over-all management, and a suitable program of

education for the natives, plus a profitable market for meat and hides to

keep pace with the expanding herds. }

       

Richard Finnie

Reindeer Breeding in U.S.S.R.

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0108                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(V. J. Tereshtenko)

REINDEER BREEDING IN THE U.S.S.R.

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Definition and Classification	1
Historical Background	5
Reindeer Breeding Before the 1917 Revolution	14
Reindeer Breeding After the Revolution	17
Reindeer Herding	24
Utilization of the Reindeer	28
Draft Animals	30
Meat	37
By-Products	40
Bibliography	44

001      |      Vol_III-0109                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(V. J. Tereshtenko)

       

REINDEER BREEDING IN THE U.S.S.R.

       

Definition and Classification

        The English term “reindeer breeding” is liable to misinterpretation

when applied to conditions in the Soviet Union, and may easily cause con–

fusion among foreign students who do not have sufficient mastery of the

Russian language or do not inform themselves as to views on the zoological

classification of reindeer.

        There are two sources of possible confusion, the first of which comes

from Russian terminology and nomenclature applied to reindeer breeding.

Berthold Laufer, in The Reindeer and Its Domestication (27), falls victim

to this difficulty, for he complains that the Russians do not discriminate

between stag and reindeer, calling both indifferently olen . But any

Russian-English dictionary indicates that olen means “deer” in English.

The English word “reindeer” and its equivalents in other languages are

translated into Russian by adding a qualifying word to olen . Thus “reindeer”

in Russian is severnyiolen , which literally means “northern deer.” The only

Russian equivalent of the term “reindeer breeding” is olenevodstvo , the

ending vodstvo implying the breeding or cultivation of something, thus

the word may signify the breeding of any deer. As a matter of fact, in

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

the territory of the U.S.S.R. the breeding of other species of deer as well

as reindeer has been developed. Accordingly, although the word olenevodstvo

often conveys the meaning of “reindeer breeding,” this is not always the case,

and therefore if taken out of context the word may lead to misunderstanding.

        A second source of possible confusion to the foreign student of Soviet

reindeer breeding is the lack of precision in the existing classification of

reindeer in Russian literature and even more so in the works about reindeer

written outside of Russia.

        For instance, the first 16 reindeer purchased in 1891 for the introduction

of reindeer breeding in Alaska, and the second group of 171 purchased in 1892.

were obtained from Cape Sertse Kamen and South Head, Siberia. The initiator

of the plan was Dr. Sheldon Jackson, United States General Agent of Education

in Alaska. Lieutenant B. P. Bertholf was later sent by Jackson to purchase

reindeer, with instructions to get a better breed than those “usually met with

on the northeast coast of Siberia.” In the report on his mission, Bertholf

stated that the Tungus deer “are much larger and sturdier and have longer legs

than the deer of the northeast coast of Siberia”, that “the interior Chukchi

and those some distance to the west of the east cape have deer which are

larger than those on the coast”; and that Koriak deer are smaller. In the

light of the modern zoological classification, Bertholf’s mention of the

“Tungus deer” may perhaps be interpreted as a reference to reindeer which

are described by Soviet zoologists as a subspecies rather than a “better breed”.

        Rangifer , the genus which in English commonly includes all species of

of domestic and wild reindeer and caribou, but which is treated by some Soviet

writers as a species, is represented in the Soviet Far North by Rangifer

tarandus , the Russian severnyi olen . Within this group the following subgroups

003      |      Vol_III-0111                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

are distinguished, the Russian equivalents of the Latin names being formed

by adding one or two qualifying adjectives to severnyi olen: ( 1 ) Rangifer

tarandus tarandus , an inhabitant of Lapland and eastern European taiga ; ,

Laplandskii severn y i olen in Russian; ( 2 ) Rangifer tarandus pearsoni ,

which is found on Novaya Zemlya and called Novozemelskii severnyi olen

in Russian; ( 3 ) Rangifer tarandus sibiricus , or Sibirskii tundrovyi severnyi

olen , in Russian (Siberian tundra reindeer); it lives in the eastern European

and Siberian tundra, on the Novosibirskie Islands, and sometimes is found

also in the nor h thern taiga; ( 4 ) Rangifer tarandus valentinae , an inhabitant

of the woodland area of Siberia and Ural up to Tataria in the west, northern

Mongolia in the south, and the Stanovoi Range in the east; it is called

Sibirskii lesnoy severnyi olen (Siberian woodland reindeer) in Russian;

( 5 ) Rangifer tarandus phylarehus , found on the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the

coast of Okhotsk Sea, in the Amur region, and called Okhotskii severnyi olen

in Russian; ( 6 ) Rangifer tarandus setoni , Sakhalinskii olen in Russian; it

is met on the island of Sakhalin; ( 7 ) Rangifer tarandus angustrirostris ,

found in the mountains of the Transbaikal region, and in the Barguzin Range

in particular, its Russian name is Barguzinskii severnyi olen .

        The wild reindeer does not occur between the middle course of the

Yenisei and that of the Ob. It is found on Sakhalin, but not in the center

of Yakutia. It is found also on Novaya Zemlya, Vaigach, and the islands of

Novosibirskie, Belyi, and Medvezhii. In the past, the bor d er line went

farther south than that of the present time and reached such cities in

C E uropean Russia as Novgorod and Kazan, and the middle course of the Kama.

        As in the whole deer family, reindeer horns differ from those of other

004      |      Vol_III-0112                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

ruminants in being solid, generally branched, shed, and renewed annually.

In contrast to other deer, the reindeer has antlers in both sexes, those of

the males larger and more branched. In the early stages of growth they are

soft and covered with a downy, vascular covering — the “velvet” — which

later is shed, or rubbed off. The antlers are cast every year; the males

usually cast them between November and December, the gelded reindeer and

the yearlings from March to May, and the females in May and June. At first

the growth of antlers proceeds slowly; toward the end of May, and especially

in June, the antlers of the mature stags grow rapidly. It is said that in

the whole kingdom of vertebrates there is no other tissue known which grows

as rapidly as reindeer antlers (4). According to some observations made in

the Pechora region, antlers grow at a rate of 0.39 inch and even as much as

0.79 inch a day at the beginning of June. Speaking of the antlers of Cervus

elaphus , another species of the deer family, Maiseven (4), asserts that

“their growth cannot be compared even with the growth of malignant tumors.

It far exceeds the latter.”

        Depending upon climatic conditions and food supply, reindeer differ

considerably in weight and size. North of the tree line the reindeer is dark

brown in color, short and stocky (the height being about 39 to 43 inches),

but lighter in weight than the woodland reindeer which is long, big-framed,

with long legs and narrow chest (height about 43 to 46 inches) and of

steel-gray color. As a rule reindeer increase in weight from northwest to

southeast. The Nentsi reindeer are smaller than those met in the Norilsk

district, while the reindeer of the Tungus are much [ ?] larger, weighing

up to 330 pounds. On the northern slopes of the Saian Mountains ( Karagasskii olen )

[ ?] it reaches a height of 55 inches. It is very strong, capable of carrying

005      |      Vol_III-0113                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

more than 200 pounds on its back over the most difficult roads. (According

to data of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, the average reindeer in Alaska

stands 42 to 44 inches high, measures 5 1/2 to 6 feet from nose to tip of

tail, and has an average dressed weight around 150 pounds.) The reindeer

of the Tafalarsk district (Irkutsk region) is considered one of the

strongest and largest. The weight of the male reaches 440 to 507 pounds,

and it can easily carry a load of 175 to 220 pounds on its back. At the

All-Union Exhibition in 1939-40, some 4-month fawns from the Tafalarsk

district were shown weighing 185 pounds. The reindeer in Buriat-Mongolia,

in the Amur region, and on the island of Sakhalin are also strong and larger

than those of Yakutia. In the Chukhotsk district they are rather small, the

carcass weighing 130 to 150 pounds. The reindeer of European Russian (such

as those found in Malozemelskai Tundra, Bolshezemelskaia Tundra, and the

Iamal s — Iamal reindeer) are a little larger than those of the Chukhotsk

district but smaller than the Tafalarsk, Amur or Yakut reindeer. The average

weight of the Kolguev reindeer is about 300 pounds for the buck and 250

pounds for the doe.

        According to the views of some, the domestic reindeer of a given region

are in size and other characteristics similar to the wild caribou (wild reindeer)

of the same or neighboring districts.

       

Historical Background

        The origin of reindeer breeding is still doubtful. According to some

writers, it falls within historic times; by other investigators, domestication

is believed to date from prehistoric time. D. M. Wilcken in his work on the

history of domestic animals Grundzüge der Naturgeschichte der Haustiere

006      |      Vol_III-0114                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

(Leipzig, 1905), asserts that the domestication of reindeer occurred in

prehistoric times. Recent Soviet investigators accept this, as in the

article on reindeer breeding in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

        There are many authors, however, who do not share the prehistoric theory.

For instance, L. Reinhardt in his Kulturgeschichte der Nutztiere (Munich, 1912)

maintained that the domestication of reindeer “could not have taken place

much earlier than 500 years ago.” Berthold Laufer for (27) suggests that Reinhardt’s figure should be multiplied

“at least by three.” Laufer concedes that the wild reindeer (caribou) was

among the game hunted by Paleolithic man, but does not see any evidence that

man of that age attempted to domesticate the animal. Laufer suggests that

since the domesticated reindeer is lacking in aboriginal America, its domes–

tication cannot be of very ancient date. Further proof of this, according

to Laufer, is the fact that the classical authors, at least in western

Europe, have left us no account whatever of the domesticated reindeer. The

first good description of wild reindeer ( bos cervi figura ) under the name of

tarandus , was by Julius Caesar. King Alfred of England (849-899) knew that

in his time the Norwegians had domestic reindeer in the north of their country (26A).

        Archaeological evidence does not shed much light on the question. In

Scythian and Siberian antiquities of the Bronze Age, as well as on burial

stones in Mongolia, figures of elk have been found, but they are shown as

wild animals, and no representation of domestic reindeer accompanied by men

has yet been discovered.

        The question of where the first domestication began leaves less room for

speculation than the question of time. It is true that the wild reindeer or

caribou had formerly a much wider geographical range than at present. Its

remains are found associated with hippopotami in Pleistocene formations much

007      |      Vol_III-0115                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

farther south in Europe than the location of the Hercynian forests, where they

we e r e found by Caesar. All investigators agree that the domesticated reind d e er

was the cultural property of the Old World and the domestication of the animal

occurred somewhere in the territory which may be described at present as the

Soviet North, together with the adjoining region of Lake Baikal. A former

popular notion that the animals were tamed at first only by the inhabitants

of the northern plains was banished long ago. Laufer (27) considered that

“the records referring to the woodland reindeer are much older than those

pertaining to the tundra reindeer of the maritime coasts,” and that “the

woodland reindeer is the first in point of time to be domesticated and spread

from the south into other regions, gradually developing into the tundra reindeer

through infusion with the blood of wild forms of the tundra.” There is no

historic evidence that reindeer breeding was restricted to a certain ethnic

group. Apparently it was bound originally to certain localities with a

suitable floristic environment.

        The earliest records in existence containing references to the domestic–

cated reindeer are Chinese. The Chinese were well acquainted with tribes in

the north and northwest of their country, and although no Chinese author

of the pre-Christian era made any allusions to reindeer, a story dating back

to 499 A.D. contains such a reference. It was found in the Annals of the

Liang dynasty ( Liang shu , ch. 54, p. 12) in a story told by the Buddhist

monk, Huei Shen. In 499 A.D., J H uei Shen returned after a long journey

to the Liang and gave a fabulous account of the land of “Fu-sang,” allegedly

located far from the “northeastern ocean.” He reported that in Fu-sang

people had vehicles drawn by horses, oxen, and stags, that they raised deer

as oxen were reared in China, and that cream was made from deer milk. The

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whole description of the land of Fu-sang is considered a concoction placed

together from heterogenous elements without any coherent geographical value,

nevertheless, the allusion to reindeer is accepted as authentic. Since the

breeding of horses, cattle, and reindeer is found concurrently only in the

Baik e a l region, there is every reason to identify the oldest Chinese account

of the tame reindeer with the culture of that region.

        The Annals of the T’ang dynasty (618-906) contain another reference to

reindeer breeding. Speaking of the tribe Wu-huan, which lived either east

or southeast of Lake Baikal, the Annals state that those people “have neither

sheep nor horses, but keep reindeer [stags] in the manner of cattle or

horses. These animals subsist only on moss. They are trained to draw

sledges [carts]. Moreover, reindeer skins are utilized as material for

clothing.” ( T’and shu , ch. 217 B, pp. 7a-b).

        Marco Polo’s travels also contain s a reference to reindeer. Speaking

about a tribe called Mescript, he states: “They are a very wild race and

live by their cattle, the most of which are stags and these stags, I assure

you, are used to ride upon.” (Yule and Cardier. The Book of S e i r Marco Polo ,

Vol. I., p. 269). Marco Polo’s “Mescript” is identified with the Merkit in

the country of Barga, near Lake Baikal.

        In the history of the Mongols, written by the Persian historian Rash i ī d

al-D i ī n in 1302, an allusion to reindeer breeding is understood by some

specialists in the text where the author speaks of a tribe, “Woodland

Uryangkit,” living in the o forests northeast of Lake Baikal. While the

oldest Chinese records refer to reindeer breeding in the Baikal region, the

Annals of the Mongol dynasty of the thirteenth century mention the existence

of the domesticated reindeer at the source of the Yenisei and east of the

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river “Wu-se” (Is), an affluent of the Yenisei. ( Yuan shi , ch. 42, 63,

p. 32 B; K’ien-lung ed.). These Annals speak of the Kirgiz living on the

upper Yenisei, and mention a small territory “Han-ho-ha,” apparently

inhabited likewise by the Kirgiz: “This region is accessible only over

two mountain passes and abounds in wild game, while domestic animals are

scarce….They transport their chattels on white deer and consume the milk

of this deer.”

        The Chinese noticed that reindeer were used also by the Tungusian tribe

Oroci. The memoirs of the Manchu Tulishen’s embassy to the Kalmyk (1712-1715)

describe briefly the reindeer among the Tungus living in the region of

Irkutsk (G.T. Staunton, Narrative of the Chinese Embassy to the Khan of the

Tourgouth Tartars ) . For the Yakuts the reindeer was a secondary acquisition.

According to some historical records, the Yakuts were driven from the grass–

lands near the Caspian and Aral seas by the Mongols of Genghis Khan and

brought to the land of present Soviet Yakutia the steppe dwellers’ made of

life. Their domestic animals were the horse and cow, while reindeer breeding

was adopted by them from the Tungus. The Yakuts used to call e reindeer

“Tungusian foreign cattle” and asserted that the Tungus were acquainted

with no other domestic animals. (V. L. Seroshevski, Yakuty , vol. 1, pp. 146,307.)

Historically, reindeer breeding has never occupied an important place in

the culture of the Tungus and has spread mainly in the northern districts of

Yakutia. The Yakuts did not adopt milking the reindeer and killed the

animals for meat only on rare occasions.

        Regarding the western centers of reindeer breeding in the Soviet North,

the earliest reference is contained in the narrative of the Norseman Otter

(Ohthere), who “said to his lord, King Alfred, that he dwelt farthes e t north

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of all Norsemen.” Around 870 A.D. , Ottar (26A) undertook several voyages

in the course of which he navigated the White Sea, reached the south coast

of the Kola Peninsula and became acquainted with the old Permians of the

present northeast of European Russia. The account of Ottar’s travels is

included in an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Hormista of Paulus Orosius

and contains the following statement: “He [Ottar] was a very rich man in

those possessions in which their wealth consists, that is, in wild animals.

He still had when he came to the king, 600 tame deer, unsold. These deer

they call ‘reindeer’; six of them were decoy-dear; these are much prized

among the Finns [Lapps] because they capture wild deer with them.” (Alfred

the Great. The Anglo-Saxon Version from the Historian Orosius. London, 1773).

        No references to domesticated reindeer are found in the Finnish national

epic poem, Kale y v ala , although the elk and caribou are mentioned in songs

dating from a time prior to the Finns’ Christianization in 1151 A.D. Among

the Russian sources, probably the earliest reference to reindeer is made in

a document relating to 1499 (I.V. Shcheglov. Chronologicheskii perechen

vazhneishikh dannykh iz istorii Sibiri 1032-1882 ; Published by the East

Siberian Section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Irkutsk, 1883,

p. 12). In that year, Ivan the Great decided to complete the subjugation

of “Yugra” - the territory of the Ural Mountains, inhabited by Vogul and

other Ugrian tribes - and sent a military expedition there. In the description

of this expedition, the following statements are found [translation]:

“The military chiefs [voivody] slew 50 men of the Samoyed [Nentsi] on the

Rock and captured 200 reindeer. …Proceeding from Lyapino they met the Yugor

princes who came on reindeer from Obdor; from Lyapino the military chiefs

traveled on reindeer; the army, however, on dogs.” (Lyapino, later called)

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Vorulsk, was a small town on the banks of the Sygma; Obdor was a settlement

not far from the mouth of the Ob; “Rock” was a designation of the Ural; the

distance covered from the Rock to Lyapino was about 290 miles.) This

document makes it clear that the Uralic Ugrians wee acquainted with the

domesticated reindeer at the end of the fifteenth century. Mention of

domesticated reindeer is made in the epic traditions of Irtysh-Ostiak,

traced to a period from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries (S. Patkov.

Die Irtysch-Ostjaken ).

        The credit for bringing the reindeer from Asia to C E urope is usually

attributed to the Nentsi [Samoyeds] whom Laufer calls “the most skillful

and successful reindeer breeders.” Their language has a very specialized

nomenclature of reindeer and the equipment pertaining to reindeer breeding,

and has special terms denoting the gelded and ungelded male, wild, domesticated,

and hornless animals, calves (fawns) in various stages of growth, etc. Among

the Nentsi, as among the Ostiaks, on sacrificial holidays the reindeer was

slaughtered in honor of the gods. They also adopted, like all other reindeer-

breeding tribes, the use of property marks for the purpose of recognizing

their animals. While Chukchi used to bite a piece out of the fawns’ ears

for this purpose, the Nentsi, Tungus and others cut marks on the ears of

their reindeer. These tribes display [ ?] great skill in lassoing the reindeer.

        As to reindeer driving, it apparently developed as an imitation of driving

dog sledges, which for centuries had been a distinctive method of transport–

tation among such tribes of Eastern Siberia as the Koriaks, Kamchadals,

Giliaks, and Yenisei-Ostiaks. An old statement regarding the use of

reindeer with sledges is found in the information on Siberia gathered from

oral accounts by the Jesuit Philippe Avril who visited Moscow in 1664, having

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been commissioned by the King of France to discover a new land route into

China: “To make the reine-deer go more swiftly they tie a great dog behind,

that scaring the poor beast with his barking, sets her a running d with his

barking, sets her a running with that speed, as to draw her burthen no less

than forty leagues a day. …But that which is more wonderful as to these

sort of sledges, they are driven along by the wind sometimes over the land

cover’d with snow, sometimes over the ice of frozen rivers, as our vessels

that sail upon the sea. For in regard the country beyond Siberia is open

and extremely level as far as Mount Caucassus, the people who inhabit it

making use of this advantage to spare their beasts, have so order’d their

sleds, as either to b y e drawn along by the reine-deer, or else to carry sails,

when the wind favours ‘em.” (Jesuit Philippe Avril. Voyage en divers etats

d’Europe et d’Asie . Utrecht, 1673, Paris, 1692. Also published in English

under the title “ Travels into Divers Parts of Europe and Asia ”, London, 1693.)

        The custom of decorating riding deer with ribbons to which glass beads

or buttons are sewn has been widespread among the natives of Siberia, par–

ticularly the Tungus. It has continued until modern times and as recently

as September 1950, the Soviet Weekly reported on the traditional “Reindeer Day”

festival held in the Nenets National Territory, at which the competition

for the best decorated animals and sledges was a part of the program.

        According to Laufer, reindeer breeding spread westward from the Nentsi

to the Ugrian tribes of the Ural and the Lapps, and eastward to the Tungusians,

from the latter to the Yakut, Chukchi, and Koriak. When the Nentsi moved

northward beyond the forest, they took along their woodland reindeer. Their

old stocks were gradually replenished by capturing the northern caribou,

until a point was reached when the better bread predominated.

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        Soviet scientists, in their attempts to determine the original area

of the domestication of the reindeer, are less definite in their conclusions

than were some of their western colleagues, particularly [ ?] Laufer.

For instance, volume 43 of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1939) states that

the question of indicating the exact region where the reindeer were

originally domesticated is highly controversial; the “two oldest centers of

reindeer breeding” established with certainty are the Nymylanskoe in

eastern Asia, and the Nenets in the west. The Soviet scientists

also consider it proved that the larger ethnic groups of the north adopted

reindeer breeding from the smaller tribes; the Yakuts took it from the Evenki,

the Komi from the Nenets, etc.

        Perhaps one reason for the doubt displayed by Soviet explorers regard–

ing the origin of reindeer breeding is the confusion of names applied by historians

to various reindeer breeding tribes of the Far North. Early Russian traders

often gave these tribes names which were really terms of derision. Only

in recent years have the correct names been restored or established with

the help of modern ethnography and better knowledge of local languages and

dialects. For instance the word “Samoyeds,” mentioned as early as 1096

in the Old Russian chronicle of Nestor, actually means “people who devour

one another.” The tribe called Nentsi, living at present on the shores of

the Arctic Sea, from the Mezen River to the Taimyr, constitute apparently

the bulk of former “Semoyeds.” These Nentsi, however, should be distinguished

from Nentsi (Gods) living in the Far East. Possibly also some of the

Ostiaks should be included in the group of former “Samoyeds.” Some [ ?]

of the supposed old tribal names proved to be simply the native words

designating “men” or “people.” Chukchi living in the Soviet Chukotsk-National

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District were recently renamed the Luoravetlans, since, “Chukchi” simply

means “rich in reindeer.”

        It has been said that reindeer are less dependent on man than other

domestic animals such as horses and cattle. This is largely a matter of

adaptation to environment. The reindeer respon d s to care and feeding as

other animals do, but it is at home in arctic and subarctic regions; it can

find its own food if necessary, and it requires no shelter from the cold,

while sheep and cattle imported from warmer climates require stabling and

other care. Large herds of cattle and sheep do live through severe winters

on the plains of the western United States without shelter, but every now

and then, in bad winters, the losses are severe.

       

Reindeer Breeding Before the 1917 Revolution

        As an organized industry, reindeer breeding did not exist in Imperial

Russia before the Revolution. It was considered an occupation of the

primitive tribes who inhabited the Far North and the Russians did not display

active interest in its study or development. When Lieutenant Berthof visited

St. Petersburg on his assignment to purchase the reindeer for Alaska, he “was

astonished at the apparent lack of information at the government’s disposal

regarding reindeer matters in Siberia…. It was impossible to find out h

where the deer were or the number of deer, and I got the impression that

the officials didn’t much care.”

        The Great Encyclopedia of F. A. Brockhaus and I. E. Efron, published

in St. Petersburg in 1897, indicates that in 1888-89 the reindeer herds in

Russia amounted to 533,000 head; of these 263,000 were in European Russia,

198,000 in Siberia, and 72,000 in the principality of Finland. In 1893, the

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number of reindeer in the Archangel Region was 270,000 and it increased to

367,128 in 1895.

        A 1914 publication of the Resettlement Administration of the Imperial

Government (22) stated that “There is no exact figure available as to how

many natives in Siberia are engaged in reindeer breeding and what number of

the reindeer they possess.” According to this source there were about

1,100,000 reindeer in Russian Asia in 1906; of these 515,000 were in two

districts of the Tobolsk region, 95,360 in the Yeniseisk region (mostly in

the Turukhansk district), 287,000 in four districts of the Yakutsk region,

176,000 in the Primorsk region (including Kamchatka), 2,000 in the Narymsk

district of the Tomsk region, 2,400 in the Irkutsk region, about 1,500 in

the Transbaikal region, and also a small number in the Amur region. “Neverthe–

less,” states the above source, “these figures are not reliable and actually

there should be many more reindeer, since the count was not made everywhere.”

        The number of reindeer in Yakutia dropped to 120,900 by 1911, such

decreases having occurred often owing to a complete lack of zootechnical and

veterinary facilities, depletion of pastures, and frequent outbreaks of

various epizootics. The “Siberian plague” (anthrax) was a real scourge

to reindeer breeders, in the Bolshezemelskaia Tundra alone, 76,000 animals

died of disease in 1898, 200,000 in 1907, and 100,000 in 1911.

        Some influential Russians were concerned for the welfare of the reindeer

industry. There were, for instance, the nineteenth-century projects of

Senator Unterberg and N. L. Gondatti (later Governor-General of the

Priamur region) aiming at the encouragement of reindeer breeding.

        In the early 1900’s, the Russian government forbade the exportation of

reindeer to Alaska after the first few purchases (1,280 head) made by the

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United States government. The reason for this unexpected veto has never

been explained; It may have reflected the apprehension of the Russian

government that further exports on an increasing scale could have depleted

the East Siberian herd with damaging effects on the natives’ economy, or it

may have been part of a general plan to discourage non-Russians from attempts

to build up a commerce with the natives of northeastern Siberia.

        Shortly before the end of the Imperial regime, there occurred a dramatic

episode connected with the utilization of reindeer (25). In 1915 the Russian

government was hastily building the new port of Murmansk and the railroad

across the Kola Peninsula in order to arrange a channel of transportation

for munitions and supplies coming from the western Allies, of which Russia

was critically in need. As early as November 1915, a question was raised

in St. Petersburg as to how the cargoes from Murmansk could be delivered to

Rovaniemi, the nearest railway station in Finland, before the railroad con–

struction was finished. Rovaniemi was roughly 150 miles from Kandalaksha,

a Russian town approximately 135 miles south of Murmansk. About 12 miles

of the railway line was already built from Kandalaksha toward Murmansk by

January 1916. Under the auspices of the Department of the Navy, a meeting

was called in Archangel to discuss with local businessmen the possibility

of using reindeer. The consensus was that reindeer transportation would be

too expensive and impractical. A navy captain named Roshakovski did not

agree with the majority. With the help of a local man he made an investigation

and reported his conclusions to the Tsar. All precedents were broken and

he obtained official permission to use reindeer and an appropriation for

the project.

        In the meantime a few British ships loaded with munitions anchored in

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Murmansk, being unable to proceed to Archangel. On January 1 6 5 , 1916,

Roshakovski was back in Murmansk and on the same day the loading of the

cargo on sledges began. About 15,000 reindeer with an adequate number of

drivers was drafted. Day and night the caravans of sledges were dispatched

from Murmansk under the supervision of noncommissioned officers, with one,

two, or four reindeer carrying each sledge loaded with boxes of munitions.

The reindeer were driven about 45 miles without rest and then released to

pasture, while fresh reindeer assembled at established points were harnessed.

At times 20 reindeer trains were in circulation. At a point reached by the

railway under construction, the cargo was loaded on cars, delivered to

Kandalaksha 12 miles away, again reloaded on sledges and carried to Rovaniemi.

Some cargo was shipped directly to Petrozavodsk, over 500 miles south of Murmansk,

but that distance proved to be too long. By the middle of April the thaw–

ing of the snow interrupted this unusual transportation. By that time,

however, the reindeer had delivered to the Russian army 250,000 rifles with

adequate quantities of cartridges and a great quantity of hand grenades.

It was revealed later that about 1,000 reindeer died as a result of exhaustion

in the course of the spectacular performance.

       

Reindeer Breeding after the Revolution

        The first years after the Revolution of 1917 did not create conditions

especially favorable for the reindeer husbandry. Although there are con–

siderable discrepancies among the available statistics, the depletion of

stocks by 1933 is evident. Between 1926 and 1933, the reindeer of the U.S.S.R.

decreased from 2,193,000 to 1,931,000 (P. V. Orlovski, “Agriculture in the

Far North”, in Sovetski Sever , 1933, no.2, p.15). This reflects the

general decline of Soviet animal husbandry in 19 3 2 9-33 as a result of

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collectivization and violent resentment to it on the side of the wealthier

groups of the rural population (kulaks). Also, continuous losses from

various diseases had their effect. For instance, in 1926-27 in the Kamchatsk

region and on the Okhotsk coast 5% and 4.6%, respectively, of the reindeer

were lost because of various diseases, while 1.8% and 3.0% disappeared from

“unknown reasons.”

        After 1939 the Soviet government ceased the regular release of statistics

in absolute figures. The available statistics are usually given in percentages

showing changes in comparison with a certain year for which no absolute

figures are known. This makes it very difficult to estimate the present

reindeer population of the U.S.S.R. or to determine the number of animals

from year to year. Nevertheless, an attempt is made here to arrive at the

figures sought. Table I may give an approximate picture of the reindeer

stocks of the U.S.S.R. in 1933-36.

        The Great Soviet Encyclopedia states that in 1937 the U.S.S.R. possessed

about 70% of the world’s reindeer population which were bred on an area

of about 11,000,000 square kilometers; that year the share of Alaska was

16% and that of Scandinavia 14%. In 1948 the same Encyclopedia indicated

that the total number of reindeer in the U.S.S.R. at the beginning of 1940

equaled “approximately 2,000,000” (against 2,138,000 arrived at in Table I.)

The increase of reindeer after 1943 was interrupted by World War II. The

war increased the demand for reindeer meat and consequently caused greater

slaughter of the animals; also it led to the drafting of many experienced

herdsmen.

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Table I. Reindeer Stocks of the U.S.S.R. a

Year	In % of 1933 herd	In millions
1933	100.0	1,615
1934	104.2	1,683
1935	110.5	1,785
1936	117.0	1,890
1937	122.9	1,985
1938	128.1	2,069
1939	130.8	2,112
1940	132.4	2,138
1941	133.3	2,153
1942	123.3	1,991
1943	118.2	1,909
1944	118.8	1,919
1945	119.8	1,935
1946	129.8	2,096

a Percentages are from Zhigunov ( [ ?] ); absolute figures from Eikhfeld

and Chmora (8).

        Table II gives a picture of the prewar distribution of reindeer herds

in the Asiatic portion of the Far North:

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Table II. Reindeer in the Asiatic Far North (13).

Geographical regions	1926	1933	1937	1938 (according to the plan)
Ob Sever:	438,000	303,800	418,300	454,700
Ostiako-Vogul district	128,000	92,000	74,200	80,700
Yamalo-Nenets district	310,000	211,000	344,100	374,000
Narym district	5,000	---	3,000	3,300
Yenisei Sever:	179,000	124,800	152,800	169,000
Taimyr district	119,000	61,300	80,300	90,000
Evenk district	49,000	52,200	57,100	63,100
Igarka and Turukhansk counties	11,000	11,300	12,700	---
Yakutian A.S.S.R.	118,000	142,100	167,300	194,100
Khabarovsk Sever	857,900	578,000	610,900	669,000
Total	1,597,900	1,148,700	1,352,300	1,490,100

        In 1940 the centers of reindeer breeding in the Asiatic Far North were

the northern districts of the Khabarovsk and Omsk regions. The industry was

less developed in Yeniseisk Sever and in Yakutia, where about 80% of the

reindeer were found in the 16 northern districts (about 16% of the Yakutian

reindeer are in the Aldan district). In the Narymsk district it was of no

economic importance. Of the 610,900 reindeer in the Khabarovsk Sever in

1937, 498,000 or 80.2% were in the Kamchatka region (not so much, however,

on the Kamchatka Peninsula itself) while only a little over 2% were on the

island of Sakhalin. In the Chukhotsk district reindeer numbered 537,000 in

1934, while by 1940 about 62% of all the reindeer of the Asiatic Far North

were concentrated here (13). No recent data are available on the value of

reindeer production in rubles. In 1926-27 the total gross value of the

products was given at 1,097,000 rubles.

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        In the Murmansk district, within its post-1920 frontiers, there were

74,000 reindeer in 1914, the figure dropped to 28,300 in 1921 and then

increased to 54,000 in 1934. It was established that this stock would

reach 82,000 in 1938, of which about 10,000 would be in the industrial

district of Murmansk itself.

        Attempts with domestic reindeer in Novaya Zemlya before the Revolution

were unsuccessful, although wild reindeer are found here in great numbers.

The first attempts to develop the industry here were made in 1928 by

Sevkraigostorg (the Trading Office for the Northern Regions). This organi–

zation sent a large herd of reindeer with an adequate number of herdsmen to

Novaya Zemlya but lack of knowledge of the local conditions prevented success.

When the Soviet Academy of Science came to the assistance of the local state

farm in 1930, progress was made, especially after the 1932 survey of pastures.

No data are available regarding the number of reindeer in Novaya Zemlya at

present.

        After the Revolution, one of the first undertakings of the Soviet

authorities was an attempt to improve the bread, and to organize a scientific

crusade against those diseases which were periodically depleting the herds

and badly damaging the products of the reindeer industry. (For instance,

one parasite, the warble fly ( Oedemagena tarandi ), sometimes depreciated

the value of reindeer hides 75 to 80%.) A number of special studies were

undertaken for the prevention of epizootics, veterinary facilities were

provided on an ever-growing scale, mass vaccination of the reindeer was

introduced, and experimental breeding farms were organized. In 1932 the

Reindeer T o r ust opened courses to provide specialists in reindeer breeding;

subsequently a number of technical schools were opened for the same purpose.

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In the course of the First Five-Year Plan over 120 zootechnical and

veterinarian aid posts were opened. As early as 1924 two special labora–

tories were established in Salekhard and Izhma and assigned the task of

studying methods of fighting anthrax. Later studies on the prevention of

reindeer diseases were carried out by the Institute of Urogravidantherapy.

It is reported that such diseases as anthrax no longer threaten the reindeer

of the Soviet North.

        In 1931 a special Institute of Reindeer Breeding was founded in Leningrad.

It sponsors various projects to foster reindeer breeding, conducts research

work, organizes expeditions to the Far North in order to study local condi–

tions of husbandry, publishes literature on the subject, etc. Since 1936

the institute has functioned as a branch of the All-Union Institute of Polar

Agriculture.

        In 1936 Glavsevmorput (Northern Sea Route Administration) submitted to

the government a project for the establishment of three scientific research

institutes at Obdorsk, Igarka, and Yakutsk for the study of agriculture and

animal husbandry in the Arctic. Within the framework of these institutions

14 district stations were to be opened, to embrace all Yakutia and the

northern sections of the Ob-Irtysk and the Yenisei regions. This network

of scientific institutions was to study the native animals, work on the

problems of reindeer transportation, and train specialists from among the

natives.

        On the eve of World War II, 4 regional stations and 5 zootechnical

bases in the Far North were devoting their work to the d problems of rein–

deer husbandry exclusively. An inventory of better-bred stocks was taken

in some districts, and the method of artificial insemination has been applied.

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

Concentrated fodders and portable corrals are used effectively in many

places. Methods of more efficient protection of reindeer against wild

animals, the wolf in particular, were studied. (In 1926-27 approximately

75,000 reindeer were victims of wild animals.) A special set of rules for

reindeer breeding was worked out and decreed by the government, these decrees

regulate the use of pastures, prescribe the obligatory zootechnical and

veterinary measures, etc. A periodical called The Soviet Reindeer Industry

is published several times a year, and is devoted to various problems of

reindeer husbandry and technology

        State farms and collective farms are considered by the Soviet govern–

ment as the main channels for application of the achievements of science

and better methods in reindeer breeding, and mass collectivization in the

Far North began in 1929. However, the private segment in animal husbandry

has been for years more important in the North than in any other part of

the U.S.S.R.; this is especially g true regarding reindeer breeding in the

most northern districts of the Asiatic Far North. In 1937, 85.5% of the

reindeer on the Chukhotsk Peninsula and 59% of the ones in the Khabarovsk

Sever were still the individual property of the natives. By January 1, 1937,

19 collective farms had been established by Glavsevmorput. Of “about 2,000,000

reindeer” indicated by the Great Soviet Encyclopedia for 1940, 436,000 are

listed as the property of collective farms, while those of the state farms

is estimated at 243,000. A 1939 publication of the Gosplan listed 36 “rein–

deer state farms.” One of the largest of them is in Novaya Zemlya. Some

of the reindeer state farms received from the government an allotment of

1,000,000 to 2,000,000 hectares of land.

        It was reported that the best collective farms achieved considerable

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

success in the annual increases of their herds. These farms contributed

also to better organization of reindeer transportation. At present the

reindeer farms interested in incomes from transportation services submit

their claims to the local district administration, which works out a plan

of transportation operations and allocates the demand among the collective

farms; then, according to the plan, orders for the required number of

reindeer, sledges, drivers, etc., are issued.

       

Reindeer Herding

        Efficient methods of herding and proper utilization of pastures

constitute the basis for successful reindeer breeding. Almost 68% of the

northern prairie is considered suitable for pasture in the summer; of this

39% is also suitable for winter grazing. At the end of summer the rein–

deer are driven southward toward the forest border. In spring a northward

shift takes place. Such seasonal drives in the Bolshezemelskaia Tundra

sometimes take s the reindeer more than 300 miles to the south. At the

Lena the distance between the extreme points of movement is usually from

110 to 125 miles.

        Approximately 400 far northern plants, that is, about one-third of

all plants known there, may be used by the reindeer as fodder; lichens

are especially important, for they preserve their nourishing value all

year round, which makes them the important winter food. The animals,

perhaps by their sense of smell, find the lichens underneath the snow and

uncover them by pawing. Some lichens, however, grow only 0.3 to 0.4 centi–

meter a year. It may take ten years before they re-establish themselves

on overgrazed land; hence overgrazing presents one of the chief difficulties

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to reindeer breeders.

        In the U.S.S.R. a systematic investigation of lichen growth was first

undertaken by two stations of the Institute of Reindeer Breeding, Salaskin

(at Oksino on the Kola Peninsula) and Igoshina (at Labytnang on the lower

course of the Ob). This study made it possible to work out a theoretical

basis for choice of pasturage. Grazing should not exceed a certain limit;

a sufficient quantity of viable lichen bases must be left for recovery of

the pasture. Also the propagation of such valuable and comparatively quick–

growing fodder lichens as Cladonia rengifera and [ ?] C. uncialis is

practiced.

        In 1932 the institute made surveys of pastures, sometimes from the

air, and grazing grounds were divided by the government so as to avoid

overgrazing. From 40 to 70 hectares of pasture per year is required for

each reindeer, according to Soviet sources. (The United States Dept. of

Agriculture studies of carrying capacity of pastures made by pasturing

reindeer within fences in Alaska indicate 33 acres as the minimum year-long

grazing area requirement for one reindeer.) Such norms made it possible to

establish the capacity of each territory and apportion the number of rein–

deer accordingly. The haphazard movement of peoples and herds were brought

under control. Long journeys from winter to summer feeding grounds were

reduced to a minim.

        Reindeer have natural periods of loss and gain, with some variations

dependent on age, sex, and castration. Winter is generally their lean season,

while during summer they fatten, gaining as much as 3/4 of a pound a day in

the Malozemelskaia Tundra. The increase in weight at peak-condition periods

reaches as much as 60 pounds in steers and 40 to 50 pounds in other animals.

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In winter the reindeer spend about 11 hours a day feeding. They may be

maintained in good condition on cultivated fodder, such as hay, grain,

fish, and bone flour. Over 13 pounds of fodder is required daily by a

nonworking animal. About 4 pounds of salt a year is consumed by reindeer

in pasture and 5 pounds in a feed lot. During World War II, when reindeer

were used on the northernmost front, artificial fodders proved to be very

useful.

        Reindeer are herded much as sheep are on the large western ranges in

the United States, by herders following the animals as they move about. In

selecting pastures, not only the question of fodder is considered, but also

the problem of the insects which attack the animals during the warm season.

The reindeer requires protection from insects either by locating summer

pastures on higher ground exposed to the wind, or by the use of fly repell a e nts

and similar devices. A reindeer may lose as much as 125 grams of blood a

day if exposed to mass attacks of mosquitoes, and cases have been recorded

of animals dying from insect bites.

        A reindeer herd should be constantly watched. They are marked by

cutting or notching the ears; or a metal tag or button may be used for

identification. The natives are skillful in identifying each individual

animal; it is said that in one of the nomad languages there are 16 different

words to designate various shades of the gray-brown color of the local

reindeer.

        Trained dogs are useful to herders. When the United States made a

first appropriation of $6,000 for the introduction of reindeer in Alaska

Dr. Shel [ ?] d on Jackson sent a notice to the Scandinavian newspapers in the

United States, seeking the services of experienced Scandinavians acquainted

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

with methods of reindeer breeding in Lapland. In the great majority of

the 250 answers received, it was stated that the trained dogs of Lapland

were necessary for herding. When the first superintendent of the Alaskan

Teller Reindeer Station, William A. Kjellman, was sent to Lapland, his

assignment was to bring not only Lapps but dogs.

        However, Soviet herders rely on dogs less than do the Scandinavian

Lapps. The Nenets and Komi herders use dogs more than anyone else in the

Soviet Far North, the Evenki and Yakutians seldom use them. Generally,

the farther from the Kola Peninsula toward the Lena, the less use is made

of dogs, and east of the Lena up to the Chukhotsk Peninsula, the reindeer

breeders have never used dogs in herding until recently. Shortly before

World War II, the utilization of dogs in herding somehow became known in

the Bulun district of Yakutia, in Chukhotsk and Koriak districts, and in

the Khabarovsk region. With a few exceptions, dogs are not used even now

in herding in the T t aiga, although experiments have proved that they can be

useful there.

        Reindeer are castrated to produce steers for meat and to reduce the

number of bucks to a proper proportion of the herd. Fawn crops average

between 50% and 60% of the adult doe population. Male and female fawns

occur in about equal numbers. Twin fawns are rare. The average doe breeds

to an age of 10 to 12 years. The newborn fawns weighs from 7 to 16 pounds.

        The size of a herd may vary from 100 or 150 head to 3,000. The desirable

size for the Komi and Nenet herds, as advocated by Soviet specialists, ranges

from 1,200 to 1,500 animals. While larger herds in open country are not

objectionable ; , on land even partially forested, herds of from 250 to 600

animals are more desirable. From 5 to 6 herdsmen are required to take care

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of 2,000 Lead according to experience in the Murmansk region.

       

Utilization of the Reindeer

        For centuries reindeer breeding has been one of the main occupations

(sometimes the only one) of a great many tribes living on the northern

prairie and at the northern border of the forest. The nomads had mastered

the art of making full use of the “all provider.” However, the emphasis

placed on various forms of reindeer utilization differs from region to

region, for instance, riding or milking is not practiced by all the natives

of the Far North. On the Kola Peninsula, in the Archangel region, and in

the region of Omsk, the utmost importance is attached to the reindeer’s

meat and skin; but in the Krasnoiarsk region and forested districts of

Yakutia the reindeer has been appreciated mainly as a draft animal. In some

forest districts of the Krasnoiarsk region, and in the Tobolsk district of

the Omsk region, reindeer milk is considered important.

        The folk tales of the Nentsi express colorfully the natives’ apprecia–

tion of the reindeer harnessed to a sledge and say that it is “second to

none in the world.” What the reindeer meant for the natives was emphasized

in Russian Asia (22), published by the Resettlement Administration of the

Imperial Government in 1914 [translation]: “[the reindeer] is so useful that

in the whole animal kingdom you may find hardly another creature which might

equal it. In the full meaning of the world there is nothing in this remarkable

animal which is not used in the everyday practice of the natives of the

North who are blessed by its possession. Its fatty milk, similar to cream,

serves as an excellent beverage and is used in the preparation of a very

tasty cheese. Meat, internal organs, marrow, brains, and the blood are used

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

for food; also the antlers, before ossifying, may be used for food; jelly

can be made of them, which is considered not only tasty but also as a

medicinal food. The skin is used for making the natives’ clothes as well

as for shelters. All kinds of household items are made of the bones and

the ossified antlers: knives, forks, spoons, sewing needles, etc. Hollowed–

out hoofs are used instead of cups and glasses. The sinews are used for

thread and the hair for spinning and weaving. The intestines are used in

the preparation of sausages stuffed with a mixture of blood and various roots.

Candles are made of the fat. The stomach is dried and serves as a substitute

for kitchen utensils. Even the content of the stomach, if used immediately

after the reindeer is slaughtered, is not wasted; the natives consider it

a delicacy and are only too glad to use it as food. Considering the complete

absence of roads in the tundra, the reindeer serves as the only pack and

transportation animal which can move with ease over the most boggy ground

and through snows of any depth.”

        Three main types of reindeer breeding are distinguished by the Soviet

specialists at present: ( 1 ) Breeding which emphasizes meat as the main product

and the skin as a product of secondary importance. This type of breeding

requires the maintenance of a proportionally large number of gelded reindeer

rather than fawns or does (about 37%); it prevails in the eastern tundra, on

the Chukhotsk Peninsula and in the Koriak district. ( 2 ) Breeding with

emphasis on skin production; it is developed mainly in the Murmansk region,

in Nenets and Iamalo-Nen e ts districts, and in Komi A.S.S.R. The best results

here are achieved by slaughtering fawns in the fall and keeping herds with

a possible maximum number of does (up to 45%). ( 3 ) Breeding with emphasis

on the reindeer as a draft animal, which calls for a smaller number of does

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in the herds (about 30%); it prevails in the forest zone where reindeer

milk is also widely utilized.

        Since the importance of reindeer transportation on the northern prairies

is great, Soviet authorities consider it their ta ks sk to obtain a bread of

animals which will be equally good as suppliers of meat and as draft animals.

This is especially important for reindeer breeders in Yakutia, Chukhotsk

Peninsula, Ismalo-Nen e ts and Taimyr districts.

        Draft Animals . Without the reindeer, remarkable for endurance, strength,

and speed in drawing sledges, much of the Soviet Far North could hardly be

inhabited permanently. The chief advantage of reindeer over dog transporta–

tion is that a grazing animal finds its own food, while provisions must be

carried for dogs and their maintenance often proves difficult. Also, in an

emergency the reindeer is a source of food to its master. Windy weather is

difficult for the dog travel, especially when heading into the wind, while

reindeer naturally travel to windward, even in a blizzard, this being a trait

they have from their wild forebears, the caribou. The reindeer does not mind

a temperature of −80°F.; its broad, deeply cleft hoofs fit it admirably

for traveling over the broken snow, and it makes it way through areas of

deep snow more easily than even a horse. Gelded reindeer between the ages

of 4 and 12 are preferred for drawing sledges. The training of animals

for this service starts with the third winter.

        The Reindeer Breeding Branch of the All-Union Institute of Polar

Agriculture undertook a number of projects for improvement of the technique

of reindeer transportation. Serious defects were found in the traditional

equipment used by the natives, which f v aried from place to place. For instance,

on the Kola Peninsula and in Karelia the natives use harness with a collar,

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

but breast straps or neck bands, with all kinds of local modifications, are

used in the rest of the Far North. When the Samoyeds, harness a few animals to draw

a sledge, they place the foremost one on the left side; placing the leader

on the right side is called the dolganski , method of harnessing. To urge

the reindeer to go faster, the natives prod them rather cruelly in the back

with a long birch pole which has a bone button affixed to its end. The

Nentsi almost never use reindeer for riding. The sledge used for transport–

ing heavy loads is called narta . It may be 3 meters long; the distance

between runners is up to 80 centimeters. In building their narta the natives

formerly used ropes and wooden rails only, since iron nails were unobtainable,

and, besides, iron breaks easily under the low temperatures of the Arctic.

Freight up to 770 pounds may be loaded on such a narta , drawn usually by

four reindeer.

        Newly devised equipment enables the adoption of reindeer for services

to the Red Cross, such as carrying stretchers and transporting the sick,

while a new harness recently devised makes it possible to use reindeer for

work which until recently has been considered too heavy for them, such as

plowing and harrowing.

        The Encyclopedia Americana indicates that full-grown reindeer can draw

a sledge with a load of 300 pounds and travel at the rate of 100 miles a day.

w v arious sources of information, however, give different figures in this

respect, since much depends upon the size of the reindeer in a given region,

the habits of the natives, and the care they display regarding their animals.

According to the Soviet Resettlement Administration, the reindeer, without

being fed, easily makes 65 miles in 10 to 12 [ ?] hours, provided it is

permitted to stop for 1 or 2 minutes every 6 or 7 miles; however, cases

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

of reindeer covering a distance of more than 130 miles in 24 hours are not at all

rare. N.N. Urvantsev reported in 1928 that in the course of his expedition he

traveled on one occasion from Norilsk to Dudinka in 5 hours and 37 minutes,

having covered a distance of about 62 miles.

        Interesting records were established at special reindeer races organized

periodically by the Soviet government. In their primitive form, such races

have been popular among the tundra natives from time immemorial and are still

on the programs of the yearly reindeer breeders’ festivals. The names of the

victors are retained in the memory of reindeer breeders for years. Reindeer

races were introduced in their modern form in the 1920’s. At the races held

in the Leningrad hippodrome between December 6, 1931, and February 7, 1932.

the record of the winning troika (three reindeer harnessed abreast) was 1,600

meters in 2 minutes and 39 seconds. These reindeer were from the Kola

Peninsula. In 1933, at the races in Narian-Mar, Nenet National District,

the best results were achieved by four reindeer of local breed, harnessed

abreast, which covered 1,380 meters in 2 minutes and 10 seconds. At the race

in Lovozero, Murmansk region, on December 7, 1938, the distance of 1,600

meters was covered by four reindeer harnessed abreast in 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

        In tests of the reindeer’s endurance and weight-drawing capacity the

average records achieved at the races in Yakutia in 1936 and 1937 were as

follows: for endurance, a weights of 900 to 1,000 pounds were pulled 12.4

miles by two reindeer harnessed abreast in 1 hour and 20 minutes; for maximum

weight, two reindeer harnessed abreast pulled a load of 2,200 to 5,500

pounds a distance of 400 meters.

        The following speed and average load were recommended in 1948 by the

Administration of the Far North of the Ministry of Agriculture of the

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R.S.F.S.R. for reindeer continually employed for transportation services.

Table III. Norms Recommended for Reindeer Transportation (26).

Type of road	Load on sledges with 2 reindeer, in kg.	Speed, km. per hr.	Distance per day, in km.
Good smooth road	300	4-5	25-30
	150	7-8	45-50
	120	9-10	55-60
Average tundra road	200	4-5	25-30
	100	7-8	45-50
	80	9-10	55-60
Poor tundra road	100	4-5	25-30
	50	7-8	45-50
	40	9-10	55-60

        The Administration also worked out a set of recommendations which should

be followed in the use of reindeer for commercial transportation. A new harness,

devised recently by a member of the staff of the All-Union Institute of Polar

Agriculture, S. P. Popov, makes it possible to increase the load up to 700

or 800 and even 1,000 kilograms in nartas used on a good smooth road. The

winter reindeer transportation train ( argish ) usually consists of 24 to 30

nartas , 70 to 85 reindeer (of which 8 or 10 are kept in reserve), and 4 or

5 men. Strings of sledges in greater numbers are considered less convenient

because of the possible difficulties of finding food for a larger number of

reindeer; if a string consists of only a few sledges, the utilization of

the drivers becomes less economical.

        The utilization of reindeer for riding and carrying pack loads is

important in forests and among mountains, as well as on the [ ?] prairie

during the summer. Under normal conditions the reindeer may be used for

034      |      Vol_III-0142                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

these services for a period of 5 to 6 years, up to an age limit of 10 years.

        A 1934 United States Dept. of Agriculture publication on reindeer breed–

ing in Alaska indicates from 60 to 70 pounds as a normal pack load for an

animal which covers from 20 to 25 miles a day. The natives in Siberia

usually load as much as 60 kilograms (more than 130 pounds) on a reindeer’s

back. The Soviet Administration of the Far North, however, suggests using

the following norms for continued employment of animals for this type of

service.

Table IV. Norms for Pack-Load Carrying (26).

Type of road	Load on one rein– deer, in kg.	Speed, km. per hr.	Distance per day, in km.
Good smooth trail	50	4-5	25-30
	35	6-7	40-45
Average broke country	40	4-5	25-30
	28	6-7	40-45
Very broken country	30	4-5	25-30
	20	6-7	40-45

        Experiments with pack equipment have shown that the center of gravity of

the reindeer’s body lies considerably farther forward than in other transport

animals. Hence the usual type of pack equipment intended for horses proved

unsuitable, as it overloads the hind legs. A new type of saddle and pack

were cons t ructed at the Bulun Reindeer Station in Yakutia in 1937, which

allows the reindeer to carry loads up to 50 or 60% of its own live weight,

with a maximum not exceeding 80%.

        The reindeer as a draft animal has proved important for Soviet hunters

and trappers in North. Trap lines are long and the Siberian hunter sometimes has

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

to cover from 30 to 45 miles a day in order to inspect them, besides, these

trap lines may be several hundred miles from the hunter’s home. Under these

conditions reindeer transport becomes as indispensable basis for the fur

trade, and possession of reindeer strongly affects the incomes of members

of the collective farms engaged in hunting and trapping. For instance in

1945, the Evenki National Region, the yearly income from hunting averaged

only 165 rubles in the case of a farmer without reindeer; for those who had

less than 40 reindeer the income was 2,499 rubles; and for those with more

than 40 reindeer, 3,469 rubles.

        Observations of reindeer under saddle and pack established the fact that

animal

the [ ?] animal has a constant length of stride on a level trail and changes it

with strict regularity, depending upon the angle of slopes and ascents. This

discovery made it possible to use the reindeer stride as a measure of length

of the roadway traveled by geological, topographical, and other research

expeditions.

        The modernization of transportation methods does not decrease the

reliance on reindeer transport in the Soviet North; on the contrary, its

importance has been constantly increasing. A publication of Glavsevmorput,

1939, says: “Numerous large scale projects of the Far North were material–

ized almost exclusively with the aid of the reindeer transport. In many

regions of the Far North, reindeer transport is the basic means of conveying

people and freight. Also in strengthening the defense of our country, the

reindeer may occupy not the last place.” A 1948 publication by the Far North

Administration calls the reindeer transportation “irreplaceable” and states

that “in the majority of the regions of the Far North the demand for reindeer

transportation has been increasing yearly.”

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        Carrying good s from polar sea ports southward across the prairie and

even into the forest, delivering meat, fish, skins, furs, and a number of

other raw materials, is done by reindeer transport. Thousands of reindeer

and men are engaged in this work. In 1936, in the northern regions of

Yak u tia, 2,680,000 rubles, or 21.8% of the gross incomes of collective f o a rms,

came from reindeer transport services. The corresponding figures for the

Iamalo-Nenet s district was 403, 0 1 00 rubles or 15%; for the Ostiako-Vogul

district, 638,700 rubles or 16%. In 1946 the income from reindeer transporta–

tion constituted 17% of the total income of the collective farms in the Far

North, while for some of them it [ ?] was the basic income.

        As a matter of curiosity it may be added here that the elk ( Alces alces )

may become a serious competitor to reindeer in some parts of the northern

forest. In accordance with an order of the Yakutian government, whose

country is very rich in elk, experiments were made in 1936 at the Yakutsk

Agricultural Experimental station in training and driving the elk. The

tests were continued in 1937 and proved that the elk, if caught at the age

of one month, is easily handled and domesticated, readily fed, and as a

draft animal shows high ability.

        In the northern districts of the Tiumen region, E K rasnoiarsk Krai,

Yakutia, and other districts of the Far North, there are established

reindeer fr e ighting lines. Every 40 or 50 kilometers special shelters have

been built — chumy , made of skins for winter and tarpaulins for summer.

They are equipped with stoves and provide comfortable resting places for

the drivers; also feed for reindeer is kept in some of them. These freight–

ing lines are so planned that the overnight stopping places are at good

pastures. The length of some of these lines reaches 1,000 [ ?] kilometers.

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

        Meat . Meat is another entry on the list of articles and services

offered by reindeer breeding. The full-grown reindeer yields 90 to 110

pounds of meat on the average, the autumn-killed fawn 45 to 55 pounds.

The animal slaughtering is usually at the end of summer. In their estimates

of meat sources of the Arctic, Soviet statisticians do not overlook the

meat of the wild reindeer (caribou). It is regarded as a potentially

important item of food on the Taimyr Peninsula as well as in the territory

between the rivers of Iana and Indigirka. Workers and employees of the

governmental industrial project in Nordvik were b g etting about 6,000 caribou

a year from the natives in 1940; it is said that an additional 3,000 or

4,000 could be easily used without damage to the local herds. Between the

Iana and Indigirka, approximately 30,000 caribou were used in a year; in

1940 the officials estimated that delivery of about 1,000 tons of meat per

year could be easily arranged in this district. Better methods of hunting

and utilization of airplanes for scouting the caribou herds were suggested

in order to increase the yield.

        In composition reindeer meat does not differ much from beef or veal

of the same grade, but it differs slightly in flavor. It is fine in texture

and most of the meat is tender. The Russians consider that the most

desirable cut is the round, which they use for steaks or roasting; the

bottom round, which is less tender, can be used best for pot roast or in

soup. Reindeer meat finds a good market far to the south; somewhat as

Scandinavian reindeer meat does in Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. Its

importance in the Asiatic Far North may be seen from the following table:

038      |      Vol_III-0146                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

Table V. Consumption of Reindeer Meat in Relation to Total

Consumption of Meat in the Asiatic Far North (13).

Geographical Regions	All meat, in tons	Percentage of reindeer meat
Omsky Sever:	3,650	73.7
Ostiako-Vogul district	1,651	44.4
Iamalo-Nenet district	1,998	97.9
Yeniseisk Sever:	1,299	75.8
Turukhansky district	271	33.6
Igarka district	101	4.0
Evenki district	392	94.4
Taimyr district	535	97.2
Yakutsk North (16 districts)	1,528	52.2
Chukhotsk district	2,591	98.9
Total	9,068	77.6

        As of 1940 the yearly slaughter of reindeer amounted to about 300,000

animals. In the Murmansk district the reindeer meat production as planned

for 1937 amounted to 607 tons.

        Stressing nutrition and calorie content, Soviet authorities consider

reindeer meat one of the best meats. Soviet tests claim that it is several

times richer in vitamins than beef or veal; it is rich in vitamin B ₂ . The

[ ?]

October 1950 issue of the Soviet magazine Priroda asserts that recent investi–

gations showed 4.2 mg. of ascorbic acid as a minimum found in reindeer meat.

Table VI. Chemical Content of Reindeer Meat (26).

	Water	Albumen	Fat	Carbohydrates	Minerals	Calories per kg.
Meat of a gelded rein– deer (average fatness	63.74	18.61	16.05	0.60	1.0	2,269
Meat of a fawn (average fatness)	70.76	21.31	5.95	074	1.24	1,452

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

        The Tafal [ ?] rsk reindeer found in the Irkutsk region is one of the best

producers of meat; the 4 or 5-month-old fawns are 80 to 90 pounds dressed

weight. The gelded reindeer of the Chukhotsk Peninsula gives about 130

pounds, sometimes up to 180 pounds of meat. At an outdoor temperature of

2 or 3°C. fresh reindeer meat can be kept safely in the open for 4 or 5 days.

If frozen, it can be preserved for a year. Salted meat may be shipped and

retained for one year at a temperature of + 3 to −1°C. Steaks are used

either fresh, dried, salted, or smoked; salted meat is used most often.

Natives usually dry the ribs and legs in the open air and then slightly

smoke them; in this form the meat is easily carried on long journeys. The

tongues are considered a great delicacy; they contain from 8 to 25 mg. % of

ascorbic acid, according to the article in Priroda .

        Until relatively recent times reindeer liver was not fully appreciated.

For instance, a 1929 booklet of reindeer recipes, published by the Bureau

of Home Economics, United States Dept. of Agriculture (30), refers to it

rather modestly as a product which “when properly prepared compares favorably

in tenderness and flavor with other kinds.” The conclusion of Soviet

specialists, however, bases upon the research of the Murmansk technological

expedition of the Institute of Reindeer Breeding in 1932, are is that a pat e é

of such high quality may be made of the reindeer liver that it “undoubtedly

could serve as an item for export.” According to Priroda , reindeer liver

contains from 60 to 137 % mg. of ascorbic acid, while that of cattle contains

6 to 20 % mg. only. Proper methods for utilizing the kidneys, brain, lungs,

heart, and head as food have been devised recently. The reindeer’s melted

fat is widely used; in taste, it is similar to lamb fat.

        Hides . Reindeer hide, after proper dressing, is very soft and pliable.

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

It provides the principal clothing material for the natives. From it they

make garments, including boots, mittens, socks, leggings, trousers, sleeping

bags, etc. It is used also for bedding, being warm and easily transported;

an average skin weighs only from 4 to 6 pounds. Fawn hides are used as

winter clothing with the fur on the outer side; such furs are very warm.

Reindeer hides provide an excellent leather for the industrial manufacture

of kid gloves, leather jackets, etc. the “chamois” prepared from the

reindeer skin, especially that of the fawn, has a high value on the world’s

market; it is used in the manufacture of precision instruments, optical

instruments, and those used in aviation.

        By-Products . As a result of years of technological research of the

Institute of Reindeer Breeding, reindeer by-products are widely utilized

in industry at present. The blood is salted and as a product rich in

[ ?] albumin is used for food and as an admixture in concentrated

forages. Together with bones and viscera it is used in the preparation

of dog food. It is also used in the manufacture of glue for plywood and

veneer. As a matter of fact, the reindeer if properly slaughtered gives

proportionally more blood than any other domestic animal (on the average,

6.76% in the case of females and 5.44% in the case of males). No industrial

utilization was made of reindeer intestines until in 1932 when the Institute

of Reindeer Breeding made the first tests in Leningrad. Then the expedition

of 1935, sent by the Institute to organize the reindeer slaughterhouses

in the Nenet region, proceeded with the experiments which were repeated

in 1936. The studies proved that certain parts of reindeer intestines do

not differ in their wall strength from those of cattle, and the manufacture

of sausage casing from them can be carried out with the usual methods.

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

The strength of the intestinal walls was found to increase considerably

if immediately after removal from the carcass they are washed with water

and kept for 25 or 30 days in salt. However, a disadvantage of the casings

manufactured from reindeer intestines is their small diameter which does

not conform with the standard requirements of the market.

        Reindeer hair is also highly valued because each hair is hollow,

which makes it useful for manufacturing life preservers and upholstery.

The investigation made by the Textile Research Institute in 1929 and con–

tinued by the Institute of Reindeer Breeding since 1932 proved that the

reindeer down (the soft woolly part of the hair) is equal in quality to

the highest grade of merino wool. However, the presence of a large quantity

of dead, coarse, brittle fibers in the hair made it impossible for use in

textile manufacturing. Finding rational methods of separating down from

brittle fibers was a task set for Soviet scientists; no information is

available as to what progress has been made toward solving the problem.

        The sinews of the reindeer are also utilized. They are separated from

the meat and dried. From them the natives skillfully make thread which

they use for sewing both shoes and other clothing.

        Reindeer hoofs are used for the production of keratin glue, plastics,

hoof meal, hoof coal, and ferrocyanide of potash. They cannot be used,

however, in the manufacture of buttons and other notions because of the

insignificant thickness of their walls (0.1 to 0.2 cm.).

        Antlers are a nother important by-product of the industry. They are not

only employed for decorative purposes, but also for making knife handles and

parts of harness; they are also used in the manufacture of glue. As early

as 1866, in the Archangel Region, a merchant names Volodin made the first

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0150                                                                                                                  

        p. 42 of Tereshtenko

Reindeer Breeding

        Chese and milk [neg?]-

5th line from bottom

ch. 4 [ butter ?] from same?

042      |      Vol_III-0151                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

        successful attempt to manufacture glue from reindeer antlers for the market.

The glue obtained from the antlers is of very high quality. As a result

of the technological research of the Institute of Reindeer Breeding the

methods of glue production were improved to the point, where, by its quality,

it could easily compete with the standards established for exported glue.

The weight of the product reaches from 10 to 20% of the weight of the

antlers. The weight of the antlers collected per year between 1933-36 was

estimated by various authors at 1,412 to 4,740 tons. As another by-product,

photogelatin was obtained from the antlers; no information is available

about its 2 / quality.

        In some regions of the Far North, reindeer milk is considered a

valuable product. From 0.2 to 0.3 liters of milk a day can be obtained.

Karagask reindeer in the Saian ranges give as much as 1 liter of milk a

day. In A a ppearance and taste it compares with cream. Its chemical

content, according to Soviet data of 1948, is as follows: water, 67.7%;

fat, 17.1% casein, 10.9%; milk sugar, 2.8%; minerals, 1.5%. Thus, it

contains about 3 times more minerals and 4 or 5 times more fat than cow’s

milk. From reindeer milk both butter and cheese are prepared. In chemical

content the butter contains 15% water, 83.5% fat, 1.4% albumin and other

organic substances, 0.1% minerals; thus it approximates butter prepared

from cow’s milk. It melts at a temperature of 36 to 40°C. On the average,

16% of butter can be obtained from reindeer milk and 25 to 28% of cheese.

The cheese reminds one of the sheep’s-milk cheese called brynza in Russian.

        Soviet authorities assert that the reindeer industry in the U.S.S.R. is

in its initial stage only. On the basis of recent geographic surveys of

pastures the government estimates that the Soviet Far North may provide

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EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

fodder for about 10,000,000 reindeer, and that the task is not only to

improve the breed of reindeer but also to at least triple the available

herds. It is said that whether this goal will be reached will depend upon

the general economic development of the Soviet Far North; but this, in turn,

may depend considerably upon the progress of the reindeer industry.

044      |      Vol_III-0153                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R.

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In Russian:

1. Akademia Nauk S.S.S.R. Trudy Poliarnoi Komissii (Works of the Committee

for the Polar Regions), vol.14, Leningrad, 1934, pp. 54-69.

2. Arkticheskogo Instituta, Trudy . (Transactions of the Arctic Institute),

1935, Vol.22.

3. Bobrinskoi, N.A., ed. Opredelitel Mlekopitaivshchikhy S.S.S.R. (Identi–

fication of the Mammals in the U.S.S.R.). Moscow, 1944.

4. Bol, V.K. and Nikolaevski, L.D. “O Roste i Sbrasyvanii Rogov u Severnogo

Olenia.” (Regarding the Growth and Casting of the Reindeer

Antlers) Sovetskoe Olenevodstvo , vol.8, 1936, pp.45-59.

5. Bunakov, E.B. “Economicheskoe Obosnoyanie Razvitia Olenevodstva

Murmanskogo Kraia” (The Economic Foundation of the Reindeer

breeding in the Murmansk District). Sovetskoe Olenevodstvo ,

vol.4, 1935, pp.107-162.

6. Debel, D.B. “Ispolzovanie Rogovogo Bashmaka Severnogo Olenia”

(Utilization of the Reindeer Hoof). Sovetskoe Olenevodstvo ,

vol.8, 1936, pp.177-180.

7. Dushechkin, V.I. “Olenii Pastbishcha v Kharaulakhskykh Gorakh (Yakutia)”

(Reindeer Ranges in the Kharaulakh Mountains (Yakutya)). Trudy

Arkticheskogo Instituta, vol.63, pp.209-243.

8. Eikhfeld, I.G. and Chmora, N.Y. “Selsko-Khoziaistvennoe Osvoenie

Krainego Severa” (Agricultural Reclamation of the Far North).

Materialy Soveshchania po nauchvo-izsledovatelskoi rabote Na

Krainem Severe, 27/II-3/III, 1936. Moscow, Vsesoiuznaia

Akademiya Selsko-Khoziaistvennykh Nauk, Moskva, 1937.

9. Geptner, V.G. and Tsalkin, V.I. Oleni S.S.R. Sistematika i zoogeografia

(The Reindeer of the U.S.S.R. Classification and Zoogeography).

Moscow, Moskovskoe Obshchestvo Ispytatelei Prirody, 1947.

10. Gorodkov, B.N. “Itogi Izuchenia Prirosta Lishainikov” (Results of the

Study of the Growth of lichens). Sovetskoe Olenovodstvo ,

vol.8, 1936.

11. ----. ed. “Sistemy Vypasa Olenei i Pastbishchnoe Khoziaistvo Murmanskogo

Okruga” (Reindeer Pastures and Vegetation Cover of the Murmansk

District). Trudy Arkticheskogo Institut, vol.72, Leningrad, 1936.

12. Govorukhin, V.S. “Sezonnye Pastbishcha Severnogo Olenia” (Seasonal

Pastures in the Far North). Kalendar Prirody S.S.S.R., vol.2,

Moscow, 1949, pp.313-338.

045      |      Vol_III-0154                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R. - Bibliography

13. Khrapal, A.A. Selskoe Khoziastvo Aziatskogo Severa . Moscow,

Glavsevmorput, 1940.

14. Liverovski, Y.A. and Kolesnikov, B.P. Priroda Yuzhnoi Poloviny

Sovetskogo Dalnego Vostoka. (The Nature of the Southern

Part of the Soviet Far East). Moscow, Akademia Nauk S.S.S.R.

Institute Geografii, 1949.

15. Lukashevski, V.A. and Kharin, P.S. “Svoistva Oleniei Shersti-Lenki”

(The Properties of the Reindeer Hair). Sovetskoe Olenevodstvo ,

vol.4, 1935, pp.163-176.

16. K Mirovich, A.F. “K Voprosu ob Ispolzovanii Kishek Severnogo Olenia dlia

Kolbasnogo Proizvodstva” (On the Utilization of the

Intestines of Reindeer in the Manufacture of Sausage Casing).

Sovetskoi Olenevodstvo, vol.8, 1936.

17. Mutovin, M.E. and Purin, A.A. “Bogatstva Kamchatskoi Oblasti i ikh

Expluatatsia” (Natural Resources of the Kamchatka Region

and Their Exploitation). Kamchatka Petropavlovska na

Kamchatke . Shankhai, 1940, pp.155-195. “Slovo” publisher.

18. “Novoye v Ispolzovanii Severnogo Olenia i Losya dlia Transporta” (News

Regarding the Utilization of the Reindeer and the Elk for

Transportation). Trudy Nauchno-Izsledovatelskogo Instituta

Poliarnogo Zemledelia, Zhivtnovodstva i Promyslovogo

Khoziaistva. Trudy , Seriia Olenevodstva , vol.6, 1939.

19. Pinegin, N.V. Novaya Zemlya , Sevkraiz, 1935.

20. Rodionov, K.V. “Materialy po Izuchaniu Technologicheskikh Svoistv

Severnogo Olenia.” (Materials Regarding the Study of the

Technological Properties of the Reindeer Antlers).

Sovetskoe Olenevodstvo , vol.6, 1936, pp.51-62.

21 Rodionov, K.V. “Voprosy Tekhnologii Produktov Olenevodstva” (Questions

of the Technology of the Reindeer Products). Sovetskoe

Olenevodstvo, vol.4, 1935.

22. Russian Asia , vol.1, 2. St. Petersburg, Resettlement Administration, 1914.

23. Sdobnikov, V. and Romanov, A. “O Myasnykh Respursakh v Arktike”

(Concerning the Meat Resources in the Arctic). Sovetskaia

Arctica . no.9, 1940, pp.23-36.

24. Sochava, V.G., ed. “Olenevodstvo. Olenii Pastbishcha i Priemy Vypasa

Olenei v Anadyrskom Krae” (The Reindeer Ranges and Methods

of Pasturing of the Reindeer in the Anadyr Region).

Transactions of the Arctic Institute of the U.S.S.R., vol.62,

Leningrad, 1936.

046      |      Vol_III-0155                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Tereshtenko: Reindeer Breeding in the U.S.S.R. - Bibliography

25. Varnek, P.A. “Russkii Sever v Pervuiu Mirovuiu Voinu” (The Russian

North in the First World War). Morskie Zapiski , Pub. by

Obshchestvo Byvshikh Ofitserov v Amerike. Vol.7, no.1,

March 1949, pp.23-25.

26. Zhigunov, P.S. and Terentiev, F.A. Severnoe Olenevodstvo (Reindeer

Breeding in the North). Ministerstvo Selskogo Khozuaistva

R.S.F.S.R. Upravlenie Raionov Krainego Severa. Moscow, 1948.

In English:

26a. Bosworth, Joseph. A Description of Europe and the Voyage of Ohthere

and Wulfstan , written in Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred

the Great. London, 1855.

27. Laufer, Berthold. “The Reindeer and its Domestication.” Memoirs of the

American Anthropological Association, vol.4, 1917, pp.91-147.

28. Palmer, L.J. “Raising Reindeer in Alaska.” U.S. Dept. of Agric., Misc .

pub . no.207, 1934.

29. Report of the Royal Commission Appointed by Order in Council of Date May 20 ,

1919, to Investigate the Possibilities of the Reindeer and

Musk-Ox Industries in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Regions of

Canada . Ottawa, 1922.

30. Stanley, Louise. “Reindeer Recipes.” Bureau of Home Economics, U.S. Dept.

of Agric., Leaflet no.48, 1929.

       

V. J. Tereshtenko

Biology of Ovibos

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0156                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(A. L. Rand and Vilhjalmur Stefansson)

BIOLOGY OF OVIBOS

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Description	2
Range	4
Habits	5
Utilization	8
Bibliography	10

001      |      Vol_III-0157                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(A. L. Rand and Vilhjalmur Stefansson)

       

BIOLOGY OF OVIBOS

        The bison, through v f alse analogy miscalled the buffalo, and the

ovibos, through misunderstanding or perhaps through cupidity miscalled

the musk ox, are NOrth America’s great representatives of the family

Bovidae, the one occupying the prairies of the midcontinent, the other

those of the Far North.

        The ovibos ranks with caribou, seal, and whale as one of the four

animals most important to man in relation to the Far North. Its one land

rival, the caribou, may seem to lead in the competition, because some

caribou have been domesticated as reindeer; but friends of the ovibos

reply that its Latin-derived name, from ovis for sheep and bos for cattle,

truly implies that this animal possesses, as a candidate for domestication,

the combined merits of the sheep and the cow, and is thus potentially the

greatest of assets for northward colonization, being already resident in

even the most northerly arctic lands.

        Ovibos , appearing in northern literature under many names, among them

northern ox or northern cattle, arctic ox or arctic ca f t tle, musk ox or musk

cattle, polar ox or polar cattle, is, as said, a member of the family Bovidae,

to which belongs our domestic cattle, as well as sheep and goats. Much has

been written of these immediate relatives, and at one time the ovibos was

002      |      Vol_III-0158                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

considered a bison specialized for arctic conditions. More recent studies

show that the ovibos of northern America and the takin of the mountains of

southern Asia are the sole living representatives of a once more widespread

and diversified group, only some of which were adapted for arctic conditions.

This group is most closely related, on the one hand, to the goats and sheep,

and, on the other, to the goat antelopes, such as the Rocky Mountain goat

and the chamois.

        The original home of the ovibos group seems to have been in Eurasia,

where five fossil genera are known from the Pliocene. By the next epoch,

the Pleistocene, the five genera had disappeared, another fossil genus had

evolved in Eurasia, and the group had invaded North America, where three

fossil genera appeared. Also in the Pleistocene, the two modern genera

arose, Ovibos (musk ox, polar ox) in Eurasia and America, and Budorcas

(takin) in Asia. With the close of the Pleistocene only these two modern

genera were left. Budorcas is still restricted to Asia. Ovibos lingered

on in Eurasia until the Recent period; in Europe it existed in prehistoric

times along with the last Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men, the mammoth, and the

woolly rhinoceros; in Siberia it may have survived longer. By historic

times Ovibos existed only on the northern plains and arctic islands of

America.

       

Description

        Ovibos moschatus is a rather stout, compact ungulate with short legs

and a very short tail. The pelage is long and shaggy, contributing materially

to a bulky appearance. The underfur is a fine, soft, woolly layer, 3 to 6

inches thick; the abundant guard hairs are very long and coarse and may reach

a length of 24 inches or more. In adult males the horns sweep downward,

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EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

outward, and upward in sharp hooks, the base of the horns enlarging with

age until they cover the forehead; the horns of the female are less

expanded at the base. The color of the pelage is generally deep brown to

black, with light-colored saddle and legs; varying geographically, there

is some white in the forehead and about the head, more pronounced in the

females and young; the color of the horns is dark brown to creamy white.

        The adult male totals 96 inches in length; tail 4 inches; hind foot,

19 inches; height at shoulder, 59 inches; and horns on outside curve up to

29 inches in length. The males weigh up to 900 pounds; the females are

somewhat smaller. The northern animals are somewhat smaller than the more

southern.

        The calf is covered with short, dark-brown, curly hair. A new-born calf

is recorded as weighing 16 pounds. The first trace of a horn core appears

at 6 months. Adult size and well-grown horns are reached at about 6 years

of age.

        Three subspecies are recognized, owing to differences in size and color.

        The Ovibos moschatus moschatus , the “barren-ground musk ox,” is a large

brownish subspecies with dark-colored horns and no white in the forehead,

occurring on the Canadian arctic mainland.

        The Ovibos moschatus niphoecus , the “Hudson Bay musk ox,” is a black

subspecies, smaller than the subspecies O. moschatus moschatus . Their horns

are light-colored; the females are white about the head. They occur to the

northwest of Hudson Bay.

        The Ovibos moschatus wardi , the “white-faced musk ox,” is a grayer

race. Their horns are of a creamy-white color. Both o the male and the

female have whiter faces, and they are longer and more slender than the

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EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

subspecies O. moschatus niphoecus . They occur in Greenland and the

Canadian Arctic Islands.

       

Range

        The present range is mainland Arctic Canada between Hudson Bay and

Horton River, the Canadian Arctic Islands to the north (but not Banks, Baffin,

or Southampton islands), to northern Ellesmere Island; also in northern and

northeastern Greenland.

        As said, ovibos disappeared from Eurasia before historic times , ; in America

a much wider range than at present occupied is indicated by fossil remains

of Ovibos from the central United States (perhaps correlated with the ice age)

and from the Yukon Valley. Within historic times the ovibos was known from

the arctic coast of Alaska, where it probably became extinct about 1860 or 1870.

The southern limits of the historic range in Canada originally coincided with

the northern edge of the forest west of Hudson Bay. Minor withdrawals have

occurred and the animals no longer range west of the longitude of western

Great Bear Lake. The records from northern Manitoba are all old. Parts of

this area from Hudson Bay to Horton River are still occupied by ovibos. In

Banks Island, the last were killed by Victoria Island Eskimos around 1912.

        In the early part of the twentieth century it seemed as if the ovibos

might be exterminated; but extinction no longer seems to be threatened. A

population estimate made in 1930 gave the following figures: Canadian mainland, 500

animals; Canadian Arctic Islands, 12,420; North and East Greenland, 1,500;

total, 14,420 animals. However, the Greenland estimate has been questioned

as too small, and estimates as high as 10,000 animals have been made for the

northern east coast alone for about the same period. Though ovibos ha s d been

reduced perhaps 1% of their primitive number by 1930, the animals on the

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EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

Canadian mainland had doubled in number by 1940, and the reports from farther

north indicate s that protective laws have been successful in conserving the

species.

       

Habits

        Though ranging the northern forest in early historic time, as the wood

bison still does, ovibos is like bison in being essentially a prairie animal,

frequenting the marshes, plains, and lower, wetter country in the summer. In

the southern part of its present range where there are willow thickets, as in

the Thelon Game Sanctuary, these are also favored. In winter they tend to

frequent higher, drier and more exposed ground, presumably where the wind

will sweep away the snow. The favored foods are sedges and grasses; willow twigs

and herbaceous plants are also eaten. There is not the pronounced change from

summer food of grass to winter food of lichens as with the caribou , ; some

lichens (reindeer moss) are eaten, probably mostly in winter. When the food

is covered with snow, the ovibos digs through with its forepaws, and pushes

aside the snow with its no c s e and head. With hoofs and nose the animal may

work through four feet of snow, but it does not seem to resemble the caribou

in actually preferring to dig for food under snowbanks.

        Although there may be slight seasonal changes in the habitat occupied,

the ovibos is, in general, an inactive animal. If a herd is seen in one area

one year, the chances are that it will be there the next. Individuals appear

to move about but little. Old bulls have been recorded as not moving a half

mile all summer; a band stayed in sight of one camp for five days.

        Ovibos are placid animals, usually found in small herds or medium-sized

bands, apparently spending their time grazing and resting during the day. During

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EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

the hot, bright arctic summer they may prefer to feed during the night.

The belief, expressed by some writers, that ovibos take shelter in valleys,

or behind boulders, from the blizzards of winter, is doubted by some observers.

        Ovibos bands seem typically to consist of about 10 to 15 animals, although

smaller groups of 5 or 6, as well as lone bulls, are often reported. Where

the animals are common, herds of as many as 200 have been reported. The social

organization of these herds is imperfectly known. There seems to be some

seasonal change, the herds tending to be larger in winter. In spring herds

of bulls only may be found, but x during much of the year more than one bull

may be found in one herd. The proportion of calves in the herds is always low,

compared with many other hoofed animals. This is correlated by some with a

deduced slow rate of reproduction.

        The late summer or early fall is the time of breeding. The ovibos is

polygamous and old males fight fiercely, bellowing challenge d s , pawing the

ground, and rushing at each other and meeting head on with a tremendous crash.

They also rip each other with their sharp, hooked horns, sometimes breaking

their horns in th o e se fights. Apparently bulls sometimes kill each other, for

skulls spilt open, presumably by the force of fighting heads meeting, have

been found. Not all fighting is connected with the rut, as bulls sometimes fight

and then later consort amicably in the herd.

        According to present information, reproduction is slow, presumably adapted

to the relative immunity of the species to wolf predation. It is believed that

the females do not breed until 3 or 4 years old, and that ordinarily they

bear young only every other year. The usual number of young at a birth is

one, born in April, May, or perhaps June. Victoria Island Eskimos told

Stefansson that calves born early in the season, in April when temperatures

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EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

may drop to −50°F., often f e r eeze to death while still wet, immediately after

birth. The variation in the size of calves [ ?] seen with the herds indicates

a long breeding and calving season. The cows may retire from the herd at

the calving season; some herds for a time appear to consist solely of cows

and calves. The calves are active from birth, or shortly thereafter, and

follow the mothers. They suckle to some extent until August at least.

        The defense behavior of ovibos is very effective against wolves. The

band prefers to take a stand and fight on high ground. The animals range

themselves in close formation in more or less of a circle, heads out; they

may rub their noses and horns on their forelags, and paw the ground, perhaps

to intimidate attackers. If calves are in the herd, they may be in the d c enter

of the formation or they too may face out. The bulls do most of the fighting,

but all adults and even yearlings may take part. As the wolf or dog approaches,

a bull rushes out 10 to 15 yards, trying to catch the enemy on its horns,

then wheels about and returns, backing into place in line. The number of

animals that dash out depends on the number of attackers; sometimes all the

bulls may be out of line at one time. Dogs, when caught by the horns in

this way, have been severely injured, partly through being tossed high in

the air. A lone ovibos at the approach of danger may run to a cliff or a

rock against which it puts its back, ready to fight.

        This defense of the ovibos, while adequate against wolves and dogs, is

the weakness of the animal when it encounters man. At the approach of hunters,

especially if they have dogs, the ovibos do not flee but adopt their d c ustomary

formation, in which the dogs can hold them indefinitely. Hunters can then

kill them at leisure with rifles, or tease them with arrows until they charge,

and then kill them with spears.

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EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

        Ovibos have been introduced into Norway and Sp t i tsbergen, apparently

with some success. In Alaska, the United States introduced 34 animals in

1930, with the object of restocking suitable areas; this work is still in

the experimental stage.

       

Utilization

        The hide of ovibos is too thick and hard for general use as clothing,

although it has sometimes been used for boot soles. The woolly character

of the fur, which makes it hard to clean, is another drawback to its domestic

use. Although lacking the qualities that appeal to ordinary fur markets,

there did develop for a while in the nineteenth century such a demand for

ovibos skins that Indians of the northern Canadian forest made numerous

excursions to “no man’s land” beyond the tree line to secure skins for sale

to the Hudson’s Bay Company; some Eskimos also came south into this region

(usually avoided because of mutual Eskimo-Indian dread of each other and

therefore previously a sanctuary to ovibos), and a few of the resulting

skins got into the hands of traders.

        Most of the skins sold in London were sent to the United States and

Canada where they were prized for sleigh robes. This trade flourished from

about 1870 to 1900, and was important to certain groups of Indians who

depended on these hides for credit with the posts. The Company’s average

annual sale for the 20-year period preceding 1902 was 200 to 250 pelts,

although, in 1891, 1,358 pelts were sold in London.

        The leisurely habits of the animals and the ease with which they are

killed have made them dependable sources of food, but these very features

make it impossible for them to survive, while left to their own resources.

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EA-Zoo. Rand and Stefansson: Biology of Ovibos

where many men live. So long as they are in a wild state, it would seem

we must be content to have them survive in the remote, unsettled arctic

islands, and in sanctuaries on the mainland where they seem to be prospering

at the present time after years in which their existence was in jeopardy.

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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Allen, J. A. “Ontogenic and other variations in muskoxen, with a

systematic review of the muskox group, recent and extinct,”

Amer.Mus.Nat.Hist., Mem . n.s. vol.1, pt.4, 1913.

2. Clark, C.H.D. “A Biological Investigation of the Thelon Game Sanctuary,”

Nat.Mis.Can., Bull . no.96, 1940.

3. Hone, E. “The Present Status of the Muskox in Arctic North America and

Greenland with Notes on Distribution, Extirpation, Transplanta–

tion, Protection, Habits and Life History,” Amer.Comm.Internat.

Wild Life Prot., Special Pub l. no.5, 1934.

4. Stefansson, V. “The Domestication of Ovibos,” in The Northward Course of

Empire , Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1922.

5. Sverdrup, Otto. New Land. Four Years in the Arctic Regions , Longmans, Green.

London, 1904.

       

A. L. Rand and Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Biology of the Polar Bear

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0167                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(A. L. Rand)

BIOLOGY OF THE POLAR BEAR

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Range	2
Habitat	3
Habits	4
As Object of the Hunt	10
Edibility of the Meat	12
Bibliography	15

001      |      Vol_III-0168                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(A. L. Rand)

       

BIOLOGY OF THE POLAR BEAR

        The polar bear, Thalarctos maritimus , of the family Ursidae, is a large

bear which inhabits the arctic regions of both the Old and New Worlds, occurring

in every part of the Arctic Sea and its margins, occasionally found on adjoin–

ing land, but rarely far from sea ice. The scientific name doubly states this

fact, being a combination of the Greek words, thalassa , sea, and arktos , bear,

to which has been added the Latin word, maritimus , of the sea. It is perhaps

the second largest of the bears, next after the Kadiak, the male averaging

8 feet in length, 900 pounds in weight; the female averaging a little more than

6 feet in length, 700 pounds in weight. However, males often attain more than

1,000 pounds, and a record of 1,600 pounds has been claimed. The fur is yellowish

white, dense, and hair practically covers the soles of the feet, leaving naked

only the black lips and nose tip. Apparently there is one molt a year, during

the summer months. Old males develop a sort of ma in ne and noticeably longer fur

on shoulders and forelegs (14). The polar bear is distinguished from other bears

by its pelage, by its semiaquatic nature, and by structural differences, having a

longer neck, narrower skull, and relatively small molar teeth. Subspecies have

been described, but are generally thought not sufficiently well characterized to

justify recognition ( 2 1 ).

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EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

        Partly owing to the hairy soles of its feet, the polar bear walks sure–

footedly over the sea ice (which incidentally is not as slippery as lake ice)

and can, when hurried, attain a surprising speed, in spite of its lumbering

gallop. It is a powerful swimmer, said nearly to equal the speed of an eight–

oared European whaleboat, although readily overtaken by the exceedingly swift

Eskimo kayak.

        Polar bears are solitary, except at mating time. When two are roving the

same locality, they tend to avoid each other. The young sometimes follow the

parent female well into the second year. Exceptionally, as many as 50 bears

have been reported on a few square miles of land, gathered to the neighborhood

by a stranded whale carcass. Also where they are extremely abundant locally

(as on St. Matthew Island, where several hundred were sighted within one month

on the 22-mile-long island), the younger males may consort in small groups of

three or four (6).

       

Range

        The species has been recorded as ranging on land north to Spitsbergen and

Novaya Zemlya (8), to beyond 82° N. latitude on the north coast of Ellesmere

Island, and to 83° N. in the Franz Josef Archipelago (6). Records at sea show

an even more northerly ordinary range, or they may indicate that occasionally

individual bears may wander almost anywhere in the polar area. Among the high–

latitude records are the tracks of a bear seen by Peary, March 24, 1909, near

86°30′ N. (11), and a bear with cubs seen by Papanin near 88° N. on August 1, 1937

(10). Both of these were in the Greenland-Ellesmere sector.

        The southern limits of the Pacific range are, apparently, near the middle of

Bering Sea; bears are common around the St. Lawrence and St. Matthew Islands.

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On the Asiatic coast of Bering Sea they have been observed on drifting ice

floes in the vicinity of Plover Bay; on the American coast they have rarely

been observed as far south as the mouth of the Yukon River (6). In Atlantic

waters the species has been observed on floating ice to the north of Norway,

where they reach land once or twice in a century, and on the ice off Iceland,

where they come ashore once every ten or twenty years. Occasionally they are

reported as far south as Newfoundland, the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence,

and in James Bay, the southerly arm of Hudson Bay, at about 55° N. latitude.

       

Habitat

        Sea ice, especially when moving, provides the environment most favorable to

the polar bear’s existence, and has earned for him, in some localities, the name

“ice bear.” In the pack, he seeks narrow open leads, which provide him most

readily with his favorite food, the seal. In winter, the bear wanders over the

frozen sea, seeking leads or the edge of the ice and open water. When compelled

by ice conditions to do so, he can swim long distances. A polar bear has been

reported swimming 20 miles or more from land, out of sight of any sea ice. On

the other hand, during the short summer, he occasionally wanders inland, where

he may secure some food from vegetation of the grasslands fringing the Arctic Sea.

Polar bears have been observed at a distance of 100 miles inland, but such an

occurrence must be rare.

        Because of the movements of the ice, the polar bear, unlike most mammals,

lacks a definite home range. When the sea freezes in autumn the range grows

more southerly, for it is coextensive with the ice; in spring it shrinks with

the shrinking ice.

        The presence or absence of polar bears during a season in any region may

depend on whether or not the heavy pack comes in that year. Occasionally, bears

004      |      Vol_III-0171                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

have been found stranded on islands and mainland shores, having been caught

there by mischance when the ice moved away. Then, too, the bear may find

himself “stranded” in the ocean, when the ice melts unexpectedly beneath him,

as on contact with the Gulf Stream. What may be farthest-form-land record

is that of a bear seen by the Cherevichnyi expedition on April 16, 1941, at

78°27′ N., about 500 miles from Wrangel Island, the nearest known land (3).

        The polar bear distributes itself throughout its range in what is generally

an irregular fashion and dependent upon the displacement and accidents of the

ice. Further study of the species, however, may disclose a tendency toward

seasonal migrations. In the Bering Sea, Nelson observed that, as the ice closes

in the north of Bering Strait in October and November, large numbers of bears

are brought down on the drifting pack, pass through the strait, and reach

St. Lawrence and St. Matthew Islands, where they are said to winter (6). When

spring comes, according to this observation, the bears, following along the

border of the pack ice, pass north through the strait and into the Arctic Sea.

Such a movement, toward land in the autumn, toward the sea in spring, may be

considered as at least incipient migration. Apparently some bears come to land

to hibernate, but the polar bears’ travels seem controlled, as said, by the

seasonal expansion and contraction of the floating ice, beneath which lives

the game he subsists by, the seal that he can catch by plunging from above

though he cannot overtake it by swimming in open water.

       

Habits

        To what extent the polar bear hibernates is still a moot question. Their

absence from any habitual location, as has been said, does not necessarily imply

migration, nor does it imply hibernation. It may merely indicate that the moving

ice floes have not brought the bear to that locality. Apparently it is usual for

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EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

gravid females to hibernate; some claim that last year’s half-grown cubs,

while still unable to fend for themselves, hibernate with the mother. Probably

mature males remain active throughout the winter. In northern Alaska and

north ea we stern Canada, according to Stefansson, the Eskimo belief was that only

gravid females hibernate (15; 16).

        It can safely be assumed that the habits of the bear are similar throughout

its circumpolar range; but until closely coordinated studies have been made, it

is impossible to make a flat statement to this effect. They have been reported

as active throughout the winter in northern Greenland where, it is said, the

pregnant females retire merely to give birth to their young and where, during

spells of severe weather, females with young may take shelter in snow caves.

For hibernation, they have been known to travel some miles inland and are said

to excavate burrows in the snow, in which they sleep from December to March.

        The spring is the mating season. In the extreme North, this period is during

the months of April and May; farther south, it may occur later on. During that

season the males are embattled. When couples have formed they are believed to

remain in pairs for perhaps two weeks. After this, they drift apart, reverting to

their normal way of life, which is solitary. The male reaches puberty at the age

of three; the female at about the age of two. Some claim that the female mates

but once every two or three years, but this makes it hard to explain why they

are so often reported as accompanied by cubs of two litters which are usually

taken to be this year’s and last year’s.

        The young, one or two in number, are born in midwinter, the gestation period

being 10 or 11 months (9). The newborn cubs are incredibly small in size, not

larger than a well-grown rat, the weigh only about 650 grams. They develop

quickly, however, and at about the age of three months are able to follow the

006      |      Vol_III-0173                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Rand: Pol r a r Bear

mother bear. It is reported that about one month after the young have opened

their eyes, the mother starts migratory life with them. If this be so, then

it can be supposed that at this stage the mother bear would merely transport

her young in her mouth to another locality. They stay with their mothers

until they are able to fend for themselves, usually for about one year. Up

until the age of five months the young are still so helpless that they remain

with the mother even when she is slain by hunters. At a later age, faced with

such danger, they will flee. The solicitous female, pursued by hunters, has

been observed to urge forward her young, with pushes, nudges, and blows (14).

It has been recorded that, in the water, the young sometimes seize the female’s

short tail in their teeth and are thus borne along by the swimming parent.

When the young are unable to clamber out on the ice after their mother, she

may reach down and lift her cub out, seizing him by the nape of his neck in

her teeth. Not only must the female look after her cub, teaching him to swim

and to hunt, but she must also protect him from roving males, who, it is reported,

sometimes devour the young (14).

        The young are playful and mischievous, which sometimes impedes the mother

when stalking a meal. Even adult bears have been observed to display mischievous

tendencies along with other characteristics of the upper mammalia. Calmness,

coolness, and sagacity are supposed to be the attributes of the polar bear.

But when injured or thwarted, he displays what could be called fits of rage.

        Stefansson was able to confirm the Eskimo report that cub bears frequently

and grown bears occasionally will climb a snow slope repeatedly, to slide down

it on their haunches. When objects are thrown at bears they may bat them with

their paws and, if they roll well, may pursue them a while, batting them two or

a few times along the ice or land, reminding of a cat playing with a ball. In

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EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

one reported case, the object thrown, intended to scare the bear away so that

shooting him would not be necessary, was an empty five-gallon kerosene tin.

The bear acted as if he were interested in the noise this can made when he

batted it back, seemingly enjoying sound as well as sight of as it bounced along

in front of him.

        As evidence of its sagacity, the polar bear has been credited with using a

boulder as a weapon is attacking a walrus, with using a piece of ice or snow as

a moving shield when stalking a seal on the ice, and with holding up its paw

to hide its black nose from its intended prey (14). Such reports may be merely

a part of the body of myths and legends that have grown up about the bear. But

there are many reports that may be accepted of his persistence and ingenuity in

breaking into caches that would be safe against any other animal.

        In his quest for food, the bear depends least upon his sense of hearing,

more upon the senses of smell and sight. He scents his accustomed food at long

distances. Seals (chiefly the ringed seal, Phoca hispida ) provide his staple;

but when there is need he feeds on a variety of animal life and eve berries

and roots and other vegetation. There are reports that walrus are sometimes

slain and eaten and that the bears may get fatally wounded in such encounters.

Nordenskiold tells of having seen, in Spitsbergen on two occasions, the blood

and hair of reindeer which he inferred had been killed by bears (7).

        Opinions and reports on the normal feeding habits of the bear are many

and often conflicting, as is the case with any wild animal not as yet thoroughly

studied in its natural habitat. For example, the polar bear is reported to feed

upon vegetation when it comes out from hibernation (6; 14). In what month the

period of hibernation ends i d s doubtful; but since the young are born in midwinter

and are able to follow the mother at about the age of three months, it is

008      |      Vol_III-0175                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

questionable if there would be much vegetation available at this time. Besides,

some of the cubs appear to be born on the sea ice far from land, where there

would be no obtainable vegetation.

        According to Stefansson, more than 99% of the polar bear’s food is seal (16).

Usually, the only thing he recognizes as food by the sense of smell is something that

smells like seal. When the meat is old, it develops the odor of decay that is

common to all meat. Apparently this odor overcomes the natural fresh odor in

all meats. Thus, the polar bear has been reported to leave untouched a cache of

fresh caribou, passing to leeward without even swerving from his course of sniff

at the meat more closely. This would indicate that he does not recognize caribou,

in its fresh state, as food; but he is known to recognize it if even slightly high.

        However, there are in the books many cases where individual polar bears have

learned to try many different kinds of food, especially when they have had a chance

to forage in scrap heaps thrown out on the sea ice by ships wintering in the

Arctic. Such food may have numerous and pungent odors; and bears which have had

experience of these varied tastes and smells will go after whatever has any smell,

devouring it as avidly as if it were seal meat. The sophisticated polar bear,

who has once learned that seal is not the only food, will enter camps of travelers,

even when out in the pack ice, break open caches, eating greasy cloth, rope,

paper. Men have been killed and eaten by polar bears; and the carcasses of their

own kind have been consumed.

        Bears marooned on an island or on a mainland shore, by a gale that takes all

the ice away, will get hungry. If the season is the least bit warm, a good deal

of decay takes place along the sea beaches; and a bear of keen appetite, not able

to reach his accustomed sealing grounds among the pack ice, will give the

impression of preference for a varied diet; for he eats mussels, starfish, and

009      |      Vol_III-0176                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

various crustaceans, the eggs of sea fowl, or anything edible washed up by the

sea - even seaweed.

        The polar bear hunts the seal in various ways. Sometimes he swims

stealthily along until a seal is encountered basking on the edge of the ice,

when he will rise suddenly between it and the water, cutting it off from escape,

and crush its skull with a blow. The bear also stalks basking seals on the ice,

creeping up slowly, silently, unobserved until it is too late. He may wait

patiently at the edge of a lead, to plunge from above upon a seal swimming by.

He also secures the very young of the ringed seal in their natal snow caves,

hidden from above by a roof of snow and visited by the female through the b f r eathing

hole contrived in the ice below. These caves the polar bear searches out by scent.

Apparently he prefers adult to young seals, for on occasion he may kill several

baby seals and leave their carcasses uneaten. He also prefers the skin and fat

of seals to their flesh, and may gorge on the blubber and skin alone. (It has

been said that the bear stores food under blocks of ice, but the report should be

taken with caution.)

        From combining what Eskimos told him with evidence deciphered from blood,

footprints, and sleeping lairs, Stefansson worked out what may be a typical

feeding procedure. If the seal killed is small, the whole of it is consumed, with

bones and entrails. If a little larger, the bear eats all the skin and blubber,

with some of the lean. From a very large seal he will eat perhaps a third or

half the blubber, twenty to thirty pounds, and most of the skin but none of the

lean. Satiated, he then walks off fifty or a hundred yards and goes to sleep.

When he awakens he goes off without investigating his kill, usually traveling

upwind.

        Seemingly the bear, on waking up, feels as if he would never be hungry again,

010      |      Vol_III-0177                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

at any rate scorning the cold remnants of his warm meal. But there may not

be anything much left to scorn; for usually a bear is trailed by several foxes

that depend on him for food. They hop around him in excited circles while he

is eating, now and then coming so close they have to dodge when he makes passes

at them. When he has had his fill and goes off to sleep, the foxes come in for

their share. If it is summertime, the foxes have the same trouble keeping the

gulls away that the bear had keeping the foxes away.

        Foxes often have difficulty following a bear, for if he comes to an open

lead he swims across and they may be unable to find a bridge anywhere near. It

was under such conditions, and in winter when there were not gulls, that Stefansson

occasionally found a dead seal from which nothing had been eaten except skin and

blubber. On other occasions he found seals at which foxes had been gnawing,

showing they were not present at the kill and arrived only when the remnants of

the bear’s feast had been hardened by the frost. At other times he found remnants

of frozen seals that had been devoured by wandering hungry bears that came along

hours or days late.

       

As Object of the Hunt

        Man is bear’s only enemy. But being of little economic value as a source of

hides, furs, and food, and bear has never been hunted systematically on a large

scale. They are slain by travelers chiefly as c s ource of food.

        The skin is utilized for clothing to some extent, but though strong, it is

heavy and not commensurately warm. Most of the skins exported are for rugs, or

merely as trophies. The lighter hides are used for semiwaterproof trousers by

some Eskimos; the heavier hides as bedding. Light skins may be used by Eskimos

for mittens, and skins of any weight are cut up into strips for dog harness. The

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EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

long hairs are esteemed for ornamental purposes by the women in some Eskimo

districts.

        Particularly in the eastern Canadian Arctic and around Greenland, Eskimos

hunt the polar bear with dogs (11; 14). When the bear is sighted, the dogs are

let loose. Then, when they have brought him to bay, he is shot. In former times,

the Eskimos of Greenland and the Chukchis of Siberia killed bears with spears,

sometimes made by lashing hunting knives to walking sticks. Occasionally a

hibernating female is located in its snow cave with the aid of dogs, when she

is speared or shot.

        Much of the information we have on polar bears in the wild state derives

from the reports of travelers and hunters. For instance, as to the age which

these animals naturally reach, we have only the reports of men who have killed

bears showing by their pelage and their worn teeth that they must be old. In

captivity the polar bear has attained the age of 33 years.

        From reports of travelers, also, we get the many conflicting statements

regarding the ferocity of the bear. According to some who have encountered them,

these animals without natural enemies are, nevertheless, somewhat shy and timid.

They are also curious, and will approach a man fearlessly. They will come boldly

into occupied camps, knocking the dogs aside. From the accounts of Barents and

other polar explorers of the sixteenth the seventeenth centuries, the bear emerges

as a most ferocious and dangerous beast. But M’Clintock’s Greenlandic guide,

Petersen, is quoted by Nordenskiold as thinking the bear as little dangerous as

a sheep.

        Sometimes a polar bear will stalk a man who is crawling on the ice, hunting

seals. Stefansson believes this is because the bear mistakes for a seal the man’s

recumbent figure. But the polar bear has been known to stalk an upright man, and

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EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

Stefansson has reported a narrow escape he had on one occasion (16). The books

contain stories of men who saved themselves from belligerent individuals by

lying down on the ice, when the bear would merely sniff curiously at them, doing

no harm. And whereas, according to most reports, the polar bear flees when shot

at, in some accounts, bears, when fired upon or disturbed at a meal, turned and

attacked their hunters. Perhaps the bear who approaches a men in harmless

curiosity is merely a bear without previous experience of his enemy. In the

same way, the bear that flees, or the bear that assaults, may be one with

experience which has taught him to recognize his enemy.

        The curiosity and ingenuity of the bear are proverbial, as is his strength.

Certainly, it is difficult to make a cache which is secure against him. Bears

have been known to break into the scatter about caches of every kind, even when

they contained no food, although it may be surmised that the object of the search

was food. Stefansson has described the making of an ice cache which is more or

less polar-bear-proof (15; 16). It could be constructed by digging a pit into an

ice hummock, placing in it the things to be stored, filling the rest of the pit

with boulders of ice, tamping in snow between the chunks and pouring water on

the whole that has been secured from beneath the ice.

       

Edibility of the Meat

        Various opinions are held as to palatability of the meat. Some white

men have found it good eating, preferring it to caribou; others have found it

rank, unpleasant, and even unwholesome. A few say they prefer [ ?] to eat the

flesh raw or frozen; most prefer it cooked. Freuchen describes the flesh as pink,

sweet, and savory, but says it becomes unpalatable when too exclusively eaten . (2).

But Nansen and Johansen, who probably had most experience of all explorers in

living on polar bear meat, found they could eat it exclusively, day after day

for several months, without tiring of it. “We consumed large quantities,”

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writes Nansen, “at every meal, and strange to say, we never grew tired of this

food, but always ate it with a ravenous appetite” (5). They usually ate it

“boiled in soups,” he tells us. The paws, heart, tongue and brains are con–

sidered delicacies.

        Many arctic travelers have reported that eating the liver of the polar bear

may produce various unpleasant symptoms; drowsiness, sluggishness, irritability,

severe headache, vomiting, and peeling of the skin. It has been claimed that

older, presumably experienced, sledge dogs will refuse to eat fresh bear liver,

although young dogs will do so, but that frozen liver is eaten by young and old

dogs alike.

        Rodahl has made a vitamin assay and reports that polar bear liver is very

high in vitamin A (13). Of three specimens tested, chemically and biologically,

he measured two as containing 18,000 International Units of vitamin A per gram,

and the third 13,000. The high concentration of vitamin A might be the cause of

the toxicity, leading to hypervitaminosis A. The bear feeds upon the seal, and

seal liver was found to vary in its vitamin A content according to the time of

the year; so the liver of the bear would perhaps vary similarly according to the

season, thus accounting for some of the conflicting reports as to its toxicity.

Or the eating of several livers at successive meals might produce a headache when

a single small meal produced no symptoms.

        Recently it has been discovered that trichinosis is rather prevalent among

carnivorous arctic mammals, among them the polar bear. During World War II,

several Germans on a secret mission to the Franz Josef Islands were taken ill,

invalided to Norway (which was then in German hands), and found to be suffering

from trichinosis, readily traceable to bear meat. Since then trichinae have

been found in bear meat from various parts of the Arctic, and trichinal infection

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has been determined from bearskins preserved as specimens in museums. Tests

have revealed that some men now living are afflicted with trichinosis derived

from bear or other arctic meat eaten years ago, the organism being now in an

encysted state. A number of epidemics in the Far North and many separate

deaths, either previously written down as mysterious or else falsely diagnosed,

are now traced to this cause. A common wrong diagnosis has been typhoid. It

is now believed, too, that much of the baffling dog sickness of the Arctic has

been trichinosis.

        Trichinae are killed by freezing, though not as quickly as by boiling. In

the Arctic, most bear meat that is eaten has previously been frozen, which may

have lessened materially the incidence of human and dog trichinosis. (The U.S.

Department of Agriculture publishes tables showing how long meat needs to be

kept frozen at various temperatures to be free from trichinae, the more intense

the chilling the shorter the required period.)

        Much has been written about the polar bear; some of it has now been discredited,

some needs to be checked, and what remains still shows a wide range of variation

in the habits of this animal.

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EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Bobrinksoi, N. Opredelitel Melkopitaiushchikh S SSR (Mammals of the USSR),

Moskva, Sovetskaia Nauka, 1944.

2. Degerbøl, Magnus and Freuchen, Peter. Mammals . Copenhagen, Gyldendalske

Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1935. Thule Expedition, 5th,

1921-24. Report vol.2, no.4-5, pp.102-19.

3. Karelin, D.B. “Vozdushnaia Ekspeditsia v vysokie Shiroty Arktiki v 1941 g.”

(Air Expedition to the High Latitudes of the Arctic in 1941),

Vsesoiuznoe Geogr. Obshch. Izvestia , vol.77, no.3, pp.164-69,

1945.

4. Miller, G.S. Catalogue of the Mammals of Western Europe in the Collection

of the British Museum . London, Trustees, 1912, pp.297-303.

5. Nansen, Fridtjof. Farthest North. Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration

of the Ship Fram 1893-96 . Westminster, Constable, 1897. 2 vols.

6. Nelson, E.W. Report upon Natural History Collections Made in Alaska Between

the Years 1877 and 1881 . Ed. by Henry W. Henshaw. Wash.,

G.P.O., 1887, pp.254-55. Arctic Series of Publications

issued in Connection with the Signal Service U.S. Army, no.3.

7. Nordenskiold, A.E. The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe . London,

Macmillan, 1881, vol.1., pp.137-47.

8. Ognev, S.I. Zveri SSSR i Prilezhashchikh Stran . T. 3, [Khishohnye i Lasto–

nogie] (The Mammals of the U.S.S.R. and Adjacent Countries,

v V ol.3, Beasts of Prey and Pinnipedia.) Leningrad, M.L. ✓

Glavpushnine N.K.V.D. Biomedgiz, 1935, pp.124-39.

9. Ouwelhand, C.W. “Über Geburt and jugendentwicklung c e ines Eisbaren,” ✓

Zoologische Garten , Frankf o u rt, n.s., vol.2, pp.102-7, 1929. ✓

10. Papanin, D. Life on an Ice Floe . N.Y., Messner, 1939.

11. Peary, R.E. The North Pole , N.Y., Stokes, 1910.

12. Pedersen, Alvin. Der Eisb a ȁ r (T h alar e c tos maritimus Phipps ). København, Bruun, 1945. ✓

13. Rodahl, K., and Moore, T. “The vitamin A content and toxicity of bear and

seal liver,” Bio-chem.J. vol.37, pp.155-68, 1943.

14. Seton, E.T. Lives of Game Animals . Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1926. vol.2,

“The Polar Bear,” pp.195-228.

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EA-Zoo. Rand: Polar Bear

15. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. The Friendly Arctic . N.Y., Macmillan, 1921.

16. ----. Arctic Manual. N.Y., Macmillan, 194 4 5 .

17. Zalkin, V. “On the biology of the white bear of the Franz-Josef Archipelago,”

Moskovskoe Obshch.Ispytat.Prir.Otdel.Biol. Bull . n.s., vol.45,

pp.355-63, 1936.

       

A. L. Rand

Fur Bearers of North America

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0184                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Leonard Butler)

FUR BEARERS OF NORTH AMERICA

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Arctic Fox	2
Muskrat	8
Red Fox	11
Wolverine	13
Beaver	14
Marten	14
Weasel	15
Mink	15
Arctic Hare	15
Arctic Wolf	16
Polar Bear and Musk Ox	16
Lynx	16
Otter	17
Squirrel	17
Bibliography	18

001      |      Vol_III-0185                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Leonard Butler)

       

FUR BEARERS OF NORTH AMERICA

        The life of the Eskimo and Indian in the Far North in dependent upon

hunting, fishing, and trapping. The Arctic and subarctic was formerly a

vast preserve which annually produced a large fur catch for the scattered

native population. These pelts were turned in at the trading stores for

more and more white man’s good s until native life became almost completely

centered around trapping. As population spread northward, exploitation of

the fur resources of this frontier increased. Overtrapping was practiced

and little done to protect the fur bearers. Under such conditions the more

easily trapped and the less prolific animal s , such as beaver and marten, have

been seriously depleted.

        Trapping begins in November as soon as there is enough snow on the

ground for traveling. A group of families usually camps together, living

in tents or, in some parts of the North, after the real cold weather begins,

in snowhouses. The men visit the traplines periodically to bring in fur and

reset the traps, while the women and children remain in the central camp.

        The land animals of the Arctic which are used for their fur consist of

the following species: arctic fox, polar bear, musk ox, arctic hare, wolverine,

and arctic f wolf. On the southern limits of the arctic area and in favorable

localities extending up into the Arctic Circle, such as the Mackenzie River

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valley, the fur crop includes most of the bush species such as beaver,

weasel, colored fox, lynx, marten, mink, muskrat, otter, and squirrel.

       

Arctic Fox

        The bulk of the arctic fur crop comes from the arctic fox ( Alopex

lagop y u s) . The relative number of pelts taken yearly from the different

areas being:-

	White	Blue
Alaska	5,000	10,000
Canada	50,000	1,000
Greenland	500	4,000
U.S.S.R.	80,000	1,500

        The number of pelts taken fluctuates greatly from year to year. The

Canadian catch crops to 18,000 pelts in times of fox scarcity and rises

to 75,000 pelts in times of abundance. These periods of abundance occur

every four years (see Population Cycles).

        The arctic fox is circumpolar in distribution and occupies most of

the land north of the tree limit in both the Old and New Worlds. In early

times the range extended much farther south and included all of Europe and

most of the northern part of Asia. There is no indication how far south

the range extended in Canada. As climatic conditions changed, its range

moved northward, and at the present time it is a typical representative

of the tundra fauna of Europe, Asia, North America, and the islands scattered

over the northern seas.

        The arctic fox exists in two coat-color phases; white and “blue.”

The white phase dominates in northern Canada and part of Alaska, the

proportionate number of the blue varying from one blue to 500 whites to

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to one blue to 3,000 whites. In Greenland, the Aleutians and Pribilof

Islands the blue phase predominates and white pelts are very scarce. On

the islands off the Soviet coast the blues predominate but on the mainland

the whites are in the majority. The original coat color was blue, and white

is due to a recessive mutation. Thus it is possible for the same litter to

contain both blue and white young ones and for two blue e foxes to be the

parents of white cubs.

        The fur of the arctic fox is very dense with almost woolly underfur;

the guard hair is short and soft and the tail is thickly furred. The white

phase has a snow-white winter pelt consisting of long white guard hairs and

short, smoky-gray undefur. The underfur on the tail is darker and longer.

Poorer quality pelts have a yellow tinge especially on the belly. The dark

eyes and black nose stand out clearly against this background.

        The blue phase varies in color from a smoky greyish-brown through

the various shades of brown and gray. Many of the more desirable types

have a sprinkling of white hairs scattered over the body, giving them a

silvery appearance. They have no white tip to the tail.

        The summer coat of both color phases is a smoky-brown color with no

long guard hairs. At this stage whites and blues look much alike but can

be distinguished by the expert. The autumn change in coat beings in

September and lasts until December. The first signs of the spring molt

appear in the second half of March. The molt begins at the head and

gradually passes to the back, shoulders, and finally the belly.

        The arctic fox belongs to the dog family and the genus Alopex . Many

of the characteristics of this genus are halfway between Canis the dog genus

and Vulpes the red fox genus. The main species is lagopus, meaning hare foot,

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and many authorities maintain that the rest have only subspecific rank.

It is about two-thirds the size of the common fox and has an average

weight of five kilograms. It resembles the red fox but its muzzle is

broader and not as long. The ears are short and rounded and covered with

hair so that they are hardly noticeable in the long winter coat. The nose

and claws are black. The legs are shorter than those of the red fox and

the pads of the feet are covered with hair. The average length of life is

four to five years but in captivity some have been known to live for

eighteen years.

        The arctic fox makes its burrows in sandy or peaty soil or in favorable

stony places on the tundra, generally not far from the coast. In soft soils

the foxes dig burrows with numerous entrances while [ ?] in stony places they

make use of natural passages and crevices formed by large stones lying on

top of one another. In these burrows in April and May the young are born.

The size of the litter varies from 3 to 15, with authentic reports of

litters as high as 22 pups. The average litter size is 7 or 8. The

gestation period is 53 days, the rut extending from the middle of February

to the middle of April, being a month later than that of the red fox. Both

parents are said to take part in rearing the cubs. The mortality rate is very

high especially before the young leave the burrow for the first time. In

August the young embark on an independent life.

        The main food of the arctic fox is the lemming, a large arctic rodent

which fluctuates greatly in numbers. Other main sources of good are birds

and their eggs in the nesting and hatching period, and fish and white whales

thrown up by the sea. In the summer they [ ?] usually live well off the

eggs and young of ducks, geese, gulls, and other water birds. They vary

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their diet by taking berries and seaweed, crustace a ns, mollusks, and other

small sea animals. In winter they are restricted to lemmings with an

occasional arctic hare and ptarmigan. They sometimes devour the remains

of a polar bear’s prey and old foxes will often persistently follow a bear

for this purpose.

        When food is scarce the arctic fox may migrate and at such times they

come as far south as the tip of James Bay and into northern Manitoba and

Saskatchewan. These southern migrations used to occur at each population

high but since about 1936 there has been little of this southern movement.

        The arctic fox has few enemies. Wolverines, wolves and occasionally

polar bears hunt it but none of these animals, as far as the fox is concerned,

is seriously predatory. In the past fifteen years the red fox has extended

its range northward and infiltrated into the white fox territory. Wherever

the red fox appears it is a serious enemy of the white fox. Because of

its greater size and cunning the red fox is able to catch and kill many

whites. The red also competes with the white fox for food and, from

experience of the red for [ ?] invasion of the Belcher

Islands, it appears that a given area can support only a third as many red

foxes as it can white ones. Since the red fox is worth only a quarter as

much as the white fox and since it destroys many white foxes after they are

caught in traps, the red fox can become a serious economic menace.

        The arctic fox suffers from several diseases, the chief of which are

paratyphoid fever, distemper, encephalitis, and rabies. Epidemics have been

reported among northern sledge dogs with cyclic regularity when the fox

population is at its highest and it is suspected that the arctic fox is

the reservoir and carrier from one locality to another. At such times the

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foxes become bold, come close to dwellings and attack men, dogs, and

reindeer. In the Soviet North this disease was classified as rabies but

in Canada it was considered a form of encephalitis and was spoken of as

“crazy dog disease.” Investigations at Baker Lake in the winter of 1947-48

definitely prove that ra v b ies was present in the dog population at this point

and it may therefore be inferred that it was also present in the foxes.

        Arctic fox trapping begins early in November as soon as the pelts

become prime. Baits are scattered before the commencement of trapping, so

that the foxes may get used to visiting this spot and not be suspicious when

trapping commences. For bait, carcasses and lumps of the fat of the seal,

bearded seal and Greenland seal, and arctic cod are used. Sometimes the

arctic fox takes to addled guillemot eggs and they are used as bait. The

arctic fox is usually much less trap-wary than is the red fox.

        Most trapping is done with the double-spring trap. The trap is set in

the immediate proximity of the bait. The chain is fastened to one of the

stones that cover the bait, or to a peg driven into the snow. In the place

designed for the trap, a disk of snow, corresponding in size to that of the

trap with open jaws, is cut out with a knife. The bottom of the hole thus

formed is made level and the set trap is lowered into it. Ten or more yards

away from the place where the trap has been set a second disk of snow is cut

out, a little larger than the first in size. This disk, which is about one

inch thick, is brought to the hole in which the trap lies and carefully laid

over it in such a way that the edge of the disk lies on the edge of the hole

without spilling snow into it. After the disk is placed in position, snow is

scattered along the edge. An area in the middle of the disk over the plate

of the trap is scraped very thin but not enough to let the plate show through,

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Coming to the bait to eat it, the arctic fox breaks through the thin disk of

snow, falls with its paws on the plate of the trap, thus springing it and

getting its foot caught in the jaws of the trap.

        A more primitive method of trapping is the deadfall which the trappers

make with axe and knife out of driftwood or flat stones. It is a contraption

of balanced levers with a trigger stick. The arctic fox enters the trap, pulls

on the bait, which is attached to the trigger stick. This jerks the trigger

stick out of place upsetting the balanced wood or stones which fall and

crush the fox.

        Many attempts were made in the Arctic to farm arctic foxes by the pen–

raising methods used in silver fox ranching. Such attempts were mostly

unsuccessful as food was costly to obtain in such localities and the fox did

not breed very readily. Later, island farms were started in which mostly

blue foxes are raised in a semiwild state.

        When island farms were first established in North America the arctic

fox was left to find food for itself. Now in the best farms the animals

are fed periodically during the winter and early spring, which are the most

difficult times for them.

        The food is put in special cage traps, which act as both feeding places

and live traps. The trap is in the shape of a little house made of planks.

The food is put in the loft. There is a trap door at the point where the

animal enters the loft. In the trapping season the catch on this trap door

is released and the weight of the animal trips the door, dropping the fox

into the lower part of the cage. The trap door is reset automatically, ready

for the next fox. Animals in the cage below are culled and either pelted

or marked and released for breeding purposes.

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        Recently many silver fox farms in Canada and the United States have

begun to raise the blue phase of the arctic fox. Because of its larger

litters and lower consumption of food, it is becoming a profitable fur

animal.

        Since arctic foxes have been raised in captivity there have been several

reports of hybridization with the red fox. These hybrids are almost as

large as the red fox, bark like arctic foxes, and are stronger and more vicious

than either parent. The ears are short like the arctic fox and the tail may

or may not be white tipped. The fur has the shorter guard hair and heavy

underfur of the arctic fox, but some of the guard hair has white bars like

the silver fox. Crosses of white fox with silver have reddish flanks and go

through a partial molt and color change. So far the only hybrid reported from

the wild was in Iceland where an escaped silver fox vixen in the absence of a

male of her own species mated with a blue dog. Most of these hybrids are

sterile.

       

Muskrat

        Next to the arctic fox, the most important fur from an economic standpoint

is the muskrat (genus Ondatea ). Alaska and arctic Canada each produce

300,000 to 500,000 pelts na annually worth about one million dollars. Most

of the muskrat catch of arctic Canada comes from the Mackenzie River Delta,

where nature has created an exceptionally fine habitat for these small fur

bearers, for here the Mackenzie breaks up into a great number of rivers,

streams, and cut-off channels leaving innumerable saucer-shaped islands.

The soil of the islands slopes downward to the center away from the river

edge because of the large amount of sediment dropped when the stream overflows

its banks. The islands thus invariably contain one or more lakes or marshy

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places. These lakes are subject to periodic flooding and drying up which

makes an ideal home country for muskrats. Under these conditions muskrat

food is abundant and the Mackenzie Delta ranks with the Mississippi and the

Saskatchewan deltas as the great muskrat-producing areas of the North

American continent.

        Muskrats are caught by being trapped, either in their houses in the ice

or in burrows along the stream banks. When trapping in houses, a thin spear

is inserted to find the chamber and then a hole is chopped through the house

wall at that point and the trap put in. Then the hole is filled to keep the

house from freezing up The end of the trap chain is fastened to a stick and

the stick is left protruding from the house to show the location of the trap.

Bank trapping is much harder work because the runways are not as easy to

locate and a great deal more chopping has to be done before the trap can be

set. For this reason most northern trapping is done either in houses or

else in open water after the ice goes out. Open-water trapping is not

desirable, as the breeding season has begun by this time and many of the

pelts are torn because of the fighting of males. A popular method of

“ratt l ing” in the Mackenzie Delta is that of shooting the muskrats in the

open water after the ice breaks up. Equipped with a light canoe and a .22

rifle a native can move quickly from one lake or stream to another. With such

equipment a trapper can take 100 to 200 muskrats a night instead of 20 to 50

obtained by the other methods.

        The muskrat has two litters a year of from three to twelve young. They are

usually born in the period from June to the k m iddle of August. At first they

are naked and helpless and their greatest protection is their aquatic habitat.

The young are born either in the house or bank den or else in grass nests among

the dense marsh vegetation.

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        The muskrat, or “musquash” as it is known in the northern fur country,

is three or four times the size of the common house rat to which it bears

a superficial resemblance. It has short legs and strong hind feet which

are partly webbed and modified for swimming. The long, naked, scaly tail

is strongly flattened vertically and in the water serves well as a rudder.

The fur is very fine and dense to protect its owner from the cold water in

which much of its life is spent. In marshes or shallow lakes muskrats build

roughly conical houses three to five feet high. These houses are made of

roots and stems of plants with a mixture of mud. One or more oval chambers

are chewed out of the interior above the water level to which entrance is

gained by passageways opening under water.

        The muskrat’s food consists of the roots and stems of such aquatic

plants as cattail, bulrush, sweet flag, sedges, and pondweeds In summer

it cuts the plants loose and then carries them in its mouth to a projecting

stone or piece of driftwood and sits on this to eat, washing the food before

eating. If no solid areas are available it builds feeding platforms of

floating vegetation. In winter the muskrat does not normally come out into

the open air above the ice because it is an easy prey for predators and also

because its tail and feet freeze and it cannot withstand severe col t d .

Occasionally when conditions under the ice are unfavorable many muskrats

eme e r ge and wander around until they are killed or die. Trappers regard this

as a sign that there will be extremely poor trapping in the spring. Since

their winter range is thus confined to their house and the water under the

ice, they must obtain their food from roots and plant material in the unfrozen

marsh bottom. The food is taken to a spot above the water line to be eaten.

This spot is either the regular house or a “push-up” which is a tiny house

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made some distance from the main house for the purpose of extending the

feeding range.

       

Red Fox

        The red or colored fox belongs to the genus Vulpes . The American

species V. fulv e a exists in three well-defined coat-color phases, silver or

black, cross, and red. The black or silver phase is the most valuable.

The black phase has an almost jet black pelt with a white tail tip and a white

line down the center of the belly. There are a few hairs scattered over the

body which have white bars on them. In the silver phase these white-barred

hairs become more numerous and give the pelt a silvery appearance. As the

bar becomes wider or more of the hair becomes white the silver becomes lighter

in color. In Platinum foxes the whole hair is white. So far there has never

been a case of the platinum mutation reported in wild foxes. The red fox has

yellowish-red hairs in place of the black hairs of the black phase and has a

white brush (tail tip) and white belly. The cross fox has a mixture of red

and w s ilvery black hairs. Usually both flanks are reddish yellow and there

is a black line down the center of the back and another line across the

shoulders. These two lines from a cross from whence this color phase gets

its name. All phases have an exceptionally bus h y tail more than half the

length of the body. They curl this around them when they sleep to prevent

the sensitive nose the mouth from freezing.

        The red phase is the original wild type and the silver is a mutation.

At least two different mutations have occurred, one in eastern Canada and

the other in the vicinity of Alaska. These two mutations look alike but are

genetically different. If only one of these genes is present, a mating

between a silver and a red gives all crosses. The red and the silvers are

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true-breeding. When both mutant genes are present, the inheritance is more

complicated and the reds and silvers are no longer true-breeding. Litters

of mixed parentage may contain all three color phases.

        The proportion of silvers to cross and reds is not the same in all

parts of the range. In general the proportion of silver and cross increase

as one moves north. With the influx of foxes from the south this gradient

has been maintained but the proportions have changed. For instance, in the

Mackenzie River area the percentage of silver has fallen from 12% to 5% and

of cross from 43% to 38%.

        The colored fox is a solitary, predacious, mostly nocturnal animal

which feeds principally on small birds and rodents such as mice, lemming,

snowshoe rabbits, and arctic hare. It also eats eggs, insects, and fruit.

After a gestation period of 54 days, the young are born in a burrow during

the month of March. There are usually from three to eight young per litter

and both parents help to take care of them. There is only one litter per

year.

        Red fox have a very wide range. Unlike most wild animals, they have

even thrived in the close vicinity of man. The clearing of bushland has

created better habitat for foxes and they have increased greatly in numbers

during the past twenty-five years. Prior to this population increase, the

colored fox was only of sporadic occurrence in the Barren Grounds and rarely

bec o a me abundant in the fingers of bushland which stretch up into the Arctic.

Since they have increased in numbers in the south they have spread northward,

especially during the population peak of the ten-year cycle, and now compete

with, and prey upon, the arctic fox in parts of its tundra range.

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        The T t rapping methods for red are similar to those for white except that

greater care has to be taken to keep the fox from becoming suspicious of

the trapping site.

       

Wolverine

        The wolverin g e is a circumpolar species belonging to the northern

forested regions of both America and Asia. It has a low, squat, heavily

built body, with strong legs and feet armed with sharp claws. The wolverine

( Gulo luscus , Gulo meaning glutton) is the largest and most formidable member

of the weasel family.

        The skunk-bear, or carcajou as the Canadian voyageurs called this

animal, possesses a diabolical cunning and persistence. It frequently trails

trappers along their trap lines, eating the bait from the traps they set and

destroying the fur of animals caught in these traps. The wolverin g e is a great

traveler and covers miles of country in its ceaseless search for food and

mischief. Whenever t i t starts preying on a trap line the stouthearted trapper

puts all his energy, resources, and ingenuity to work immediately to trap

this marauder. The weakhearted trappers pull up their traps and move to

another territory.

        Because of its strength and cunning h the wolverin g e has earned a special

place for itself in Eskimo folklore. Many hunters wear belts made from the

skin of the head and legs of this animal in the fond belief that they will

acquire some of the hunting prowess of the wolverine.

        Its main food consists of fish,mice, birds and their eggs, berries, and

bait which it robs from traps. If occasion demands, it will kill a deer

or caribou. In May and June, after a gestation period of about ninety days,

two or four young are born in a cave or burrow.

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        The fur is coarse, dark brown with lighter-colored stripes stretching

from the neck along the sides of the rump. It is most used for parka trimming

because it breaks the wind but does not colle d ct and hold moisture as easily as

other furs.

       

Beaver

        Arctic Canada produces 17,000 beaver ( Castor canadensis ) pelts annually,

most of which come either from the Mackenzie River or from the more southerly

rivers of Hudson Bay and James Bay. This largest of the rodents (an adult

weighs 50 lbs.) builds houses and dams of sticks and mud and digs canals to

float sticks from the place where they grow to the dam. They live chiefly

on the bark, twigs, and young leaves of the aspen, willow, and birch. They

mate in February and their litter of three to five young is born in May or

June. The beaver does not reach maturity until it is two and a half years

old. Because of its small litter, slow maturity, and ease of trapping, the

beaver is easily trapped out unless stringent game laws are enforced or

preserves established.

       

Marten

        The Mackenzie River area, the Yukon, and the country around James Bay

were formerly the best marten ( Martes americana ) country in North America.

Overtrapping has made this valuable fur very scarce, the pelt numbers having

fallen from over 30,000 pelts in 1850 to less than 5,000 today. The marten

is extremely alert and inquisitive and very nimble and fast of foot. It

feeds chiefly on squirrels and small mammals, birds and their eggs, frogs,

fish, insects, and berries. It mates in June and July. The fertilized

ovum does not embed for six or seven months (delayed implantation) and the

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two to four young are born in March or April. Experience on fur farms

indicates that the marten is not prolific.

       

Weasel

        The two species most commonly found in the Arctic are Mustela

cicognanii , the short-tailed weasel, and M. rixosa , the least weasel. The

former has a tail about four inches long, the last two inches of which are

black, and the latter has a one-inch tail with a black tip. Both species

change the color of their fur from brown in the summer to white in the

winter. Little effort is made to trap this animal, the ermine (weasel)

pelts turned in being taken in traps set for other animals or else by

children and women trapping near the camp.

       

Mink

        The mink ( Mustela vison ), a large weasel with partially webbed feet

to adapt it for swimming, is never found far from the water. It is a blood–

thirsty, tireless, solitary hunter that kills wantonly at times. It eats

mice and other rodents, birds and their eggs, fish and muskrat young. Its

ge s tation p r e riod varies from 30 to 65 days, the three to ten young being

born in April or May. The choicest silky pelts are found in Labrador and

northern Quebec; the pelts from the Mackenzie and the Yukon are larger and

coarser.

       

Arctic Hare

        Arectic hares ( Lepus arcticus ) resemble large jack rabbits and often

attain a weight of more than ten pounds. They are more heavily built than

the snowshoe rabbit and have shorter legs and ears. Their feet are furred

and they change their coat color from agouti in the summer to snowy white

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EA-Zoo. Butler: Fur Bearers of North America

in the winter. The trip of the ear is black. They usually have one litter

a year of from one to eight young. The sex ratio may at times be predomi–

nately female, which gives rise to travelers’ stories that arctic hares

are produced by virgin births.

        The pelts are soft and sil k y but the leather is too thin and easily

torn to withstand hard wear. They are used for lining sleeping bags.

Because of the scarcity of these animals and the low value of their pelts

they are not extensively used by the fur trade.

       

Arctic Wolf

        The arctic wolf ( Cani a s tundrarum ) is the largest of the North American

wolves. The pelts often measure seven feet in length and have long sil k y

guard hairs. The color is generally pale, almost white in some cases. The

breeding and hunting habits are similar to those of other wolves except

that the length of the arctic winter and the scarcity of food make it harder

for them to survive. They feed chiefly on birds and their young, lemmings,

hares, foxes, caribou, and musk ox.

       

Polar Bear and Musk Ox

        Polar bear pelts are not used extensively by the fur trade. They are

sold in limited quantities for rug and robe making. The musk ox has become

so scarce that it is protected by law and its pelt is no longer an article

of commerce. (See separate articles on these two animals.)

       

Lynx

        Lynx ( Lynx canadensis ) are long-legged cats with tufted ears and a short

“bobbed” tail. They have a thick coat of fur which gives them a fluffy

appearance. The general color is gray with silvery white guard hairs and

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EA-Zoo. Butler: Fur Bearers of North America

and the belly is pure white. Lynx have from two to five kittens which are

born in the late spring and resemble the young of a domestic cat. The

young usually hunt with their mother as a family group during most of the

first year of their life. This animal periodically becomes very abundant

in the Mackenzie River valley (see Cycles).

       

Otter

        The otter ( Lutra canadensis ) is a short-legged, long-bodied animal which is

more at home in the water than on land. Its fur is very strong and has

greater wearing qualities than any other American fur. Otter are not prolific

breeders and the number of pelts taken annually in Canada has fallen from

over 20,000 to 12,000 pelts.

       

Squirrel

        The squirrel ( Sciurus hudsonicus ) occurs as far north as the limit of

trees. Its pelts were formerly so cheap that it was not hunted in northern

areas. In 1942, however, there was a tenfold increase in pelt prices and

there is now considerable pressure on the squirrel population. The northern

squirrels do not reach the high population densities which occur in the aspen–

grove regions of the prairies and are therefore more easily decimated by

trapping. Since the squirrel feeds on vegetation and is the lowest animal

in many food chains, it is doubtful if the trapping of squirrels in northern

sections is a good practice.

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EA-Zoo. Butler: Fur Bearers of North America

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Bar a bash-Nikiforov. “Material on the food habits of the Mednuii (Copper)

Island arctic fox Alopex beringensis semenovi Ogn.,”

Moskovskoe Obshch. Ispytat. Prir. Otdel Biol. Bull .

n.s. vol.48, no.1, pp.78-80, 1939.

2. Butler, L. “The genetics of the colour phases of the red fox in the

Mackenzie River locality,” Canad.J.Res. Sect.D, vol.25,

no.6, pp.190-215, Dec., 1947.

3. Dubrovskii, A.N. “Pesets ( Alopex lagopus (L.)) i pestsovyi Promysel na

Novoi Zemle.” (The arctic fox (Alopex lagopus and arctic

fox trapping in Novaya Zemlya), Leningrad. Arkticheskii

Nauchn. –Issled.Inst. Trudy vol.77, pp.7-31, 1937.

4. Elton, Charles. “Epidemics among sledge dogs in the Canadian Arctic and

their relation to disease in the arctic fox,” Canad.J.Res .

vol.5, pp.673-92, 1931.

5. Kirpichnikov, A.A. “On the biology of the arctic fox of the southwest

coast of Taimyr,” Moskovskoe Obshch.Ispytat.Prir.Otdel

Biol. Bull . n.s., vol.46, pp.52-57.

6. Lavrov, N.P. Pesets . (The Arctic Fox.) Moscow, Vneshtorgizdat, 1932.

7. Nelson, E.W. Wild Animals of North America. Wash., National Geographic

Soc., 1930.

8. Robinson, M.J., and Robinson, J.L. “Fur production in the northwest

territories,” Canad.Geogr.J . Jan., 1946, pp.34-46.

9. Plummer, P.J.G. “Further note on arctic dog disease and its relation

to rabies,” Canad.J.Comp.Med . vol.11, pp.330-34, 1947.

       

L r e onard Butler

Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0203                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Magnus Degerbøl)

TERRESTRIAL FUR BEARERS OF GREENLAND

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Collared Lemming ( Dicrostonyx groenlandicus groenlandicus )	4
Greenland Polar Hare ( Lepus arcticus groenlandicus , and L. arcticus porsil i di )	6
Greenland Arctic Wolf ( Canis lupus orien; C. lupus eogroenlandicus ; C. lupus arctos )	7
Greenland Fox ( Alopex lagopus groenlandicus )	9
Greenland Ermine ( Mustela erminea polaris )	10
Polar Bear ( Thalarct o us maritimus )	11
Bibliography	14

001      |      Vol_III-0204                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Magnus Degerbøl)

       

TERRESTRIAL FUR BEARERS OF GREENLAND

        The land mammals of Greenland comprise only eight species in all,

including two rodents, two ungulates, and four carnivores, as follows:

( 1 ) Collared lemming ( Dicrostonyx groenlandicus groenlandicus ); ( 2 ) Groeen–

land polar hare ( Lepus arcticus groenlandicus, and L. arcticus porsildi);

(3) Caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus); ( 4) Musk ox (Ovibos moschatus

wardi); (5) Arctic fox ( Alopex lagopus groenlandicus ); (6) Arctic wolf ( Canis

lupus orion, C. lupus eogroenlandicus, and C. lupus arctos ); (7) Greenland

ermine ( Mustela erminea polaris ); (8) Polar bear (Thalarctos maritimus).

        Of these mammals, the caribou and musk ox are not considered as fur

bearers and will not, therefore, be dealt with specifically in this paper.

        There can hardly be any doubt that these land mammals, possibly with

the exception of Rangifer , originated from Arctic North America, from which

country Greenland is separated only by narrow and frequently ice-covered

straits. Compared with that of North America the land-mammal fauna of

Greenland is poor, although, particularly with regard to South Greenland,

the conditions are such that means of subsistence are at hand for more species

than really occur there. The explanation of this nonoccurrence is that the

migration road for land mammals lay across the high-arctic North America,

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

over the narrow sounds just mentioned. Only the species which have survived

this process of selection have got through. Several American species of

mammals which could undoubtedly live in Greenland, such as Gulo , Lemmus , and

Citellus , have after the glacial epochs not been able to spread so far to

the north and have therefore not yet reached Greenland. As none of the

Greenland land mammals is of hibernating habit, they also have possibilities

of distribution when rivers and waters, which are otherwise obstacles in the

way of migration, are covered by ice.

        Four of the mentioned eight species: collared lemming, musk ox, arctic

wolf, and ermine occur only in North and Northeast Greenland, south to the

Scoresby Sound region. Nor does the polar hare occur on the east coast south

of this region; on this southeastern coast we find only two species of land

mam m als: the arctic fox, which is found all over Greenland, and the polar bear.

The caribou is now restricted in its distribution to the west coast, but

until about 1900 it l o i ved also on the northeastern coast.

        The reasons for the northeastern distribution of the four species

(collared lemming, musk ox, wolf, and ermine) must undoubtedly be sought

in the climate and the possibilities of distribution.

        In Greenland we have a high-arctic continental climate in the north

and a subarctic, oceanic [ ?] climate to the south. The boundary between these

regions is the important July isotherm of 4 to 5°C. On the west coast this

isotherm comes in at about latitude 73° N. (Upernivik) and crosses the east

coast south of Scoresby Sound at about 69° N. The country south of Scoresby

Sound, the Blosseville Coast, is a boundary area. The precipitation in

Angmagssalik is nearly three times greater than in Scoresby Sound. Another

factor of decisive importance is that the Blosseville Coast essentially

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

consists of very steep basalt rocks, divided by a large number of productive

glaciers, and, as distinguished from Northeast Greenland, there are no

extensive plains where edible material can form, and where great land

mammals, e.g., musk ox, can find sufficient food. To the northwest the

range of these four continental species is barred by the more than 100- mkilo–

meter-wide Humboldt glacier, which debouches into the sea at this point, or

by the Melville coast with its numerous glaciers.

        It has been supposed that these northern mammals arrived in Greenland

in fairly recent time. In 1822, the Scoresbys, father and son, were in the

fjord which now bears their name, but saw no musk oxen or any signs of them.

Nor did Clavering and Sabine, who in the following year were on the coast

farther north, find any trace of the presence of the musk ox. The first

expedition to see live musk oxen on the east coast of Greenland was the

Germania expedition under Koldewey in the year 1869. This led some investi–

gators to conclude that in the years 1822-23, the musk ox had not yet come

to East Greenland south of latitude 75° N. However, new light upon this

question was given in 1934 when musk ox bones were excavated from Eskimo

house ruins at Clavering Island dating from about 1600; also the fact that

the East Greenland musk ox belongs to a special ra d c e ( Ovibos moschatus wardi )

points toward its occurrence in East Greenland as dating rather far back.

        Curiously enough, these explorers did not see any caribou in 1822-23

either. Excavations have proved, however, that this species has lived in

East Greenland at least from the beginning of the 16th century through the

19th century. For the later expeditions of Koldewey Koldewey ( 1869 ) , Ryder Ryder ( 1891 ) , and

a Nathorst Nathorst ( 1899 ) , found herds of caribou in East Greenland, but whe d n the

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

Denmark Expedition 1906-08 came to the east coast the species had entirely

disappeared, and since then it has not been met with in East Greenland.

       

COLLARED LEMMING 9 ( Dicrostonyx groenlandicus groenlandicus )

        Distribution : North and Northeast Greenland, south to d’Aunay Bay,

Blosseville Coast. On Melville Peninsula the Greenland collared

lemming intergrades with the American race D. groenlandicus

richardsoni .

        In summer coat the Greenland collared lemming is less brightly colored

than the American subspecies, and in adult specimens the dark dorsal stripe

is missing. The total impression of the animal in summer pelage is that

the back is grayish to grayish black with a faint reddish-brown tinge. A

characteristic feature in the Greenland collared lemming is that the hairs

on the flanks and the upper part of the breast are rusty red. As is well

known, the collared lemming acquires a white winter coat, and the claws of

the two central digits are then v a e ry large, sometimes exceeding half an inch

in length, and have the appearance of being double, one on top of the other.

        Most of the authors who have visited Greenland are of the opinion that

this animal breeds once or twice during the summer. One author states that

in good lemming years it also brings forth a litt l e r of young in early spring,

March-April, in winter nests which are situated on the ground under the snow;

the second litter is then born in May-June, and the third in July-August.

The young that are born in early spring propagate in their first year. The

usual number in the litter is three to five; this number seems to be smaller

than in the case of the American collared lemming. Observations made on

animals held in captivity in Denmark have, however, shown that the Greenland

collared lemming is able to bring forth at least five litters in the course

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

of the summer, the interval between each litter being about a month, and

the number of young per litter varying between two and seven.

        In old embryos the vibrissae and claws are visible. After birth the

following characteristics have been observed. One day old: head and body

35 mm.; the animal has a dark back and a light-colored belly with a sharp

line of demarcation between these two parts; the back proper is covered with

rather long, black hairs, up to 2 mm. in length, which are, however, not so

closely set as to conceal the dark skin. Three to four days old: head and

body 43 mm.; the animals have a distinct dark dorsal stripe; the hairs on the

back are so dense as to cover the skin completely; the color of the belly is

still determined by the skin. About 14 days old: head and body 53 mm.,

the eyes open. Adult: and head and body 100-145 mm. (20 specimens measured).

The maximum lifetime of this animal is two years.

        Young born in the spring have very pronounced pads on the toes below

the central digits. This clearly shows that the young, which in Greenland

are born under the snow in late winter or early spring, are from the start

supplied with a double claw before they have had an opportunity to dig.

Therefore, in this case there can be no question of acquired qualities; the

phenomenon is undoubtedly hormonally determined.

        The pelage of the collared lemming is extremely soft and thick, and

the animal looks like a small furry ball. With its broad-bellied shape, it

resembles in miniature (particularly when sitting on its hind legs) a small

“Bobak,” the marmot of the Arctic. The collared lemming prefers fertile

localities, in particular where willows, its favorite food, grow thickly

and form a layer of humus. The collared lemming plays an important part

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

in the animal world of the Arctic. Since this small rodent mainly accounts

for the occurrence of several carnivorous animals, for instance such a

valuable fur animal as the arctic fox, it is obvious that the considerable

fluctuations in the number of individuals of the lemming will also affect

the occurrence of several other animals. These fluctuations, as is well

known, show a period of approximately four years.

       

GREENLAND POLAR HARE ( Lepus arcticus groenlandicus and L.a. porsildi )

        Distribution : All Greenland coasts except the southeast regions

south of Cape Dauss e y Blosseville Coast.

        There are two subspecies of hares in Greenland, the North Greenland

L.arcticu groenlandicus on the east coast, whence it spreads to the

northern part of the west coast, the region round Disko Bay, and the South

Greenland L. arcticus porsildi , L. arcticus groenlandicus is charac g t erized

by its forward-projecting and protruding (proodont) upper incisors, while

porsildi has more normal (orthodont) incisors. A method for measuring

the angle at which the upper incisors emerge from the skull (by means of

a goniometer) has made it possible to demonstrate that there is a gradual

diminution of the index when going southward. It is interesting that this

change is not confined to a limited zone, but is apparently observable

between any two series from different latitudes, a beautiful example of a

“cline.” The Greenland hares have probably emigrated as typical groenlandicus

from the north, from Ellesmere Island. Projecting incisors are well adapted

for rooting among snow and stones for dwarfed plants, but are inefficient for

ordinary regions farther south. The orthodont feature must, the n , have been

achieved as an adaptation to the more luxuriant plant life in southern

Greenland, and the animals have resumed the normal curving of the incisors.

The evolution has thus been: orthodont incisors in the American races of

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

ar c ticus west of Davis Strait; projecting incisors in groenlandicus in

Ellesmere Island and North Greenland; orthodont incisors again in South

Greenland.

        L. ar c ticus groenlandicus remains white throughout the year, though

the white summer pelage is duller and scantier than the winter pelage; at

all seasons the ear tips are black. In L. ar c ticus porsildi the summer

coat is shaded with a pale buffy. The color of the leverets is always

grayish.

        Greenland hares generally have only one litter in a year. The young are

born in June and the usual number in a litter is five or six. The hares are

very common in Northeast Greenland, but in most other districts they are

rather sparse. They live from the outer coast to the inland ice and on the

nunataks, preferring the inner parts of the ice- pile oaves free area . Especially in

winter they keep to fairly steep slopes where grass and other vegetation

are kept free from snow. Their favorite food seems to be the roots of

salix and saxifraga .

        The animal is of no great economic importance to the Greenlanders, who

generally do not like its meat. In the Thule district the skins are used

for stockings.

       

GREENLAND ARCTIC WOLF ( Canis lupus orion; C. lupus eogroenlandicus ;

C. lupus arctos )

        Bistribution : North and northeast coast, south to Scoresby Sound.

        The arctic wolf is a very rare animal in Greenland. It is extremely

cauti on ous and shy and has only occasionally been observed and killed by

expeditions and hunters. Its occurrence on the east coast was first

ascertained by the Nathorst Expedition, 1899, which prompted this explorer

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

to set forth the view that the wolf had only quite recently immigrated

to the east coast from the north. In the excavated material from Clavering

Island there were no wolf bones. In this connection it should, however, be

observed that this animal, which roams about alone or in small groups, and

which has seldom been trapped by the Eskimos, most probably was not seen

by the first explorers of East Greenland; therefore it was not represented

in the excavated material. As in the case of the East Greenland musk ox,

it should be emphasized that the East Greenland wolf belongs to a special

d race ( C. lungus lupus eogroenlandicus ). It is characterized by the very large

premolars, indeed so large that the second and third premolars overlap.

Pocock (1935) has based a special subspecies Canis lupus orion on a skin

and a skull lacking in posterior, from Cape York, [ ?] Northwest Greenland.

There is not much to be said about such scanty material; it will only be

mentioned that in this skull, which the author has examined in London, the

premolars are widely separated. Probably this animal was an immigrant from

Ellesmere Island ( C. lupus arctos C. lupus arctos ).

        It may be mentioned as a unique event that as early as the winter of

1868-69 two white wolves were observed on the west coast, in the northwestern

district of Umanak; one was shot and its skin and skeleton are now in the

Zoological Museum of Copenhagen. This specimen, too, has widely separated

premolars and must be regarded as an accidental visitor. The year 1868

was a well-marked invasion year for white foxes from Canada.

        In summertime the wolf has no difficulty in finding food — lemmings,

leverets, musk ox calves, broods of birds, etc., but in winter things are

quite different; the struggle has been especially difficulty since about 1900,

when the caribou disappeared from the country. At this season hungry wolves

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

at times attack, kill, and devour dogs.

       

GREENLAND FOX ( Alopex lagopus groenlandicus )

        Distribution : All districts of Greenland.

        From an ecological point of view the Greenland foxes have been divided

into two categories: lemming foxes, which live on the north and northeast

coast to the Scoresby Sound region, where lemmings occur; and “coast foxes,”

which subsist largely on products of the sea. In lemming foxes there are

regular fluctuations with maximum numbers at intervals of about four years

correlated with the four-year cycle of the lemmings. In coast foxes there

is no such regularity, and the food supply at the disposal of these foxes does

not fluctuate so regularly. In coast foxes the blue phase is most common,

in some small islands even approaching one hundred per cent. As a further

ecological differentiation within this last group may be mentioned foxes

resorting to bird cliffs with their more constant food supply. Under such

circumstances the blue variety is especially dominant and the number of young

in a litter is fairly constant from year to year.

        Apart from the autochthonous lemming foxes in Northeast Greenland,

there are immigrant lemming foxes which come from Canada via Smith Sound or

on the drifting ice. As almost all the Canadian foxes are white, the

arrival of these animals is indicated by a rise in the percentage of white

foxes in the catch. In the Thule District this immigration takes place

every winter, but in especially great numbers every four years, that is,

the year of lemming minimum following the lemming maximum. From an economic

point of view, these white foxes are less valuable than the blue ones.

        The rutting season of the arctic fox in Northeast Greenland is in March

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

and the beginning of April, and the young are born in May. As already

mentioned, the collared lemming may bring forth its first litter of young

below the snow in the winter or early spring, especially in lemming years.

It is evident that these early litters are of great importance to the breed–

ing conditions of the arctic fox. “Fox years” are conditioned by a good

state of nutrition before and during the period of pregnancy. Most authors,

with the exception of a few earlier ones, as Otto Fabricius Otto Fabricius , deny the possi–

bility of more than one annual litter of arctic foxes, even in good lemming

years.

        In Greenland blue foxes predominate, but the proportion between blue

and white varies from place to place. In the year 1947-48, the following

number of fox skins was traded: in South Greenland, to Holstein s borg, 966 blue

foxes, 547 white foxes; in North Greenland, 1,075 blue foxes and 622 white

foxes; in East Greenland, 41 blue foxes and 160 white foxes. In the Thule

District the skins are used for trousers and over-jackets, and in this

district the meat is eaten during the winter, when the animals are fat. In

other districts the skins are sold to the Greenland Trading Company.

       

GREENLAND ERMINE ( Mustela ermine polaris )

        Distribution : North and Northeast Greenland.

        The collared lemming is the chief food of the ermine; it is quite natural,

therefore, that the ermine has the same distribution as the lemming.

        The ermine of Greenland shows the greatest affinity to the ermine of the

eastern North American Arctic; in bo g t h the tail is relatively thin and short

and the black tip of the tail is relatively large, but the Greenland ermine

differs somewhat with regard to the color of the summer skin, having a lighter

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

appearance. Practically speaking, the Greenland ermine is intermediate in

color between the New and Old World erminea . The fur is soft and thick,

as in specimens of the ermine from the high north elsewhere.

        In Greenland the ermine is of fairly common occurrence, but it is

nowhere to be found in any great numbers. In summertime the animal strolls

about in the open air, but in winter it generally lives under the snow, being

less adapted to resist the severe cold than other terrestrial mammals of the

region. Pairing takes place by the end of the March-April. In the years when

lemmings are rare, the ermin d e may not propagate at all or it may eat its

young.

       

POLAR BEAR ( Thalarct u o s maritimus )

        Distribution : All coasts of Greenland.

        The polar bear may occur along all the coasts of Greenland, but on the

west coast, between Julianehaab and Upernivik districts, it is a very rare

and occasional guest. On the north coast proper, in the area between Polaris

Bay and Independence Fjord the polar bear is also rare. Its real residence

is the northern part of the west coast, and the east coast south to Scoresby

Sound. On the east coast it comes from this region with the drift ice in

winter and spring down the Blosseville Coast in fairly large numbers; some

mo r v e farther south along the southeast coast, around Cape Farewell, and up

along the west coast to the southern part of Julianehaab District. Not all

animals, however, are transported so far south; many go ashore in order to go

north again to the fjords of Northeast Greenland. The polar bear is

e s x tremely skillful at finding its way and may of f t en be seen to take the

shortest cuts between two fjord systems across peninsulas or behind promon–

tories, where regular “bear paths” may be seen.

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

        The everlasting wanderings of the polar bear up and down the coasts is

partly determined by the supply of food, partly by the drift ice. Since it

lives principally on seals, it seeks out places where these animals are to

be found. In East Greenland its chief residence in winter is the drift ice,

especially where openings in the ice are to be found outside the coast, but it

goes far out to sea too. At this season, before the seals come up on the

ice, the bear can catch adult specimens at the breathing holes. In March-April

the polar bears wander to the breeding places of the ringed seal, and may go

far into the fjords where seals are living, especially on the east coast

between Scoresby Sound and Dove Bay. Also on the northwest coast of Greenland

in spring they seek the breeding places of the ringed seal, especially around

Melville Bay and Peabody Bay, in Kane Basin. For a more complete discussion

of habits and characteristics, see article on “Biology of the Polar Bear,”

by A. L. Rand.

        To the Polar Eskimos in the Thule District polar bears are of great

importanc d e ; the skins are used for trousers and for rugs on sleeping platforms,

and the meat is eaten. In this district only a few skins are traded. As

far as the remaining parts of Greenland are concerned, polar bears are of some

importance to only four of the districts, namely, Scoresby Sound and

Angmagssalik on the east coast and Upernivik and Julianehaab on the west

coast. When the Scoresby Sound settlement was founded in the year 1925, no

less than 102 bear skins were traded, but the number soon diminished, averaging

44 annually in the years 1930 to 1940 and 36 in the years1940 to 1950. At

Angmagssalik the average number of bear skins traded (number of animals killed

is not known, but, practically speaking, all skins are traded) are, per annum:

1890-1900, 56.6 skins; 1900-10, 68.6; 1910-20, 86.9; 1920-30, 86.7; and

1930-40, 45.8.

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EA-Zoo. Degerbol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland

        In the last decades the number of bears has been strongly declining.

On the northwest coast the following number of bear skins has been k g raded:

Upernivik District; 1850-60, 36.4; 1860-70, 39.8; 1870-80, 19.5; 1880-90, 15.7;

1890-1900, 25.2; 1900-10, 28.7; 1910-20, 14.4; 1920-30, 17.6; 1920-40, 5.7.

Julianehaab District: 1850-60, 6.7; 1860-70, 8; 1870-80, 16.8; 1880-90, 29;

1890-1900, 31.7; 1900-10, 31.1; 1910-20, 29.1; 1920-30, 18.5; 1920-40, 6.6

014      |      Vol_III-0217                                                                                                                  
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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Braestrup, F. W. “A study on the arctic fox in Greenland. Immigrations,

fluctuations in numbers based mainly on trading statistics.”

Medd.Grønland . vol.131, no.4. 1941.

2. Degerbøl, Magnus. “Animal bones from the Eskimo settlement in Dødemandsbugten,

Clavering Island. A contribution to the immigration history

of the musk ox and reindeer in East Greenland,” Larsen, Helge.

“Dodemandsbugten,” Medd. Grønland , vol.102, no.1, 1934.

Zoological Appendix, pp.173-80.

3. ----. “A contribution to the investigation of the fauna of the Blosseville

coast, East Greenland, with special reference to zoogeography,”

Medd. Grønland , vol.104, no.19, 1937.

4. ----. “Mammals. Part 1, Systematic notes,” Thule Expedition, 5th, 1921-24.

Report , vol.II, no.4-5, pp.1-67, 1935.

5. ----, and Braestrup, Wimpfen. “The Geographical variation of the Greenland

floras,” Dansk Naturhist. Foren, Copenhagen, Vidensk Medd .

vol.98, 1934.

6. ----, and Mohl-Hansen, U. “Remarks on the breeding conditions and moulting

of the collared lemming ( Dicrostonyx ),” Medd. Grønland ,

vol.131, no.11, 1943.

7. Fabricius, Otto. Fauna Groenlandiae . Rothe, Hafniae et Lipsiae, 1780.

8. Freuchen, Peter. “Mammals. Part 2. Field notes and biological investi–

gations,” Thule Expedition, 5th, 1921-24. Report . vol.II,

no.4-5, pp.68-278, 1935.

9. Jensen, Ad.S. Grønlands Fanua . Københaven, Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, 1928.

10. Manniche, A.L.V. “The terrestrial mammals and birds of North-East Greenland,”

Medd. Grønland , vol.45, no.1, 1910.

11. Müller, B. Vildtet og Jagten i Sydgrønland . København, Hagerup, 1906.

12. Pedersen, Alvin. “Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Säugetier- und Vogelfauna der

Ostküste Grönlands,” Medd. Grønland, vol.68, no.3, 1926.

13. ----. Der Eisbär (Thalarctos maritimus Phipp a s ). Verbreitung und

Lebensweise . København, Bruun, 1945.

14. ----. “Fortgesdtzte Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Säugetier- und Vogelfauna

der Ostküste Grönlands,” Medd. Grønland , vol.77, no.5, 1930.

015      |      Vol_III-0218                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. B D eger d b ol: Terrestrial Fur Bearers of Greenland - Bibliography

15. Winge, Herluf. “Grønlands Pattedyr,” Medd. Grønland , vol.21, no.2, 1902.

16. Young, S.P., and Goldman, E.A. The Wolves of North America . Wash.,

American Wildlife Institute, 1944.

       

Magnus Degerbøl

Fur Bearers of Arctic and Subarctic Europe and Asia

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0219                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Sven Ekman)

FUR BEARERS OF ARCTIC AND SUBARCTIC EUROPE AND ASIA

       

CONTENTS

	Page
The Lynx	2
The Pine Marten	3
The Sable	6
The Ermine	8
The Glutton or Wolverine	10
The Otter	13
The Wolf	14
The Eurasian Red Fox or Forest Fox	16
The Arctic Fox	18
The Brown Bear	20
The Arctic Hare	22
The Squirrel	23
The Beaver	25
Other Eurasian Fur Bearers	26

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[EA-Zoo. Sven Ekman]

       

FUR BEARERS OF ARCTIC AND SUBARCTIC EUROPE AND ASIA

        Considered zoogeographically, the Arctic comprises the zone of the tundra

and that of the related highland health or mountain tundra, so that its southern

boundary coincides with the northern limits of the forest zone. The number of

genuine (endemic) arctic animals is small; of the Eurasian fur bearers, and

excepting the marine species (whales, seals, polar bears), only the arctic

fox belongs among them, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, reindeer and glutton

may also be grouped with them; both include the northernmost coniferous forests

in their range, but their main habitat is the tundra or at least the lightly

wooded tundra. Equally at home in the tundra, although of a still more

southerly range than the foregoing two, are the wolf, the red fox, the ermine,

the small weasel, and the hare. However, as the scope of this work calls

for consideration not only of the tundra animals but of the fauna of the

northernmost forest zone as well, several other species, some of which consti–

tute excellent commercial values, must be included in the survey to

follow.

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The Lynx

        The only member of the cat family that belongs in the category under

consideration is the lynx ( Lynx lynx ). In former times, the animal inhabited

the forests of Europe down to the Mediterranean and those of Asia as far south

as the Caucasus, northern Persia, and southeastern Tibet. In central Europe,

it has long since been exterminated, and it is rare even in Scandinavia, where

a few specimens are still to be found in Sweden, north of about latitude 63° N.

The species is somewhat more common in northeastern Finland, but its main

habitat is now in northern European Russia and in Siberia.

        The lynx is not an arctic animal and does not form a part of the fauna of

the tundra zone. In the northern Scandinavian mountains even the birch forests

that circle the southern edge of the highland health (mountain tundra) areas lie

outside the usual habitat of the lynx, although it has been observed here prowl–

ing for game. Its young, however, are never born above the limits of the

coniferous forests.

        According to observation made in zoological gardens and in the wilderness,

the family life of the lynx in the northern region is as follows. April is

mating time. This is one of the rare occasions when the voice of the animal

is heard, starting with a “meow” resembling that of the domestic cat and ending

in a hollow bark or howl, or else in a low snarl. The gestation period [ ?]

averages ten weeks, after which time two, rarely three, young are born, which

are blind for about two weeks. The den is in a rocky crevice or the like,

and so far has been found only by very few people. The young follow their

mother until the end of the winter, but the latter send them about their

business at the beginning of the next rut.

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        The lynx may attack prey as large as an adult reindeer, but [ ?] its

favorite quarry is the hare. Lemmings and voles are also to its taste and

when abundant constitute its main food. Hares and large-sized game are over–

taken with a few very long leaps, usually eight or ten, but the hunt is quickly

abandoned if not successful at once. However, its temper is that of a wanton

destroyer, for when breaking into a sheep or goat pen if will kill as many

animals as possible in order to suck their blood. It is therefore considered

a hateful marauder to be destroyed at all cost; it is also hunted because of

its beautiful pelt, which has high commercial value. The lynx is easily caught,

for it lacks endurance and when pursued by fast dogs quickly takes to a tree.

       

The Pine Marten

        The pine or forest marten ( Martes martes ) is no tundra inhabitant either,

but its range extends northward as far as the northernmost limits of the coni–

ferrous forest. In Europe, it is found as far south as central Italy, Sardinia,

and the Balearic Isles, although in some of the more densely populated countries

it is now nearly or altogether extinct. In Asia, it inhabits the taiga zone

as far east as Manchuria, and it is said to occur in the Himalayas, south of

the steppes and the deserts.

        No other beast of prey is as skilled a climber of trees as the marten, and

the facility with which it hunts and overtakes squirrels in treetops is well

known. Squirrels are its favorite prey and in regions where a marten has settled

the former soon disappear. Its preferred way of traveling is from treetop to

treetop but it also takes some of its prey on the ground, sometimes chasing a

hare over several miles. It hunts during the nig t ht and rests during the day,

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preferably in a squirrel’s nest. Hunters who have shot up to a hundred martens

report that the majority of their quarry was killed or roused in such nests.

The marten will kill any warm-blooded animal not very much larger than its own

size, whether it lives in trees or on the ground. Many instances are known

where a marten attacked a capereaillie or a black cock in a tree and then “flew”

to the ground in the back of the bird; in one instance, a distance of 40 meters

was thus traversed, in another all of 300 meters. While prowling at night, the

marten has no difficulties in finding the trees on which the birds are roosting,

as they betray their presence by the droppings accumulating on the ground below.

Hens nesting on the ground are also attacked. More often than not only a small

part of the quarry is devoured before the killer is off on another hunt again to

leave only a partly eaten spoil behind. The marten also feeds on birds’ eggs,

the honey of wild bees, on fruit, such as apples, pears, and cherries, and finally

on berries, including bilberries, sorb apples, and the berry of the juniper bush.

        Like most predators, the marten often buries the food of which it has no

need at the moment, and it is able to find its various caches even after a long

period of time. One man who followed a marten in wintertime , noticed that it

had entered a stone pile twice and twice reappeared with the egg of a capercaillie

which was then eaten on the spot. A forester reported five similar incidents.

A hunter , who is also an experienced zoologist, relates that he had quite often

seen evidence of a marten digging here and there in the snow to recover eggs

buried during the [ ?] previous summer; the eggs were those of capercaillies,

black grouse, ptarmigan, and mallards. Dead capercaillies, found in the nests

of squirrels or of black woodpeckers, had obviously been hidden there by a

marten.

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        The fertilization story of the species, although not altogether exceptional

among the marten-like varieties, is a strange one in at least one regard. Up

to 20 or 30 years ago, it was assumed that implantation took place late in winter

and that the period of gravidity was about 2 months, for the young are usually

born in April. Observations in zoological gardens, on animal farms, and even

outdoors, have led to different conclusions. There is no doubt now that in

almost all cases the main, effective mating takes place in July, rarely toward

the end of June or at the beginning of August, and that the period of gestation

is 8 to 9 months instead of 8 to 9 weeks. At the fur-bearing animal station

at Pushkino, U.S.S.R., where marten and sable are bred experimentally, the

sexes are permitted to mate only during the summer and are kept separate for

the rest of the year. Yet the young are regularly born in April. Only on very

few occasions have such births been preceded by a winter mating. The few known

exceptions were very young females, hardly a year old, although the female is

generally not fully matured until her second year. The period of gestation may

therefore vary to a considerable extent. An explanation for this may be that

the development of the embryo is slowed up if not altogether at a standstill

after mating has taken place, as is the case with the badger which belongs to the

marten family. The badger mates in the late summer or early fall, but the

embryo develops at such slow rate that it measures only 3 mm. after 4 or 5 months;

however, within another 8 weeks it is fully developed and ready for birth.

        The den of the marten is usually in a hollow tree and is easily detected

by its odor. The litter consists of 3 to 5 young.

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The Sable

        The sable ( Martes zibellina ), one of the best-known and most valuable fur

bearers, is a close relative of the pine marten, except that the color of its

fur is darker, almost black, especially on the back, while the light patch under–

neath the throat is of a more rust-colored, sometimes of a reddish-orange tint,

shading to a paler hue after the animal’s death. Its build is somewhat coarser

than that of the marten, especially as regards the legs and feet. The colora–

tion differs among the various subspecies. The finest furs are said to be

those of the Transbaikal variety, the pelts of which are said to be “splendid,

soft and silky, of a brilliant dark black brownish hue, and the underfur dark bluish

gray with a brownish tint, the throat patch much reduced and commonly not

visible” (Ognev). Largest in size are the Kamchatka race and the sables which

inhabit the forest zone adjoining the open tundra. The pelt of the forest

sable is less valuable than that of the mountain sable; it is coarser and the

underfur is more yellowish in color.

        A detailed description of the characteristics of the sable has recently been

given by I. Kozhantchikov. Its main habitat is the Siberian taiga (coniferous

forest zone) but its western limit is somewhat beyond the Ural Mountains, along

the Pechora and Kama rivers, between latitudes 60° and 65° N. The southern limit

of the species extends from the Altai Mountains eastward along the southern

forested slopes of the border mountains between Siberia and Mongolia as far as

southern Manchuria. The sable is also found in Kamchatka, on the island of Sak–

halin, and on Hakkaido Island.

        The numerical distribution of the sable varies in the mountain regions, and

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in the area between the Altai Mountains and Lake Baikal three different dis–

tribution zones may be distinguished, in general, the sable is relatively rare

or at least of spotty occurrence at altitudes of from 400 to 600 or 800 meters,

where the European pine ( Pinus silvestris ), the common aspen ( Populus tremula ),

and the larch ( Larix sibirica ) are characteristic trees and where the growing

season is about 5-1/2 to 6 months. In contrast, it is numerous in altitudes

of from 700 or 800 meters to 1,400 or 1,500 meters where spring starts in May

or June, and where the snow cover in winter has a thickness of 1-1/2 meters;

it is absent here only in the deciduous forests or in treeless areas. Charac–

teristic trees here are the stone pine ( Pinus cembra ), the fir ( Abies sibirica ),

and two members of the birch family, Betula pubescens and humilis . At still

higher altitudes, between 1,300 or 1,400 meters and 1,600 or 1,700 meters, where

stone pine and Siberian fir constitute the northernmost trees next to the

mountain tundra zone, the sable occurs in only a few specimens. Spring here

starts at the end of June. It may be said in general that the sable is most

numerous in dense forests of stone pine and Siberian fir. It is thus truly a

taiga animal. However, in all areas it is far less numerous than in former

times.

        The sable is not entirely carnivorous and its food varies according to the

seasons. In the fall, bilberries, lingonberries , and the seeds of the stone

pine are said to furnish the bulk of its diet, although small rodents and oc–

casionally birds may also be taken. At that time, its favorite haunts are the

pine forests where bilberries are especially abundant. Early in December, when

the ground is covered with snow, it invades the fir forests and occasionally

visits the deciduous forests where it feeds on sorb apples and hunts various

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birds which are more numerous than elsewhere. At this season, however, half

of its food consists of mammals, foremost among them the pika ( Ochotona ).

From the beginning of March, it feeds primarily on mammals, including the

squirrel, and in the spring also on birds’ eggs. The impression is gained from

reports of hunters and trappers that the sable is far less arboreal in habits

than the marten.

        As to the time of mating and the gestation period, sable and marten are

alike. The litter consists of 3 to 5 young which are usually born in May.

        The sable has long played an important part in Siberia’s fur industry,

especially in the areas east of the Lena River where up to a few decades ago

sables were still relatively numerous and constituted the main source of income

of both natives and new settlers. Sables are caught either in traps or by means

of snares and nets, or else hunted with dogs and a gun. At the beginning of

the century the trade in sable furs totaled about 70,000 pelts annually.

       

The Ermine

        Although small, the ermine ( Mustela erminea ) is valued for its winter pelt

which is pure white except for its black-tipped tail, changing to brown only in

the spring. However, the change in color depends on the climate. For instance,

in southern Europe, south of the Alps, and in countries with a maritime climate,

such as Ireland or southern England, the ermine does not change to white at all.

In contrast subspecies inhabiting the Fur North are slow to change from white to

brown and will keep their winter pelage the longer the more northerly their

habitat. The under parts of the rump are sometimes tinted a light yellow or a

yellowish green due to secretions from the anal glands.

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        The ermine is very widely distributed, its range in Europe extending from

the Polar Sea to the Mediterranean and in Asia as far as Kamchatka, Japan, and

Tibet. Whether the North American and the Eurasian species constitute two

distinct types or whether all are subspecies of one and the same circumpolar

species has not been decided. The ermine is a very hardy animal and can tolerate

many types of climate, ranging from those of the Temperate Zones to that of the

Arctic. The animal is as common in the birch zone of the Scandinavian highlands,

that is, in the tree zone bordering on the mountain tundra, as in the dense

coniferous forests farther below. Its tracks are also found in the snow fields

above the tree line, as high up as 1,000 meters above the nearest tree. Not only

does it prowl in these barren areas for game, but the female will whelp here,

especially in years when lemmings and voles are abundant. The same applies to

the species that is found in the tundra of the Siberian North.

        The ermine hunts birds and various small mammals, notably small rodents,

easily tracking the latter to their very burrows thanks to its short legs and

its long slender rump which is no wider than its narrow head. It also attacks

larger prey, such as hares and ducks. On one occasion a capercaillie was seen

flying through the air with an ermine fastened around its neck much like a white

boa. The ermine attacks its prey in the neck or at the base of the skull and when

its victim is a small rodent, its grip is so strong that the eyes are squeezed out.

This form of attack is characteristic also of other members of the marten family,

such as the marten and glutton, while members of the dog tribe (wolf, fox) attack

their victims in the throat, provided their prey is not too small.

        Recent experiments have shown that the ermine, like the marten and the sable,

has two rutting seasons, one in summer and one in winter. In the case of the

010      |      Vol_III-0229                                                                                                                  
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ermine, however, the winter or early spring rut seems the more important of the

two. If summer mating (June/July) has taken place, gestation is practically at

a standstill for the next six or seven months and proceeds more rapidly only

during the two months preceding the birth of the litter, that is, subsequent to

the period of the late winter rut. In case of winter-mating (usually March),

the female whelps about two months later. The size of the litter depends on the

availability of food. Usually there are from k 5 to 7 young, but in years when

small rodents are abundant, the litter may be larger. On rare occasions, there

have been up to 13 young, and up to 16 embryos have been found inside females.

        Other varieties of the weasel family include the least weasel or mouse

weasel ( Mustela nivalis ) which inhabits Europe and western Siberia and has a

range here similar to that of the ermine. The variety is probably similar to

the typical Mustela rixosa whose main range is farther to the eastward. Because

of its small size, it has little commercial value.

       

The Glutton or Wolverine

        The wolverine ( Gulo gulo ), although not a tundra inhabitant exclusively,

is a more strictly northern species than any of the other mentioned fur bearers.

In northern Scandinavia, it inhabits the treeless highland tundra, the birch zone,

and the coniferous forests closest to the tree limit and visits the forests

farther south only in winter and during its various marauding expeditions. Its

range, in general, is limited to the cold temperate zone. In Siberia, too, it

is more frequently found in the mountain tundra than in the forest zones. Its

range here extends from the Arctic southward to the Altai Mountains and in–

cludes the tundra proper, where, according to Middendorff, it habitually robs

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fox traps. The North American wolverine is distributed in similar manner. The

latter is sometimes considered a separate species, but might better be called a

subspecies of the Old World variety ( G. gulo luscus ).

        The glutton is the largest of the marten-type animals. The thick, long–

haired pelt of the adult is a deep black-brown while that of the young is charac–

terized by hands of light brown running along each side of the rump. During

the summer it feeds mainly on small rodents, sometimes adding berries to its diet,

although to a far lesser extent than the marten and sable. In winter, when the

pursuit of rodents is rendered difficult by the snow, it goes prowling for larger

prey and becomes a danger to reindeer calves in particular, and, in the mountains

of northern Asia, to musk deer. While stalking a reindeer, the glutton usually

waits until its victim starts digging for food in the snow, attacking it in the

neck the very moment its head is bent to the ground. Reindeer calves are pur–

sued through deep snow until they break down, as the glutton is one of the most

persistent of all predators. Part of its kill is often cached for future use.

It may divide a reindeer in two parts and on several occasions has been seen to

make off with the head and antlers, to hide them high up in a tree. Incredibly

powerful for its size, it may drag an entire sheep to a distant hiding place.

        The glutton is equipped with anal glands which secrete a sharp-smelling

fluid and in times of danger serve as an effective means of defense, even against

large-sized attackers such as dogs, wolves, or bears. Eskimos from the [ ?]

Hudson Bay area maintain that, when a wolverine approaches, wolves will abandon

their prey. Instances are known where a wolverine also drove off a bear and, in

one case, two pumas in the Sierra Nevada of California. These stories seem all

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0231                                                                                                                  
Related to the American skunk?

or to the marten family, see below.



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the more credible in view of the fact that the glutton, or wolverine, is re–

lated to the North American skunk which uses its anal glands in similar effec–

tive manner.

        The glutton is an excellent climber of trees and when pursued by dogs often

escapes into a treetop. It is also a good swimmer. Its gait is peculiar in

that the animal never trots but either walks or gallops, a characteristic it

shares with the rest of the marten tribe despite its longer legs. It is capable

of wide leaps and may go bouncing along for days on end. When in a playful

mood it cuts numerous capers or slides down a snow slope on its back, a trick

it may repeat over and over again.

        Despite the arctic or subarctic climate of its habitat, the female [ ?]

whelps as early as March or April, rarely before or after. Even in eastern

Siberia, where spring sets in at a later date, the young are usually born in

April. Their home is sometimes in a mountain cave or the like, but more often

in a lengthy burrow dug into the snow. The litter consists of from 2 to 4 young

which are unusually small and of a light gray or whitish color, very dissimilar

from their parents. However, the smallness of their size does not necessarily

point to a short gestation period (about 2 months) as was formerly assumed.

There seems evidence now that the glutton, like other members of the marten family,

mates in summer as well as in winter and that the period of gravidity may last

from 7 to 10 months. The question whether or not this is due to delayed im–

plantation is still open to debate. That gestation is delayed seems probable

but has not been fully confirmed up to now.

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The Otter

        The otter ( Lutra lutra ), too, is a member of the marten family, although

it belongs to a different subfamily than those mentioned before. As with most

aquatic [ ?] mammals, the fur consists of two layers: a dense inner one of short

wool which does not get wet and an outer coat of stiff glossy guard hairs. The

otter is found in most parts of Europe, likewise in Asia except in certain parts

of the south, and in northwestern Africa. To the northward, its range extends

rarely beyond the tree limit, except along various Siberian rivers where fish

are plentiful and where the otter may settle and breed.

        When swimming, the otter propels itself forward with its tail and to a lesser

extent with its hind legs, while the forelegs contribute little to its foreward

motions, although they are sometimes used for steering purposes or may also

serve as a brake. The base of the tail is generally thicker than that of the

average mammal, very muscular, and flattened, not laterally like that of a fish,

but [ ?] dorso-ventrally. This corresponds to the swimming motions of the animals,

for the tail moves upward and downward and not sideways like a fish. The hind

legs, meanwhile, move in paddle-like fashion, backward and upward, and not

rudder-like, to the right and left, as do those of the seal which are kept

closely together. The ease with which the otter catches even such [ ?] fast and

strong fish as pike and salmon is nevertheless surprising and may largely be due

to the animal’s endurance. A mammal can store far more oxygen in the haemoglobin

of its red corpuscles and in the red myoglobin of its muscles than can the fish

with its relative lesser blood content and its pale flesh — a fact of decisive

importance where endurance is concerned.

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        Besides fish, which constitute its main food, [ ?] the otter also eats frogs,

crabs, and even small rodents and the like.

        The young are usually born in May or June, but there may be litters in

any month and even in the northernmost parts of the otter’s range litters have

occurred in December or January or else fully grown foetuses have been found

inside females.

       

The Wolf

        The original range of the wolf ( Canis lupus ), before it was limited by man,

covered all of Europe including Great Britain, Ireland, and Sicily; all of northern

and central Asia down to southern Arabia; northern India; Afghanistan; the western

Himalayas; northern China, and northern Japan. The distribution area also in–

cluded almost all of North America, from the Arctic down to Texas and Florida.

Its range is therefore circumpolar. The wolf does not occur in Spitsbergen. Be–

cause of variations in coloration, wolves of the various regions are often divided

into subspecies and listed under different names ( lycaon , nubilus , etc.), but the

majority of the races overlap and are too closely related to be considered inde–

pendent species. Possibly an exception is the polar wolf, which is almost circum–

polar in distribution on the barren grounds, and which is represented by a

variety of subspecies from northern Greenland ( Canis lupus eogroenlandicus ), the

arctic islands in Canada ( C. lupus arctos, bernardi , manningi , etc.), and from

the northern part of mainland North America and eastern Siberia ( C. lupus

tundrarum , mackenzii ). Although its skull is said to have some of the characteris–

tics of the common wolf, it is definitely distinguished from the more typical

varieties by its coloration which remains white throughout the seasons, except

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EA-Zoo. Ekman: Eurasian Fur Bearers

for a few markings of mixed gray and black hair. Hybridization forms are not

known.

        The common wolf, too, is a tundra inhabitant. However, it seems comfortable

in all types of climate, and it is equally at home in the barren wastes of the

desert and the steppe. In Great Britain it has long since been exterminated, and

in central Europe it is now found only in the mountain regions of France and in

the highlands of northern Scandinavia. In southern and central Sweden it has

been extinct since the middl e of the nineteenth century. The Swedish variety,

which is the variety referred to below unless otherwise indicated, is confined

now to the northernmost highland areas. It is rare even here and would have dis–

appeared altogether had its stock not been replenished repeatedly by [ ?] arrivals

from the east. For the past hundred years its young here have usually been born

in dens located in the birch zone or in the lower parts of the mountain tundra

zone and relatively seldom in the forest zone. Wolves often dig their own dens,

usually in sandy soil, or else they make use of fox dens which they enlarge.

        The wolf is strictly carnivorous, but its game varies with the seasons. In

summer, its preferred food is small rodents, especially when the latter are

abundant, but its prey also includes hares, reindeer calves, foxes, birds, etc.,

and even large-sized insects. In winter, when small rodents remain hidden under

the snow, its chief game is the reindeer. At this season it usually hunts in

families of from five to seven members, sometimes also in larger groups. The

tactics of the group consists in a furious attack on a poorly watched herd in

order to scatter it or at least to detach some of its members which are then

singled out for further pursuit. At times such an attack results in a full-scale

stampede and it has happened that several hundred reindeer were chased into an

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EA-Zoo. Ekman: Eurasian Fur Bearers

abyss where all of them perished. The wolves, however, rarely follow the

domesticated reindeer far into the forest zone and, when winter comes, remain

in the highlands to hunt the few specimens unintentionally left behind by the

Lapps.

        The wolf usually attacks the reindeer in the throat, or, if its victim at–

tempts to escape, in the hind legs, so as to bring it down. When attacked by a

lone wolf, a male reindeer or elk is sometimes able to defend itself and to ward

off the killer with a few strokes of its powerful forelegs, but when faced by

several wolves both reindeer and elk are usually helpless. Even bears will suc–

cumb when attacked by several wolves. Three cases are known in Sweden where a

bear was killed by packs numbering from 7 to 12 wolves. The North knows no

greater scourge than a prowling group of famished wolves.

        After killing a reindeer, the wolf first eats its tongue which it pulls out

with the larynx. L. Munsterhjelm, in reporting on his hunting expeditions in

northern Finland, tells of a case where 7 wolves killed 11 reindeer; only two

carcasses were partly devoured, but the tongue of each reindeer had been pulled

out and eaten.

       

The Eurasian Red Fox or Forest Fox

        The red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ), much like the wolf, is at home in many climates,

for its range includes North Africa, Mt. Sinai, Palestine, Arabia, and India as

well as the areas of the North as far up as the tree line. It is common in the

Sahara, in the interior of Arabia and other dry areas of southwest Asia, and in

the vast steppes and deserts of Eurasia from southern Russian eastward to China.

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However, it is not commonly found in the tundra, at least not in the altogether

treeless northernmost parts. The few specimens that have been observed, for

instance, on Novaya Zemlya, are considered strays that have traveled up from the

south. The species includes a number of geographic subspecies or races.

        The habits of the common fox are too well known to necessitate a detailed

description. In the following, therefore, only a few of its outstanding

character traits are considered.

        Like most predators, the fox often caches its food in the snow, under moss,

or in the loose soil of a mole hill, etc., and there is sufficient proof to show

that the animal is able to find it again at a later date. As a rule, the spoil

consists of bird’s eggs which are carefully conveyed to a relatively distant

hiding place and retrieved during the following winter. The eggs include those

of capercaillies, ptarmigan, and sea divers. Such habits, although not exclusively

those of the fox, seem to indicate not only a resourceful mind but a highly

developed memory for places.

        Equally interesting are the feeding methods of the female. When bringing

food to the den for her young, she often carries an astonishing amount of small

prey in her mouth and gullet. A female which was shot at the entrance of her

den, was found to be holding 9 bird chicks in her mouth; another one carried 15

voles in her mouth; a third had returned with 3 young hares and 2 rats. On one

occasion, a female was seen to arrange 12 dead rats in a row; she then picked

them up in such manner that only the tails were still [ ?] visible, six of them

showing on either side of her mouth. The following even more astonishing inci–

dent was observed in Norway where a dead female fox was found with a capercaillie

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EA-Zoo. Ekman: Eurasian Fur Bearers

in its mouth; wrapped inside the bird’s folded wings were 11 capercaillie s and

black grouse chicks, together with a vole. Another had arrived at the den with

a piece of meat, a rat, and a frog carefully wrapped in a folded lambskin. A

third carried a large parcel of heather, dwarf birch and reindeer moss, tied to–

gether with the long fine roots of the dwarf birch. When opened, the parcel

was found to contain 26 voles and 2 small birds. The three cases seem to indi–

cate that the fox is able to make use of tools, a faculty usually attributed only

to two other (non-human) mammals, the monkey and the elephant.

       

The Arctic Fox

        The arctic fox ( Alopex lagopus ) is definitely a tundra or mountain tundra

denizen, far more so, at any rate, than any of the [ ?] mammals described above.

In Sweden, where a close study has been made of its habits and range, it is rarely

found below the tree limit, except in winter, when it visits the nearby forests

in search of game; usually it even avoids areas where a few birches may still

be found. It is common in the lower parts of the mountain tundra zone, less

common in the upper parts. In Asia, too, it ranges through the treeless zones.

It is found here as far north as the shores of the Arctic Sea and withstands even

more extreme climatic conditions than those encountered in the Scandinavian

highlands. It is common also on the islands scattered over the northern seas,

such as Bear Island, Jan Mayen, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, etc., where it

is more numerous than other land mammals. Its distribution in general is

circumpolar.

        The arctic fox exists in two varieties: one whose coat turns white in

winter and another which assumes a blue-gray hue, shading faintly into brown.

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During the summer both are blue-gray or brown. The ability of the blue foxes

to retain their blue-gray color in winter is determined by heredity, but is

individual only, and it is possible for the same litter to contain both blue

and white varieties. The “blues” are commercially more valuable than the “whites.

The percentage of the blue foxes differs in the various regions. It is highest

in certain coastal regions, for instance, in Iceland, where more than 50% of

the foxes are blue. In other areas the proportionate number of blue foxes may

be relatively small.

        The arctic fox has two outstanding traits: curiosity and fearlessness. In

areas where it is not generally pursued, it is easy to approach, and an observer

stationed close to a den may see alternately one of the parents or one of the

young peer out of the entrance. The food varies according to regions. In

arctic coastal areas the fox feeds largely on invertebrates that have been

swept ashore, while its diet in inland areas consists mainly of small rodents,

ptarmigan, and the remains of spoil left by other predators. Foxes are usually

more numerous following years when lemmings were abundant, as a rich diet

results in larger litters. Although small, the fox may prove a menace also

to larger animals, especially reindeer calves, as young cows which have

calved for the first time cannot always defend their young. Usually, however,

the fox is satisfied to feed on si x c k or dying calves found by the wayside,

for the mortality among reindeer young is especially great when weather conditions

are unfavorable during the breeding season. Like the red fox, the arctic fox

also takes berries, such as blueberries and dwarf blackberries. Its voice is a

hoarse bark, similar to that of a small dog.

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        The female is said sometimes to whelp in a rocky cavern or under blocks

of stone. Usually, however, it digs a burrow in sandy soil with the assistance

of the male. The burrows have numerous entrances with the excavated soil form–

ing slight elevations, from 10 to 35 meters long, above the gangways of the

inner den. The largest of the burrows are inhabited by at least two families

and may have from 50 to 100 entrances; on one occasion 172 entrances were

counted. The “hills” are usualy visible from quite a distance as the foxes

deposit their dung and the remains of [ ?] spoil on their tops and a lush cover

of grass is promoted by such constant fertilization. Up to about fifty years

ago the highlands of northern Sweden abounded in such dens, of which H. Zetterberg

has furnished a detailed description. However, the species is practically ex–

tinct in Sweden nor due to persistent hunting, and the majority of the “hills”

constitute nothing more than monuments of a vanished animal race. The dens

of the arctic fox that are found in Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya are identical

in type.

       

The Brown Bear

        In Europe and Asia, the original range of the brown bear ( Ursus arctos )

comprised all forested regions from the timber line in the north to the Mediter–

ranean, Lebanon Mountains, Persia, the Himalayas, southwest China, and Hokkaido

Island of northern Japan in the south. Its former occurrence in northwest Africa

is in doubt. Today its western limits are central Italy, the Carpathian Moun–

tains, western Russia, and northern Scandinavia, with a wide gap isolating the

Italian variety from the next eastward tribe in the Balkan mountains. In Norway

bears are found only in five small isolated areas while the main range is in the

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highlands of northern Sweden where they occur in two regions, one located be–

tween latitudes 61°30′ N., and the other between latitudes 64°30′

and 68° N. They are scarce even here, however, and inhabit only the coniferous

forests and birch groves located at higher altitudes. Their range thus extends

to the southern boundary of the mountain tundra zone, rarely beyond, although

they may roam in the mountain tundra to feed on berries. The European bear is

considered an independent species, as is the western Siberian one. A third nor–

thern species inhabits Manchuria, the forests north of the Okhotsk Sea, and

Kamchatka. Members of the last-named race are very tall and are closely re–

lated to the North American grizzly bear. At the time of the Vega expedition

Nordenskiöld observed brown bears on the northern shores of Chukotsk Peninsula.

Most likely, the animals were attracted to the region by the presence here of

the hoary marmot.

        In view of the fact that extensive literature exists regarding the habits

of the bear, only a few of its traits will be dealt with in this article. In

winter, the bear of the Scandinavian highlands remains asleep in its den for

a period of at least six months, the female and her young somewhat longer.

A gravid female usually digs a den for herself and her future young on a sandy

slope or underneath the root of a tree; she may also establish her den in a

rocky cavern, under a fallen tree, or in a fir thicket. As a rule, the dens

are in the forest zone, but cases are known where the bear, this genuine forest

animal, has also hibernated in the mountain tundra zone. In northern Sweden,

a large cave on a mountain top, 650 meters above the tree line, once served

as a hibernation place to five or more bears at a time. A hunter who had killed

42 bears, secured 30 of them in this very cave or “bear hotel,”

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        Opinions as to the mating habits of the bear have undergone certain re–

visions in recent years. It was known for a long time that the young, usually

two or three, are born in the den around the New Year or in January and that

the cubs are very small at birth. On the basis of information furnished by

hunters, it was assumed that mating took place in the late summer. However,

according to observations made in animal parks or in the open, it is now certain

that the sexes mate in May or June, which would mean that in the northern region,

at least, fertilization takes place less than a month after the bears have left

their dens. The period of gravidity is about 7-1/2 months which seems unusually

long in view of the small size of the new-born cubs. Gestation may therefore

be delayed as is the case with the marten.

       

The Arctic Hare

        Although not a purely arctic and subarctic animal, the arctic hare ( Lepus

timidus ) confines its range to the frigid and cold temperate zones. It is

absent therefore in C c entral Europe but it inhabits the Pyrenees, the Alps, and

the Carpathian Mountains, Scotland and Ireland, the Scandinavian Peninsula,

and all of northern Asia as far east as the Bering Sea and northern Japan. The

northern Siberian race tschuktorum is closely related to the Alaskan subspecies

othus and may even be identical with it. The entire North American species

Lepus arcticus is so closely related to the Eurasian Lepus timidus that the

question may be raised whether or not both are geographic subspecies of a single

circumpolar variety. Hares do not occur on Spitsbergen and Iceland. In Eurasia

as well as in North America the species advances beyond and above the timber

line (that is, its range includes both tundra and mountain tundra zones) and

023      |      Vol_III-0243                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Ekman: Eurasian Fur Bearers

it is widely distributed even in the coldest parts of the Arctic. A seasonal

change of pelage occurs due to molting, that is, the animals lose their brown

summer coat and take on a white one in the fall. The change depends on the

climate, [ ?] however. Arctic specimens transplanted to a warmer climate, assume

the coloration of their new environment.

        Apart from its meat, the arctic hare is valued for its fur, although it

is too thin to stand hard wear. Before World War I, two to three million white

pelts were taken annually in Siberia, but the number has doubtless fallen off

since then.

       

The Squirrel

        The squirrel ( Sciurus vulgaris ) inhabits all of Europe and northern Asia,

its range northward extending as far as the northern boundary of the coniferous

forests and northeastward as far as longitude 180° E. (Bering Sea). About

twenty different races have been distinguished, among them 16 in Russia and

Siberia. The summer pelt of the northern Eurasian varieties is usually either

reddish-brown or else darker with nearly black tail and ear tufts. The markings

are individual, however, and not racial. Both types may occur in the same litter

and hybrids are common. In central Siberia, the darker-hued type is said to

occur primarily in forests where the Pinus cembra (stone pine) is the characteris–

tic tree; the ligh t er-hued variety is more common in forests of Pinus silvestris

(Scotch pine). In winter the reddish-brown coloration is replaced by a gray one

while the under parts of the body remain white throughout the year. The purer

the gray of the pelt, the higher is its commercial value. The finest are those

of the northern Russian and Siberian variety which are a dark even gray with black

024      |      Vol_III-0244                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Ekman: Eurasian Fur Bearers

tails and ear tufts. The light-gray squirrel does not turn a darker gray in

winter and the tail and the turfs remain brown in the fall as these parts of

the body are not affected by the molt.

        The bulk of the squirrel’s diet consists of the seeds of conifers. Pine

or fir cones are picked clear of their seeds in the following manner: The squirrel

holds the cone in its forepaws with its top turned down and then tears off the

scales until only the stem and uppermost scales are left. It is particularly

fond of the fat seeds of the stone pine, but in the spring feeds also on the

buds of trees. The ground underneath fir trees is often covered with sprouts

gnawed off by squirrels. On one instance a squirrel was observed to drop 6 to

13 sprouts to the ground per minute.

        Squirrels, too, have a habit of caching their food. When offered a nut or

an almond in a park, the squirrel does not eat it on the spot but as a rule

carried it off to buy it in a small hole which is then covered with a little

moss or soil. Mushrooms or an apple (of which it eats only the seeds) are some–

times fastened inside the crotch of a tree.

        As its favorite abode is in trees, its nest, too, is built in tree tops,

preferably in those of fir trees. Nests are fashioned of twigs, mosses, lichens,

the fiber of bark, etc., and are usually built on two parallel branches close to

the main trunk. In the northern regions, the gestation period averages 4 to 5

weeks. The litter consists of from 2 to 3 young which are born between March

and May. As a rule there is only one litter a year, at least in the more northerly

areas.

        Squirrels have been hunted since time immemorial and they are still being

025      |      Vol_III-0245                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Ekman: Eurasian Fur Bearers

eagerly pursued in many parts, especially in northern Russia and Siberia. At

the beginning of the century the annual trade in squirrel pelts amounted to

roughly 13 million pelts.

       

The Beaver

        Beaver ( Castor fiber ) pelts were much in demand in former centuries, like–

wise the secretions of the beaver’s anal glands, the so-called castoreum, which

served as a remedy against various diseases. The demand became so great that

the species was trapped or hunted to extinction within most parts of its original

range. Its range in Europe today (roughly around [ ?] 1930) includes the Rhone

d D elta in southern France, possibly as far north as Avignon; the valley of the

German river Elbe together with that of its tributaries between Wittenberg

and Magdeburg: southern Norway where the European variety is still well repre–

sented; and the vast swamp areas of western Russia and eastern Poland, along the

tributa i ries of the Pripet (a confluent of the Dnieper) and the Niemen. In

Siberia, where the beaver was common once as far east as the Lena b B asin its range

is now said to be limited to the eastern slopes of the northern Ural Mountains

and the Mongolian part of the Altai Mountains. In Sweden, it was exterminated

during the nineteenth century, while the Norwegian beaver has been restocked since

1922 and is on the increase. In the highlands of northern Sweden beavers were

occasionally found as high up as the birch zone, above the coniferous forest

zone. Extermination of the species has doubtless been facilitated by the ease

with which its houses and damen dams and other signs of its activities are spotted.

        Today its trade value is negligible. Its one-time importance in international

trade can be judged by the fact that in the sixteenth century thousands of beaver

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pelts were annually shipped from Stockholm and that the pelts were divided

into as many as seven categories according to quality.

       

Other Eurasian Fur Bearers

        Among the northern Eurasian fur bearers three additional species deserve

consideration here: the so-called Burunduk , i.e., the Asiatic chipmunk; the

hoary marmot; and the Eurasian flying squirrel.

        The Asiatic Chipmunk ( Eutamias asiaticus ) is from 15 to 16 cm. long; the

tail has a length of about 10 cm. The pelage is marked by five horizontal stripes.

The species occurs in northeastern Russia and throughout Siberia as far as the

northern boundary of Kamchatka. The furs rank as export goods despite the small

size of the pelts.

        The Hoary Marmot ( Marmota caligata ) reaches a total length of 50 cm. or

more. There are several races which are found in northwestern North America

and in northeastern Asia. In northeastern Siberia its range extends to the

shores of the Arctic Sea.

        The Eurasian Flying Squirrel ( Pteromys volans , syn. Sciuropterus russicus )

is much smaller than the common squirrel but its pelt is very beautiful, a soft

light gray in winter and tinted a yellow-brown in summer. Its range extends from

the forests of northern Finland to the northern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

        Other rodents of the Eurasian North, although not part of the category far

bearers, include the Asiatic pika ( Ochotona hyperborea ) which inhabits the high

mountains of northeastern Asia, Kamchatka, and the Chukotsk Peninsula, and some

twenty varieties of lemmings and voles of which at least half are tundra inhabitants

or include the tundra zone in their range.

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        Mention must also be made of two other species of mammals which, like the

reindeer, are tundra inhabitants although their range is limited to definite

localities. They are the musk deer ( Moschus moschiferus ) which follows the

mountain ranges almost to the shores of the Arctic Sea, and the mountain sheep

( Ovis nivicola borealis Ovis nivicola borealis ) which persists as a relict species in the Verkhoyansk

Mountains east of the Lena River and to the northwestward in the Byranga Range

of Taimyr Peninsula north of 72° N.

        Also to be included among the northern Eurasian animals are the reindeer

and the polar bear which, however, are dealt with elsewhere in the Encyclopedia

Arctica .

       

Sven Ekman

Wolf

001      |      Vol_III-0248                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(A.W.F. Banfield)

WOLF

        Throughout vast arctic regions of Asia and America the wolf ( Canis lupus )

dominates the natural scheme. It holds the apical position in the pyramid of

numbers and natural food chains. Vegetation is transformed, through such

intermediary stages as mice, ground squirrels, hares, and caribou, into wolves.

        Considering its wide range, the wolf must be recognized as an efficient

and successful organism. In the Northern Hemisphere it is circumpolar in

distribution. It extends south in the Old World to central Europe and southern

Asia, and in North America it extends south to central Mexico.

        The wolf is a member of the family of carnivores Canidae (dogs). The

species forms a compact group of closely related geographical races across

— the its entire range but there is intergradations along the margins of the various

races. There is a close resemblance between the wolves of Alaska and those of

eastern Siberia, suggesting the close relationship of these races and the

probable exchange of individuals.

        Goldman (11) recognized 23 subspecies of wolves in North America. Of

these, eleven are recognized from the territory covered by this Encyclopedia.

These subspecies and their ranges are outlined below: G. N. F. B. Could you supply us with scimitar list for Old [Nored?] species?

1. Canis lupus tundrarum - northern Alaska and Yukon.
   
   
2. Canis lupus pambasileus - southern Alaska and Yukon.
   
   


002      |      Vol_III-0249                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf


3. Canis lupus mackenzii - northern Mackenzie District, Northwest Territories.
   
   
4. — Canis lupus occidentalis Canis lupus occidentalis - southern Mackenzie district, Northwest
   
   Territories.
   
   
5. Canis lupus hudsonicus - Keewatin District, Northwest Territories.
   
   
6. Canis lupus lycaon - southern Hudson Bay and James Bay areas.
   
   
7. Canis lupus labradorius - Ungava Peninsula.
   
   
8. Canis lupus manningi - Baffin Island.
   
   
9. Canis lupus bernardi - Banks and Victoria Islands.
   
   
10. Canis lupus arctos - High-Arctic Islands.
    
    
11. Canis lupus orion - Greenland.
    
    

        The larger subspecies are those occurring in Alaska, Yukon, and the Mackenzie

District. Those inhabiting the Canadian Arctic Islands are smaller in size. Two

of the largest wolves taken by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service,

reported by Young (11), were: one at the Savage River drainage, Alaska, January 23,

1934, weighed 157 pounds, and one taken near the Seventymile River, Alaska, on

July 12, 1939, weighed 175 pounds. Radforth reported a male killed on Shultz

Lake, Northwest Territories, on January 4, 1912, which measured 67.7 inches in

length and weighed 101 pounds. Another specimen reported by Young, taken at

Mount Hayes, Alaska, on October 21, 1939, weighed 155 pounds and measured 69

inches in length and 38 inches at the shoulder. A group of wolves from Greenland

averaged about 42 inches in length and weighed 45 to 63 pounds. Males are

generally larger than females.

        Color among wolves is of little scientific importance for racial descriptions.

Wolves show great individual variation, and may be any color from pure white to

jet black. They vary through every gradation of cream, gray, and rufous to

dusky and black; gray is the most common color. In the arctic regions white

003      |      Vol_III-0250                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf

wolves are more common. The annual molt is variable in duration but occurs

during the summer months.

        The dental formula is: incisors (3-3)/(3-3), canines (1-1)/(1-1), premolars (4-4)/(4-4), molars molars (2-2)/(3-3) = 42. The —

carnassials teeth, used for tearing meat, are well developed. The wolf bolts

its food rather than chews it.

        The wolf is of rangy appearance, with short stout , long legs. The paws are —

large compared to those of a dog of equal proportions. Wolves run with a bound–

ing gait that often appears clumsy; but they have been observed to run with a

speed of 28 miles per hour for a distance of 200 yards. On a long run of a

mile or two, the speed is reduced to about 22 to 24 miles per hour. The wolf

seldom relies on speed alon g e to capture its prey, placing more reliance on —

surprise or, if necessary, endurance. The endurance of the wolf is legendary.

MacFarlane (4) records a wolf which escaped with a steel trap at Ile a à la —

Crosses , Saskatchewan. It was killed at Green Lake a month later (approximately

100 miles south) with the trap and toggle attached to the hind leg.

        The normal home range of a wolf covers a large territory. During hunting

forays, they usually travel along well-marked game trails or geographical paths

such as river bottoms or shore lines. Wolves have been known to use regular

circuits of over 100 miles, the circuits being usually an irregular circle.

During the winter months wolves may travel even greater distances, following

migrating herds of caribou.

        Wolves are good swimmers and do not shun taking to the water when their

path lies across it. During the evening of August 3, 1948, the author watched

a large black wolf following a well-worn caribou trail on the shores of Lake

Clinton-Colden, Mackenzie District. When it reached the western shore s of

Caribou Narrows, it entered the water without hesitation and swam rapidly

004      |      Vol_III-0251                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf

across the narrows, a distance of one-third of a mile.

        The wolf can emit a variety of sounds which convey a wide range of ex–

pression. Some are quite doglike such as the whines heard about the den, the

quick bark on being disturbed or surprised, or the yelps of the chase. How–

ever, the wolf cry most often heard — a long, deep guttural, quavering howl —

is the wolf’s singular expression of his kind.

        Wolves do not breed until they are two or three years old. Murie (6)

mentions a captive Alaskan bitch which came into heat during her second year.

The period lasted two weeks and she mated during the second week. She whelped

on May 15 after a gestation period of 60 to 63 days. A male wolf, kept captive

for two years at Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan, during 1945 and 1946,

failed to mate with a female dog during its first two years of life.

        The whelps are generally born during May or June in the Arctic. The litter

may include up to fourteen in number; five to seven seems to be the average

litter. In the Arctic, where the white color phase predominates, the young

at birth are dull slate in color. They are born blind but their eyes are open

after approximately one week. They nurse for six to eight weeks. By September

they are learning to hunt for themselves and are about half grown.

        The dens are usually situated in the center of the home territory. From

the den the runways or circuits radiate. The den sites are usually chosen in

dry sandy soil, on a promontory, to give a good view and to be near permanent

water. North of the tree line, the sand eskers are favorite localities for

— dens. The den s may be dug by the wolves themselves, but more likely they are

usurped and enlarged fox dens, beaver lodges, or natural crevasses in rockslides.

— The y re are generally several dens nearby to which the whelps may be moved as the

season progresses. If the den is a remodeled fox den, there will probably be

005      |      Vol_III-0252                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf

several entrances which the growing whelps can use. The burrows may be up to

thirty feet in length and lead to a chamber in which the young are born. This

chamber is usually only two to five feet below the surface. A nearby knoll is

used as a lookout from which the wolf can keep a careful watch over the sur–

rounding country. There will also be depressions about the den month, used

as beds by the adults.

        The dens are usually occupied in April or May when the ground is still

snow-covered. The same dens are generally used in successive years. The wolves

in attendance are not only the mated pair but usually a small group which lives

in harmony. These wolves are believed to be related, possibly the parents and

the previous year’s litter l . All the members of the group assist in bringing

food for the bitch and whelps. The dens are abandoned in September or October

when the young wolves are being taught to hunt.

        It is a common though disputed belief that wolves gather in packs for AU: Ok? Ok FB

hunting purposes, especially in winter. These are thought to be temporary

aggregations of families. The size of the pack would be limited by the law

— of d o i minishing returns.

        In summer wolves appear to be evenly spread over the arctic plains. Some

believe that pack territories are occupied. Clarke (2), from personal observa–

tions and interviews with northern residents, estimated a population of about

six wolves per hundred square miles. Considering the 600,000 square miles of

caribou range in the northern Canadian mainland, this gave an estimated

population of 36,000 wolves.

        The population of wolves, like that of many other animals, fluctuates.

During the past two decades (1930-49), there has been a high wolf population

throughout northern North America. Periods of wolf scarcity have been noted

006      |      Vol_III-0253                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf

also. In his investigation of Mount McKinley National Park, Murie (6) stated

that, according to information gathered, wolves were fairly abundant in 1880

and probably from 1900 to 1908. The population then declined and wolves were

generally scarce from 1916 to 1925. Since 1927 they have been on the increase

in the area.

        The wolf has no predators except man. The grizzly bear ( Ursus sp.) and

wolverine ( Gulo luscus ) are its most important competitors. Predation cannot

be counted as a factor controlling the wolf population in arctic areas. It is

generally believed that disease exercises an important role in controlling the

number of wolves. Buffalo Jones believed firmly that the numbers of wolves are

kept in check by disease. MacFarlane (4) given March 1868, as the date of a

great epidemic among wolves which greatly reduced their numbers. Plummer (8)

recently reported the identification of rabies in a wolf specimen from Baker

Lake, Keewatin District. Other rabies identification has been made from

— specimen t s from Old Crow, Yukon Territory. Cowan (3) has reported the occurrence

of sarcoptic mange in Rocky Mountain wolves. These diseases may exert a powerful

influence on the numbers of wolves and foxes in the Arctic. [A recent view is Ok FB?

— that of trichinosis may account both for some direct fatalities and for deaths

resulting from starvation brought on by inefficiency in hunting due to illness

from this infection.]

        The caribou is to the arctic wolf what the buffalo was to the plains wolf.

During the summer months, when the wolf families are tied to the den locality

by the whelps, caribou do not regularly form the major part of their food, for

during this period the caribou herds migrate out of the territory of numerous

wolves. Observations made at a den in southern Keewatin District indicated

that small game was utilized under these conditions. Wolves were observed to

007      |      Vol_III-0254                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf

be capturing fish, voles, lemmings, ptarmigan, nesting waterfowl, and other

birds.

        During winter months wolves follow the migratory caribou herds. Clark e (2) —

has estimated, based on observations in the Thelon Game Sanctuary, that a wolf

kills an average of twelve caribou per year. Wolves often follow trappers

and rob trap lines. They may catch some arctic foxes under natural conditions.

Beavers are favorite food item where available.

        — Murie (6) examined 1,174 f a eces from the Mount McKinley area of Alaska and

found that the remains consisted of 43% caribou ( Rangifer arcticus ), 25% Dall

sheep ( Ovis dalli ), and 32% small game.

        When trailing wolves, one frequently discovers that they are carrying

meat or bones in their mouths. Young (11) reports that during late winter,

excessive numbers of caribou and sheep are often killed in Alaska and the car–

cases cached in the snow for food supply during the denning season. A den

visited in May, when the snow was four feet deep, was surrounded by the remains

of about four Dall sheep which were cached in the snow.

        If food is plentiful, usually no special effort is made to cache the kill.

On August 20, 1948, a wolf was seen to kill two calf caribou at Lake Clinton–

Colden. One carcass was [ ?] almost completely eaten, the other had only

the tongue removed before the wolf departed. The following day the wolf returned

to the carcass but departed when it sensed the presence of human beings. Although

wolves usually make their own kills, they sometimes eat carrion.

        There has been considerable controversy concerning the physical condition

of the mountain sheep and caribou killed by wolves. Murie (6) examined the

skulls of 221 Dall sheep which had perished during the previous two years from

wolf predation and other lethal factors. He found that: 69% were in the

008      |      Vol_III-0255                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf These are the figures given by Murie on pg 112. I suppose he left out decimals which would have raised to 100%

old-age class, 9% of prime age but diseased (actinomycosis), 4% prime, 3% Au: should these add up to 100%?

diseased yearlings, 10% healthy yearlings, and 3% lambs. A further examination

of 608 older skulls produced a similar grouping. From these observations it is

indicated that despite the occasional observation of healthy animals succumbing,

generally the older, weaker, and diseased stock are taken by wolf predation,

these being the most easily captured.

        Observations of hunting wolves by Murie and others have confirmed this fact.

The wolves pursue caribou bands and finally concentrate s on the animal which drops behind, usually Ok FB.

for one of two reasons: clumsiness due to age, or (in the case of bulls in

season) because of the weight of the antlers.

        Wildlife scientists commonly hold the opinion that a certain amount of predation

is beneficial to a game species. The predators help to maintain a healthy

stock by removing the aged, sick, and less wary individuals of the population.

So Cowan (3) compared populations of elk ( Cervus canadensis ), moose ( Alces

americana ), mountain sheep ( Ovis canadensis ), and mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus )

in two areas of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. One area had a wolf population;

no wolves were present in the second area. He found that there was no significant

difference in the proportion of young animals in the populations of big game

in the two areas. He concluded that factors such as available food, weather,

and competition other than predation were critical in determining the annual

increment.

        Wolves have an insatiable curiosity and often trail hunters and trappers at

a discreet distance to rob their traps, or pick up camp scraps. From many

historical reports it seems the Old World wolves are more prone to attack humans

than those of North America. However, occasionally, on the North American con–

tinent, wolves have made unprovoked attacks upon man; such an attack was recently

009      |      Vol_III-0256                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: [ ?] Wolf

reported by Peterson (7). The possibility of the wolf being rapid should

always be considered in these cases. A recent attack upon a game warden and his

dog team in the Mackenzie Delta during early 1948 was by a wolf presumably rapid,

since the bitten dog died from a light would about two weeks later. Dogs

belonging to Eskimos are frequently attacked and infected by rabies in the

Canadian Arctic.

        Since time immemorial the hand of man has been against the wolf. Some of

the methods used to kill wolves by the Eskimos are very interesting. Richardson (9)

reported the Eskimo use of an ice box trap, constructed of ice blocks with a heavy

portcullis of ice which fell when the trigger, which was a peg baited with meat,

was pulled out of position. One of the most unique devices is described by

Mason (5) as a “piercer.” A small piece of whalebone is bent double to the

appropriate size for wolves to swallow; the tension is held by a sinew; and the

piece is wrapped with fat and blubber. After freezing the sinew may be cut,

though this is not necessary. The baits are spread over the ground and, when

swallowed, the fat and sinew are digested and the whalebone springs open and

pierces the digestive tract. Another method is to encase a sharpened knife blade

in frozen fat and stick the handle in a block of ice. The wolf, licking the blade,

cuts its tongue; tasting blood, it becomes frenzied and inflicts greater injury.

[Some authors consider this last to be folklore.]

        Over large areas of the wolf’s former range, the increasing demands of

civilization have necessitated the extermination of this predator because of its

destruction to domestic stock. In the sparsely inhabited arctic regions, there

are few areas where the investment in domestic stock is large enough to warrant

the expenditure necessary to reduce materially the wolf population. In these

arctic regions the wolf will probably remain a spectacular member of the native

fauna for many years to come.

010      |      Vol_III-0257                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolf

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anderson, R.M. “Report on the natural history collections of the expedition,”

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. My Life with the Eskimo . N.Y. Macmillan,

1913, pp. 516-17.

2. Clarke, C.H.D. A Biological Investigation of the Thelon Game Sanctuary .

Ottawa, Patenaude, 1940. Nat.Mus.Can. Bull . no.96.

3. Cowan, I.McT. “The timber wolf in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of

Canada,” Canad.J.Res ., Sect.D, vol.25, no.5, pp.139-74, 1947.

4. MacFarlane, R.R. “Notes on mammals collected and observed in the northern

Mackenzie River district, Northwest Territories of Canada,”

U.S. Nat.Mus. Proc . vol.28, pp.673-764, 1905. (No.1405)

5. Mason, O.T. “Traps of the American Indians — a study in psychology and

invention,” Smithsonian Inst. Annual Report for the Year

Ending June 30, 1901 . Wash., G.P.O., 1902, pp.461-73.

6. Murie, Adolph. The Wolves of Mount McKinley . Wash., G.P.O., 1944.

U.S. National Park Service. Fauna of the National Parks of

the United States. Fauna series no.5.

7. Peterson, R.L. “A record of a timber wolf attacking a man,” J.Manual .

vol.28, no.3, pp.294-95, 1947.

8. Plummer, P.J.G. “Further note on arctic dog disease and its relation

to rabies,” Canad.J.Comp.Med . vol.11, pp.330-34, 1947.

9. Richardson, John. Fauna Boreali-Americana. Part 1. The Quadrupeds .

London, Murray, 1829.

10. Seton, E.T. Lives of Game Animals . N.Y., Doubleday, 1925, Vol.1, pp.251-352.

11. Young, S.P., and Goldman, E.A. The Wolves of North America . Wash.,

American Wildlife Inst., 1944.

       

A. W. F. Banfield

Wolverine

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0258                                                                                                                  
(EA-Zoo. A. W. F. Banfield)

WOLVERINE

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Physical Characteristics	1
Habitat	2
Economic Value	3
Habits	3
Bibliography	8

001      |      Vol_III-0259                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(A. W. F. Banfield)

       

WOLVERINE

        Probably no other northern mammal plays such an important role in camp–

fire tales and folklore as does the wolverine ( Gulo luscus ). With few other

mammals is there such a paucity of factual information of life history and

eco [ ?] logy.

        Physical Characteristics . The wolverine or carcajou, as it is known to

French Canadians, is the largest member of the weasel family (Mustelidae)

of carnivorous mammals. It is a medium-sized mammal with a s t out badger-like

body, a short, bushy tail, and large bearlike paws, each with five toes. The

claws are partly retractile and are suitable for climbing; the soles of the

feet are hairy. The ears are short and rounded. The dental formula (I = in–

cisors, C = canine, P = premolar, M = molar) is:

I (3-3)/(3-3), C (1-1)/(1-1), P (4-4)/(4-4), M (1-1)/(2-2) = 38

        The following average measurements were reported by Seton (7): average

of four mature males, length 41 5/8 inches, tail 8 1/2 inches, hind feet 7 7/8

inches. The females average smaller in size: average length 37 inches, tail

7 1/8 inches, hind feet 7 inches.

        The weights of three adult males, as reported to Seton by Dr. R. M. Ander–

son, were 35, 33, and 30 pounds; two females weighed 22 and 23 pounds each.

002      |      Vol_III-0260                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolverine

        Wolverines do not show great variation in color. The general color is a

rich, dark brown, paler on the head and face. A band of light chestnut begins

on each shoulder and passes back along the flanks to meet its fellow on the

rump. On the flanks these bands are pale buff or creamy white. On the

throat are irregular yellow splotches.

        Habitat . Like many other northern animals, the wolverine is circumpolar

in distribution. Its primitive range covered boreal America, Europe , and Asia.

Over much of this vast area it has in recent years been greatly reduced in

numbers in consequence of its value as a fur bearer. In North America it

still occurs in Labrador and the Ungava Peninsula of Quebec and a few in–

dividuals may yet exist in extreme northwestern Ontario and in northern Man–

itoba and Saskatchewan. It is more numerous in the forested parts of the

Northwest Territories, in Yukon Territory, and in central and northern Alaska.

It has been recorded from several of the Canadian Arctic Islands, including Ok FB

Ellesmere, Melville, Baffin, King William, and Victoria Islands. The wolverine

also occurs frequently in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, south to the United

States.

        Two races of wolverine have been described for the area included in this

Encyclopedia, namely, Gulo luscus luscus from the northern Canadian mainland

and Gulo luscus hylaeus from Mount McKinley, Alaska.

        The wolverine formerly inhabited the boreal forests of America . in some numbers. Today ?

a few remain in the forests but a the greater population is found in Canada

between tree line and the Arctic Sea. The animal is nowhere abundant and

although one may be aware of its presence, it is possible to travel for many

years without catching sight of it.

        The wolverine seems to be adaptable in the choice of habitat. It

003      |      Vol_III-0261                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolverine

occurs from the high alpine slopes above tree line of the Rocky Mountains

to the sea coast and from dense coniferous forests and rocky shrub-clad

hillsides to open, rolling arctic grasslands.

        Little is known of the home range of the wolverine, but, judging from

the animal’s habit of trailing trappers over long trap lines, it is probably

a large area. This is in keeping with the wolverine’s carnivorous food

habits. MacFarlane (4) writes of one trailing him for two days when he

was traveling forty miles a day.

        Economic Value . Throughout the arctic and subarctic regions, the fur

of the wolverine is considered valuable. It is cut into strips and used as

trim on hoods, moccasins, and mitts. It is a common belief of whites that

in cold weather the moisture in the breath does not readily freeze on this Au: OK? Ok FB

fur, when used as a trim for hoods; but anthropologists have pointed out

that when whites first came it was chiefly the Eskimo women who used hoods

trimmed with wolverine or wolf, the implication being that these fringes were

used as Europeans use lace, chiefly as ornament. There is no doubt, however,

that hoarfrost clings more readily to many other furs than it does to wolverine.

Hardy (2) investigated this characteristic and compared the fur with that of

coyote and wolf fur. It was found that the guard hairs of wolverine fur are

straight and project an inch or more beyond the underfur, which is thick and

even in length. This combination of factors results in the guard hairs being

much less readily frosted than are other furs under the same conditions.

        Habits . Wolverines are believed to mate during the last part of March.

Hearne (3) writes that they make their dens in caves or clefts in rocks. Mac–

Farlane (4) states that a discarded beaver lodge is sometimes used. Seton (7)

recorded an Indian’s description of two beds, discovered near Lake Athabaska.

004      |      Vol_III-0262                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolverine

They consisted of hollows in the ground under hanging spruce boughs and were

lined with dry grass. The young were said to be born in these beds. The

young are thought to be born in June after a gestation period of approximately

90 days. The litter may consist of two to five young. Two specimens in the

American Museum of Natural History that were taken on May 1, 1901, in Siberia,

were examined by Seton. They were three to four weeks old and were covered

with dense, creamy, woolly fur. The color on the legs, back, and tail was

grayish and the facial mask was brown. The females are brave in the defense

of their young. Seton (7) reports that the Indian who discovered the beds

previously described also stated that in each case the mother, with eyes

blazing and teeth bared, attached the intruder. The young are suckled for

eight or nine weeks. During the summer they remain in the den or bed and

receive food brought by the mother. Late in the summer they follow their

mothers and are taught to hunt. They continue to hunt with the dam all of

their first winter. By the following spring they are full grown, drift, away,

and establish their independence.

        The wolverine is omnivorous. It consumes a wide range of edible roots,

leaves, and berries as well as small game such as lemmings, mice, ground

squirrels, hares, birds’ eggs and fledglings, and fish. In wooded country

it is also known to kill beaver ( Castor canadensis ), which it secures on the

trails between the feeding grounds and their ponds. It also seems to have a

particular liking for porcupines ( Erethizon dorsatum ). However, it does not

seem to have mastered the art of killing porcupines with impunity and is stated

to succumb later, in some cases, from the quills. Other predators, such as

the coyote ( Canis latrans ) and wolf ( Canis lupus ), kill porcupines by flip–

ping them onto their backs and attacking their unprotected underparts.

005      |      Vol_III-0263                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolverine

        Carrion is also important in the diet of wolverines. They follow the

migrating herds of caribou ( Rangifer sp.) in order to clean up the carcasses

of caribou which were killed by wolves.

        There is some evidence that wolverines may at times kill big game. Two

observations that relate to this point are reported by Seton (7). Martin

Hunter of the Hudson’s Bay Company saw a caribou sprint into a lake. When

he observed it closely, he saw a black animal clinging to its neck. The

caribou was pursued in a canoe and the attacking animal dropped off into the

water. When shot, it turned out to be a wolverine. When the caribou was ap–

proached it was found dead, with its jugular vein severed. During the winter

of 1907-1908, J. Keele of the Canadian Geological Survey came upon a wounded

young moose ( Alces americana ) helpless in a snowdrift. When it had been shot,

it was found to have a large hole torn in its back. In the snow were tracks

which indicated a running fight with a wolverine. The wolverine was later

observed in the vicinity.

        Like other members of the weasel family, the wolverine is pugnacious and

strong. These characteristics seem to be developed in proportion to its size.

It is said that a wolverine will defend a carcass against the attacks of wolves

or even a g ir ri zzly bear ( Ursus sp.). it is not known whether these larger

mammals are afraid to the wolverine or are merely treating it with the same

respect they would give to a skunk ( Mephit e i s mephit e i s ), for the wolverine also

possesses well-developed anal scent glands. It is possible that it puts its

“mark” on the carcass, which further discourages intruders. In any event it

is a courageous and resolute fighter and if cornered will fight to the last.

        In movements the wolverine is generally slow and deliberate. If hunting

or changing territory, it will trot tirelessly. It seems to have only mediocre

006      |      Vol_III-0264                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolverine

eyesight and has the peculiar habit of sitting on its haunches and shading

its eyes with one paw. Its senses of hearing and smell are acute and are

used when hunting. The wolverine is generally solitary in nature except

when accompanied by its young.

        The short thick body of the wolverine is very muscular and it has

prodigious strength and endurance. It can move stones that are as heavy as

a man can roll, and can roll logs as heavy as a man can lift. It can swim

and climb with ease.

        An animal of this description would be expected to come into competition

with humans sharing the same country. The wolverine in its tireless search

for food frequently finds and follows a trap line. The traps are discovered,

the trapped animals destroyed, and the traps themselves often hidden in the

snow. The animals become very canny and remove the baits from traps with im–

punity. They become wary of traps, snares, and other devices, and are dif–

ficult to capture. If they follow the trapper persistently, it is sometimes

necessary for him to abandon the trap line temporarily and search for a new

route. On the other hand, some trappers and travelers report no difficulty

in trapping wolverines when they appear on their trap lines or around their

caches. It seems likely that young animals or other s that have had no experi–

ence with humans may be less wary of traps than are experience individuals.

        The wolverine also follows human tracks to get scraps of food which may

be left about a camp site. Caches of furs, food, or camping goods are broken

into when found. The furs are torn to shreds. The food is eaten or cached

away in the snow and even the camping gear is sometimes hidden.

        The writings of northern explorers and travelers contain many stories

of the depredations of wolverines upon their caches and of the sagacity of

007      |      Vol_III-0265                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolverine

these animals. Some writers, such as Richardson (6), state that the animals

defile with glandular secretions what food stores they do not eat. Other

writers, including Stefansson and Anderson (1), have found that their frozen

meat had been gnawed and hidden in the snow, but what remained they found

usable.

        It is difficult to prepare a cache that is “wolverine-proof.” Seton

made successful caches by placing supplies on raised platforms, the support–

ing poles of which were stripped of bark and ringed by cod hooks. Warburton

Pike (5) cached caribou meat by chopping a hole in the ice and freezing it

in a lake. Anderson (1) reported a successful elevated cache with a platform

that overhung the stripped poles by two to three feet, so that the animals

were unable to climb over. Seton (7) writes of the wolverine: “It is not

to be supposed that any part of the procedure of robbing caches is due to

malice. Malice is a human weakness. Animals are not built that way.”

        It is easy to understand how such a colorful animal as the wolverine

has become a part of many of the legends of the North. Some trappers will

repeat the common superstition that after death a trapper returns to earth

as a wolverine to plague his fellow trappers.

008      |      Vol_III-0266                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Banfield: Wolverine

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anderson, R.M. “Mammals,” Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. My Life with the

Eskimo . N.Y., Macmillan, 1913, pp.494-527.

2. Hardy, Thora M.P. “Wolverine fur frosting,” J.Wildlife Mgmt. vol.12,

no.3, pp.331-32, 1948.

3. Hearne, Samuel. A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay,

to the Northern Ocean….in the Years 1769, 1770, 1771 &

1772 . London, Strahan and Cadell, 1795.

4. MacFarlane, R.R. “Notes on mammals collected and observed in the northern

Mackenzie River district, Northwest Territories of Canada,”

U.S. Nat.Mus. Proc . vol.28, pp.673-764, 1905. (No.1405)

5. Pike, Warburton. The Barren-Grounds of Northern Canada . London,

Macmillan, 1892.

6. Richardson, John. Fauna Boreali-Americana. Part 1. Quadrupeds .

London, Murray, 1829.

7. Seton, E.T. Lives of Game Animals . N.Y., Doubleday, 1926. Vol.2,

pp.403-50.

       

A. W. F. Banfield

The Moose

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0267                                                                                                                  
(EA-Zoo. Belmore Browne)

THE MOOSE

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Physical Characteristics	1
Habits	3
Economic Importance	7
Enemies	8
Bibliography	10

001      |      Vol_III-0268                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Belmore Browne)

       

THE MOOSE

        The largest member of the deer family reaches its greatest size in

the American moose, Alces americana , and the Alaskan moose, Alces gigas ,

the latter attaining the more imposing proportions. They are related to

the elk of the northern forests of Europe and Siberia, being differentiated

from their Old World cousin by their larger size both of body and of antlers.

The exact limits of the two North American species, that is to say the ge–

ographical points of contact, have not been determined. Roughly one may say

the American moose is found on the eastern side of the northern Rocky Moun–

tains in the United States and Canada as far north as the arctic slope of

northwestern Canada; the Alaskan moose, as the name indicates, is prin–

cipally found in Alaska. Both occasionally occur beyond the Arctic Circle;

sporadically they have been reported at the Alaska seacoast just southeast

of Point Barrow and at the arctic coast of Canada on Coronation Gulf. The

two are so alike in coloring and habits that they may be treated, in a brief

study, as one.

        Physical Characteristics . In color the moose varies from a mixed gray

to black, the chest, shoulders, flanks and back being of the deepest tones.

The legs are covered with short gray hairs that make them appear almost white.

002      |      Vol_III-0269                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Browne: Moose

Individuals of a uniform mouse-gray color are occasionally seen and a few

albinos have been reported.

        An adult American bull moose will measure a total length of 102 to 108

inches and will stand at the shoulder 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 feet. The moose has a

body short in proportion to its weight and height. It is much heavier

through the shoulders than through the hindquarters. The powerful appear–

ance of the shoulders is further accentuated by a distinct hump. When the

size and importance of this animal is considered, it is surprising how rela–

tively few accurate records of its weight exist. This is probably due to the

fact that moose are usually shot in areas far removed from weighing facile–

ties and the weight of entrails and lost blood has to be approximated.

There is a recent record of 1,364 lb. for a bull shot in Quebec; many of

the Alaskan specimens would weigh considerably more.

        The head is massive. Beneath the lower jaw hangs a pouch or dewlap of

hair-covered skin called by hunters the “bell.” Indeed, in younger bulls,

the pouch is elongated into a slender appendage, suggestive of the clapper

of a bell. As the males grow older this frequently disappears, leaving a

shallower pouch. The bells of the cows usually retain the bell-clapper form.

No definite function can be ascribed to the bell; but, as the moose

habitually plunges its head beneath water to secure bottom grass and fre–

quents marshy tickets where the brush is apt to be wet or snow-covered,

it is possible that it serves the purpose of draining off some of the water

that otherwise would keep the animal’s neck and chest wet.

        The other distinctive features of the moose are the large p la al mated pro–

jecting antlers possessed by both sexes but particularly large in the bull;

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Moose

its proportionally long legs; and the long fleshy muzzle, the hairless

part of which is a small pad the size of a man’s thumbnail.

        The moose is an excellent swimmer. It has been recorded that a bull

moose swam across the entrance of Chugach Bay, Alaska, a distance of twelve

miles. It walks with great rapidity and, when traveling a straight course,

a moose can outdistance a hunter. The legs show a powerful muscular devel–

opment. The cloven and lateral hoofs, called dewclaws, are well adapted to

a marshy habitat. On the downward thrust they spread, contracting when

lifted, thus enabling the animal to move with ease across bogs or marshy

ground where a horse could pass, if at all, only with difficulty. This

arrangement also enables them to move in such a way as to make almost no

sound at all.

        To those unfamiliar with the moose, its appearance is grotesque and lack–

ing in the grace and beauty of the common deer; but in its natural habitat

it presents an inspiring picture.

        Habits . The moose is shy and elusive; but during the rutting season

it becomes bolder, more inquisitive of noises or moving objects, and is, at

times, easily approached by the hunter. If approached too closely, a moose

will fight, but if there is an avenue of escape, it acts quickly and takes

advantage of the available cover with great skill and judgment. The moose

while under observation moves slowly for a time, then flees at top speed

until cover is reached.

        The rutting season begins when the antlers are at their prime, in Setpem–

ber. The calves, usually one but not infrequently twins, are dropped eight

months later.

        Since the habits of all wild animals are influenced primarily by the

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type and location of their food supply, the Canadian moose could be listed

as a lowland animal; for the green soft woods and aquatic plants on which

it feeds are more abundant in the lowlands. But in the high mountains of

northwestern Canada and throughout Alaska, there is sufficient moisture to

sustain a heavy growth of moose provender, with the result that moose spend

much of their time at, or even above, timber line. Even in the wintertime,

moose will leave the snow-buried lowlands to feed on the wind-swept uplands,

although flat valleys, well stocked with willows, spruce, tamarack, birch,

aspen, and alder, are a favorite wintering ground.

        By nature the moose is a solitary animal, but while “yarding” in deep

snow, or in areas where they are very numerous, ten or a dozen may be seen

close together. On the Kenai Peninsula, in Alaska, a hunter reported seeing

nearly a hundred on one mountainside. Such gathering, however, would be

accidental and the group would not remain together long, move compactly, or

act in unison as a herd.

        The seasonal migrations between the mountains and lowlands are caused

by food and climatic conditions and insect pests. An understanding of local

conditions is therefore necessary to the successful hunter. There are records

of men dying of starvation in country where moose are plentiful simply because

they mistook the “sign” — the hunter’s term for animal droppings — in the

lower valleys for indications of an autumn habitat, whereas the moose were

really gathered at timber line but a few miles away. As to moose sign, in

the spring the summer when food is green and tender, it resembles the droppings

of the domestic cow; but in fall and winter, when the food consists largely of

twigs and bark, the sign consists of pellets about the size and shape of a

pecan nut.

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        In flat and forested country, moose frequent lakes and rivers in search

of swamp vegetation and aquatic plants. For purposes of feeding as well as

escaping insect pests, they spend much of their time in the water. When feed–

ing on bottom vegetation in a lake, moose sometimes have not only the head

but the larger part of the body submerged — some say occasionally the entire

body. The sound of water sluicing from their antlers can be heard at a long

distance. At such times the animals can be easily approached. In mountainous

country, mouse feed along the willow-bordered streams and seek the wind-swept

hilltops to escape the flies. Under such conditions they may be seen from

afar and approached without much difficulty by the experienced hunter.

        Moose frequent licks when available. The common belief is that all

animal licks contain salt, but the deposits are often formed of a light clay

and not infrequently salt is absent. Some of the well-known licks in the

northern Rockies contain magnesium but no common salt. Salt, however, has

a strong attraction for most or all the members of the deer family, as well

as for wild sheep and goats. (It is reported by some observers that the

arctic caribou are seldom or never seen putting their lips to sea water when

they come down to the beach, while others claim they seek the beaches to lick

salt.] Licks are easily recognized by the game trails radiating from them

and the heavily tracked condition of the area. Although waiting for moose

at a lick is universally condemned as unsportsmanlike, it would be excusable

to the hunter in a serious emergency.

        When forested country is burned over, a heavy growth of willows and other

bushes spring up. These areas are frequented moose, as the fresh growth,

tender and juicy, is desirable provender. That the burning of a forest

increases the feed for moose is the reason why the forest Indians used to

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Moose

start forest fires deliberately; in some parts they do it still.

        While the eyesight of moose is not particularly keen, their senses of

small and hearing are extraordinarily acute. In an open stalk, the three

prime requisites are the proper use of cover, silence, and a constant study

of wind direction.

        Hunting the moose in winter has certain advantages as well as disadvan–

tages. The snow preserves the tracks of the animal and deadens the footfalls

of the hunter. On the other hand, the slightest crust on the snow will produce

a crunching sound and alert the moose. The snow curst is, however, a dis–

advantage to the moose, as it cuts the legs of the animal, and the labor of

plowing through deep drifts soon exhausts it. A hunter on snowshoes can,

under such conditions, overtake and kill moose with case. This form of hunt–

ing moose or any other animal is universally frowned upon by sportsmen except

in rare cases where the securing of meat is a dire necessity. The forest

Indian and the white trapper pursue this method constantly.

        In any terrain and at any season, hunting the moose requires a high

degree of skill and experience. Particularly is this so when the ground is

covered with snow. The moose, along with other members of the deer family,

would seem to realize that its trail is a source of danger. When preparing to

lie down, the animals will, at times, move in a circle until a point is reached

from which they can watch their back track. The result is that a hunter closely

following the trail will be seen by his prey before he is aware of its presence.

Experienced hunters travel on the downwind side of the trail, keeping a close

watch ahead and locating the trail only at intervals in order to follow in the

right direction.

        In lower Canada “Moose calling” is practiced. A small horn made of birch

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Moose

or similar material is used and the long call of the cow or the grunting

noise of the bull is imitated as conditions dictate. In western Canada

the horn is rarely used and the hunter imitates the moose call through his

cupped hands with equally successful results.

        During the rutting period, or when wounded, a bull moose is dangerous.

Even when apparently dead, a wounded animal should be approached with caution.

A native of Cook Inlet, Alaska, was killed by a cow moose that he had mor–

tally wounded. The cow, as is customary, struck with her front feet. Al–

though the antlers of the male are formidable weapons and many men have been

killed by them, the bull likewise uses his front feet as defensive weapons

while the antlers are absent and during the period of their growth.

        Economic Importance . The flesh of the moose resembles beef in flavor

more than any other wild game of North America, with the exception of the

bison and ovib u o s. Since time immemorial the moose has been the chief winter

food of the forest-dwelling American Indian, and from the advent of the first

white pioneer it has played an important part in the settlement of North

America. Fresh, dried, smoked, or made into pemmican, it has furnished

sustenance to wilderness travelers, from the lone trappers or prospector to

the impressive brigades of the Hudson’s Bay Company. At present its meat is

of vital importance to many individuals and communities through the forested

North. When in prime condition, prior to the rut or mating season, the moose

carries a plentiful supply of fat, the most important food item to those who

live in remote areas. The Canadian voyageurs esteemed above all other parts

of the animal the large gelatinous muzzle, called moufle by them; it is still

considered a delicacy, and is eaten boiled or sometimes roasted.

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Moose

        Moose hide has likewise played an important part in the lives of Indians

and the white pioneers. When tanned, it is soft, pliable, and warm. In the

North it is still used for countless purposes — for coats, leggings, mittens,

moccasins, and sleeping robes. Abraham Lincoln as a boy slept beneath an

elkskin; had he lived farther north, his bedcover would have been moose.

Untanned mooseskin or rawhide has innumerable uses: winter covering for cabin

floors, mattresses for sleeping bunks, and, cut up in strips, for ropes and

string. The hide of the hock, in shape, bears a rough resemblance to the

human foot. When case-skinned, the small end can be sewed with a sinew and

the large end cut of admit the foot, thus forming an excellent emergency

moccasin.

        The long sinews which follow the backbone are composed of countless

threadlike fibers. When the sinew has dried, a thread of any requisite size

can be secured by splitting the end of the sinew with a sharp knife. It is

then immersed in water until soft. An inch or two of the end is kept dry

and hard and is used as a needle in forcing the thread through the holes per–

forated by an awl in the material to be sewn. Clothing sewed with sinew lasts

longer and is stronger than when sewed with cotton thread.

        Enemies . Man, the wolf, and disease constitute the moose’s natural

enemies. The sportsman is interested primarily in securing a fine trophy and

seeks only the bulls carrying the largest antlers, which are, in most instances,

approaching the end of their reporudctive reproductive value. The steady consumption of

moose meat, summer and winter, by Indians, trappers, and frontier communities

is a more serious matter, for the strain on the moose population is heavy and

constant and both sexes are killed indiscriminately. The final result of man’s

presence on the frontier is the growth of ranches and stock ranges. At this

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point the moose becomes a problem. A bull moose can walk through a barbed

wire or rail fence with ease, the horses or cattle passing through the break

may scatter for miles, causing many days or hard riding by the stockmen if not

the actual loss of valuable animals. The advent of the rancher and stockman

presages the end or retreat of the moose unless government sanctuaries be

made for their protection.

        The wolf is the only North American animal that habitually preys on the

moose. The grizzly bear is strong enough to kill a moose and, on rare occa–

sions, does so, but there are few if any records of black bears having killed

moose. There is little doubt, however, that they kill calves when the oppor–

tunity presents itself. The killing of calves by the smaller predatory animals

is only barely possible, as the cow moose is a powerful and dangerous adversary.

The fact that wolves sometimes hunt in families accounts for their ability to

kill so large and formidable an animal as the moose. Most of the wolf killings

occur during the wintertime, when the moose is seriously hampered by deep snow.

At the present time (1950), there has been a considerable increase in the number

of wolves throughout the North and the moose may have suffered seriously because

of it. In spite of local fluctuations, the past ten years have seen a steady

decrease in the moose population of western Canada and Alaska.

        Under normal conditions, the moose is a healthy animal and in large areas,

where they can move at will during their seasonal change of feeding grounds,

cases of disease are apparently rare. On ranges where overcrowding has occurred,

such as the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, cases of diseased moose have been reported.

        Fortunately the moose, if protected, adjusts himself to the presence of

man, and a realistic conservation plan, including strategically placed sanc–

tuaries and well-enforced game laws should secure the future of this noble

animal.

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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Dixon, J.S. Fauna of the National Parks of the United States. Birds

& Mammals of Mount McKinley National Park, Alaska . Wash.,

G.P.O.; 1938. U. S. National Park Service. Fauna series

no.3.

2. Osgood, W.H. A Biological Reconnaissance of the Base of the Alaska

Peninsula . Wash., G.P.O., 1904. U. S. Biological Survey.

North American Fauna no.24.

3. ----. The Game Resources of Alaska . Wash., G.P.O., 1908. U. S. Dept.

of Agriculture. Yearbook 1907, pp.467-82.

4. Sheldon, George. The Wilderness of Denali . N.Y., Soribner, 1930.

       

Belmore Browne

Mountain Sheep of Northern North America

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0278                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Belmore Browne)

MOUNTAIN SHEEP OF NORTHERN NORTH AMERICA

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Habitat	2
Physical Characteristics	2
Habits	4
Natural Enemies	7
Status of Geographical Varieties	8
Stone or Black Sheep	8
Fannin or Saddleback Sheep	9
Dall or White Sheep	9
Kenai Sheep	10
Summary	10
Bibliography	12

001      |      Vol_III-0279                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Belmore Browne)

       

MOUNTAIN SHEEP OF NORTHERN NORTH AMERICA

        Until recent years wild mountain sheep occurred in all the western

mountain regions of North America, from the arctic coast to Mexico. Fossil–

ized remains show that they inhabited the Yukon region in the Pleistocene

period. It is though that mountain sheep entered North America from

Asia by way of the Bering Sea land bridge. In the region between Mexico

and British Columbia and Alberta, ten subspecies are listed, all of which

are loosely referred to as the bighorn. The northern limit of the bighorn’s

range is at some unidentified spot north of the Smoky River area on the

British Columbia-Alberta boundary. North of that, for several hundred

miles, a break occurs where no wild sheep have been reported. From 55° N.,

then, to the Arctic Circle is the mountainous territory over which range

the northern mountain sheep, of which four subspecies have been described.

The northern mountain sheep differ from the bighorn in three important

characteristics: their size is similar; their horns are less massive and

tend to curl farther outward from the head; and they are lighter in color.

        Although sometimes attributed to Alaska, both the Rocky Mountain

sheep, Ovis Canadensis , and the black or Stone sheep, O. dalli stonei , may

be said to have their limits within Canadian territory and to portions

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

of northwestern United States. The distinctive Alaskan sheep is the

Dell’s sheep, O. dalli dalli and O. dalli kenaiensis . There is also the

fannin or saddleback sheep, O. fannini , but the description of it as a

distinct subspecies is now questioned.

        Habitat . All mountain sheep prefer the wild, exposed mountaintops,

but they do not hesitate to descend into timber. Their range is confined

to a narrow altitudinal strip between 2,000 feet above sea level and the

highest grass lien. Other northern animals, such as the caribou, have a

much wider range, including all territory where vegetation is found, from

sea level upward, and sometimes overlapping the habitat of the mountain

sheep.

        Physical Characteristics . The form of the mountain sheep is compact

and powerful yet full of grace. The horns are not shed but continue to

grow throughout the life of the individual, the rings of growth being an

indication of the animal’s age. For this reason, as well as because of

their beauty and comparative rarity, the horns of mountain sheep have always

been highly prized as trophies of the big-game hunter. The horn consists

of a tough outer sheath that surrounds a core of bone which is a part of

the skull. The period of fastest growth is during the summer. During

the winter, little or no horn is added and a crack of depression between

the periods of growth form “year rings” on the surface. The horns of the

ewes are much smaller than those of the rams, averaging only about nine

inches.

        Apparently the main function of sheep ’ s ’ horns is aggressive action

during the mating season, when rams savagely fight each other for possession

of the ewes. Instance of their using the horns as protective weapons

against predatory animals (including man) care rarely reported.

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

        In the extreme northern ranges , sheep rarely live longer than thirteen

years, whereas the more southern species have a greater life span.

        Mountain sheep are among the surest footed and most agile of animals.

The hoof is cloven, each half being capable of freedom of action, a valu–

able asset on rough rocky formations. Each half, moreover, is composed

of a hard toe of horn and a softer center which, wearing away more rapidly

than the shell, preserves a concave form with a sharp cutting edge. To

this is added a soft rounded heel which possesses a suction-like quality,

capable of adhering to smooth surfaces.

        The almost incredible climbing ability of the wild sheep is well known.

Its poise and fearless balance on steep slopes and the abandon with which

it plunges downward on treacherous cliffs are constant sources of amaze–

ment and admiration to mankind. This great agility and lightness of move–

ment is particularly remarkable when one remembers that the rams carry a

burden of curling horns which sometimes weights thirty pounds or more.

        They are keen of vision and, unlike most game animals, depend little

upon scent for warning of danger. It is exceedingly hard for a hunter to

approach these alert, agile, and farsighted animals on an open mountainside.

        Very little reliable material has been published on the relative weights

of the different members of the wild sheep family. They are usually killed

in remote and rugged areas and hunters rarely posses the equipment or

leisure to secure accurate results. A rough approximation, based solely

on experience in back-packing the carcasses, would place the weight of,

for instance, an adult Stone sheep at about 200 pounds. A Dall or white

ram would weigh about 30 pounds less, with the saddleback somewhere in

between. These figures will suggest the quantitative meat value of the

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

northern sheep. As food, most sheep hunters state that between the months

of August and November sheep meat is superior to that of any other American

game. It is fat, tender and nutritious, and the liver, brains, and kidneys

are esteemed as delicacies. The large intestine, when turned inside out,

washed, and roasted on a green sapling, is prized by northern forest Indians

and rare white initiates.

        Their close-packed pelage of brittle hair is practically impervious

to cold. A noticeable shedding or molting takes place in early spring.

The brittleness of sheep hair, which breaks or separates easily, renders

the hides of little use. Skins collected in August, however, when the hair

is still growing, are used by some northern forest Indians and Alaska

Eskimos for coats and bedding. They are ideal for sleeping bags, being

as light in weight as eiderdown, yet shedding frost and snow as no eider–

down bag can do.

        Despite its strength and hardihood, the wild sheep does not adjust

itself to the encroachment of civilization. It is susceptible to diseases

introduced by domestic animals and requires low-altitude wintering grounds

well removed from the presence of man.

        Habits Habits . In North America the mountain sheep rarely use the western

or humid side of the many ranges forming the western cordillera. Their

preference seems to be for the rolling grasslands on the eastern or dry side

of the western highlands. The main exceptions to this rule occur at the

northern and southern extremities of their habitat: on the arctic coast

west of the Mackenzie River, western Alaska, and on the northwestern coast

of Mexico.

        Snow is their constant neighbor and, while it may threaten their

005      |      Vol_III-0283                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

existence during hard winters, it waters the mountain pastures, cools the

air, and thus preserves the sheep from insect pests in summertime. During

heavy blizzards they may seek the ice of cliffs or descend to the protection

of the timber line but, in such case, as soon as the storm has passed, they

return to their high grass slopes where the wind blows the snow from the

winter pastures and the winter sun warm their coats.

        The sheep winter on grass-grown foothills, still above timber line

and, where possible, facing southwest. It will be found that ridges connect

their feeding grounds with higher outcrops of rock; these form a safe line

of escape during attacks from predatory animals.

        Early in the morning, the sheep begin feeding downward. They usually

speed the noon hour at rest on some exposed shoulder of the mountain.

During the afternoon they feed upward to the high ground where they spend

the night. Their beds consist of small level areas which they hollow out

in crushed rock or gravel — this type of bed providing better drainage in

times of rain or snow than would grass or moss.

        With the coming of spring, the sheep leave their wintering grounds and

follow the green grass upward into the higher ranges. The mass movements

of sheep are not migrations in the accepted sense but merely journeys to

fresh feeding grounds. Great animation is evident on the spring journey.

Different bands converging from the lower spurs may, in a wild and well–

populated range, form a band of several hundred individuals. The presence

of newborn lambs adds to the confusion and to the trepidation of the ewes.

        The mating season occurs in late October and November; the period

of gestation is about seven months. The young, usually one, sometimes

twins, are born in May, in sheltered nooks under protecting cliffs. Though

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EA-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

soon able to follow their mother, the lambs spend the first few weeks of

their lives close to easy concealment in the rocks. By June they are scam–

pering about on the grassy slopes in little bands of from four to ten. A lamb

can make a vertical jump of six feet, so that when the “migration” takes

place in June the young are able to take care of themselves, while remaining

under the watchful eyes of the ewes.

        The avalanche of plunging, leaping bodies moves from crag to crag, an

unerring instinct seeming to lead them along the safest routes. Year after

year the same general routes are used, resulting in clearly defined trails

across the cliffs, rockslides, and grassy slopes, Some of these trails can

be seen several miles away, particularly when they become etched with melting

snow. No other mountain animal equals the sheep as a trail maker.

        During these spring journeys the sheep gather the mineral deposits

known as licks. These are not, as formerly thought, salt deposits, since

recent examination has disclosed that the alkaline ingredient attractive to

the sheep is magne is si um oxide. This mild laxative, combined with clay, brings

about a scouring of the animal’s intestinal tract. Trails always converge

from all directions to these licks.

        While the rams follow the trails used by the ewes, they descend to the

wintering grounds later than do the ewes and leave earlier in the spring.

Ewes and lambs habitually range lower than the rams. The reason for this is

not clear, the ewes being as capable as the rams of reaching the higher pas–

tures and having the added incentive of removing their young from the haunts

of predatory animals. A possible reason is that ewes and lambs form larger

bands than do the rams and, therefore, require more extensive and less broken

pasture land.

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        Young rams of from three to six years of age exhibit an indecision

concerning their associates and spend much of their time wandering between

the bands of ewes and the groups of older rams. They have outlived the

need to be protected by the former and are not yet accustomed to the

monotonous and detached lives of the latter. As they grow older they

gradually become associated with a band of rams and adapt themselves to

new ways.

        As the summer advances, the separate bands gather into larger groups,

influenced, perhaps, by the prevalence of food in certain areas. Such a

band, composed of rams of medium ages, may number as high as thirty-five

head. A band of this size, moving across some steep mountainside, their

powerful bodies and massive horns standing out in bold relief against a

backdrop of snow-capped peaks, makes an impressive pictures. The oldest rams

are seldom found in a band of this kind but, instead, are apt to segregate

themselves, apparently preferring solitude. There are seldom more than six

rams in a band of patriarchs. These, because of the extraordinary size of

their horns, are the ones most sought after by the persistent sportsman.

Mountain-wise as they are, these older rams seem to become indifferent to

their surroundings in extreme old age, being caught sometimes far back in a

mountain “pocket” when the heavy snows fall, cut off by drifts from the grass

of the lower foothills. As weakness overcomes them, the weight of their

horns forces them inexorably downward into some snow-filled gully where

escape is impossible.

        Natural Enemies . Mountain sheep are hunted by men and have always

been preyed upon by wolves, wolverines, coyotes, gold en eagles, and lynx. In

the past fifty years, there has been a rapid decline in number, and the

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wild sheep is faced with extermination. Occurring now chiefly in national

parks and game preserves, the mountain sheep has become one of the major

problems of game conservation. Since in game preserves and national parks

the predatory animals are protected as well as their victim, special

legislation against such animals, particularly the wolf, has been and is

being advocated.

       

Status of Geographical Varieties

        Stone or Black Sheep ( Ovis dalli stonei ). This sheep occurs chiefly

within the confines of British Columbia, but has been reported in the area

north of 55° to the south-central Yukon Basin. On the west it does not

penetrate very far into the humid, snow-covered mountains of the Alaskan

boundary, but on the eastern side it has been found along the tributaries

of the Peace and Liard rivers. On the headwaters of the Taku River, the

Stone sheep seems to blend with the white Dall sheep, the blending becoming

more pronounced in the more northern areas. Osgood (3) failed to find

signs of Stone sheep in the northern regions and merely notes that “both

white and gray sheep are reported, though all are said to be white in

winter.”

        The Stone sheep is the largest of the northern sheep and the darkest

in color. Its color pattern resembles that of the bighorn, but the dark

shades are deeper, running to blackish brown and dark bluish black. The

light markings consist of a distinctive rump path and a ribbon of white

on the back of each leg, with light shading on the belly. The horns are

slender and curl outward from the head. They are seldom blunted or “brushed”

on the tips as is frequently the case with the close curled and more massive

horns of the bighorn.

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        Fannin or Saddleback Sheep ( Ovis fannini ). When this sheep was first

discovered and described, it was accepted as a distinct form or subspecies.

Today, after careful study of its range and physical characteristics, it is

recognized as an intergrade between the Dall and Stone sheep. Its range ex–

tends from the headwaters of the Yukon to the headwaters of the Peel River

and westward to the Tanana Hills.

        The color of this intergrading species in darker in the southern part

of its range where it meets the black sheep, and lighter in the north and

west where it meets the white sheep. The average trend of color is more

toward the light or Dall coloring than toward the darker shades of Stone

sheep. Throughout all its color variations the pattern, however dim, is

suggestive of the Stone or bighorn pattern.

        Dall or White sheep ( Ovis dalli dalli ). These sheep were unknown to

science until specimens were obtained for Edward William Nelson from the

upper Yukon region. He first described the species in 1882, naming it Ovis

dalli in honor of the early Alaskan explorer and naturalist, William Healey

Dall. The Dall sheep occur in two distinct regions. The southern range,

roughly describing an arc, runs from west of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory,

through Nutzotin and Chugach Mountains and on to the Alaska Range. In its

northern range, the Dall sheep occurs from the vicinity of the Liard River on

the south to the arctic coast along the Mackenzie Divide in the north, and

thence westward to the Baird Mountains which lie northeast of Kotzebue Sound.

        The Dall sheep is in general appearance pure white, although individuals

have been reported with a few dark hairs in the tail. It is an animal of

grace and beauty. In the past it was of great economic value, its meat pro–

viding food for the laborers who built the Alaska Railroad and other government

010      |      Vol_III-0288                                                                                                                  
EZ-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

projects. In former times carcasses were on sale in most of the mining

camps from Yukon Territory to western Alaska. Despite the heavy slaughter

and the unnecessary waste that always accompanies commercial killing, the

sheep held up numerically very well. However, they have decreased alarmingly

in recent years; which, in the author’s opinion, is due to the increase

of wolves.

        Kenai Sheep ( ovis dalli kenaiensis ). According to Osgood, the most

noticeable difference in this sheep as compared with the true dalli is that

the upper side of the tail is white, whereas in the dalli there are dusky or

brownish hairs. Also, the horns of kenaiensis average thicker at the base,

particularly on the lower side, and are less divergent at the tips than

in dalli .

       

Summary

        The wild mountain sheep everywhere in North America is in danger of ex–

tinction, a fact to be deplored since this is one of our most beautiful

animals. It now occurs almost exclusively in game preserves and national

parks. The national parks, however, also extend their protection to animals

which prey upon the sheep, and such predatory animals are by way of increase–

ing numerically as a result. Chief of these predatory animals is the wolf;

and its rank have been strengthened to late by its related species, the

coyote, which is steadily increasing its range northward, having been

reported even farther north than the most northerly sheep.

        Basing his arguments on a hypothetical beneficent “balance of nature”

and on the theory of the “survival of the fittest,” Murie (2) has opposed

all legislation aimed at checking the wolf population of Mount McKinley

011      |      Vol_III-0289                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

National Park, or other game preserves. He denies that the sheep population

has decreased due to the depredation by wolves, and asserts that only old

and feeble sheep can fall victim to the wolf. Dixon (1) also seems to favor

the continued protection of wolves but advocates the extermination of the

newcomer, the coyote, from Mount McKinley National Park. He admits, how–

ever, that one wolf den containing four pups, which he observed in 1932,

showed that several mountain sheep had been eaten by this one litter. But,

as Sheldon (4) and others have pointed out, when a wolf visits sheep country

all the sheep become terrified and run well back in the mountains, not

resuming their normal ranging habits for several days. It is clear that

such a flight from the pasture lands might well results in the diminution

of a band of sheep through starvation.

        The fact must certainly be emphasized that in the four years from 1941

to 1945, according to the author’s investigations, the sheep population in

Mount McKinley National Park dropped from around 1,000 to not over 500, at

which figure it has since, presumably, remained.

        [The effects of predators, other than man, upon animals like the moun–

tain sheep and caribou, are at present hotly disputed. Views like those of

Mr. Belmore Browne are generally held by sportsmen-naturalists; many profess–

sionals naturalists oppose them. The Editors]

012      |      Vol_III-0290                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Browne: Mountain Sheep

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Dixon, J.S. Birds & Mammals of Mount McKinley National Park, Alaska .

Wash., G.P.O., 1938. U. S. National Park Service.

Fauna Series no.3.

2. Murie, Adolf. The Wolves of Mount McKinley . Wash., G.P.O., 1944.

U. S. National Park Service. Fauna Series no.5.

3. Osgood, W.H. “Mammals of the Yukon Basin,” U. S. Biological Survey.

Results of a Biological Reconnaissance of the Yukon River

Region . Wash., G.P.O., 1900, pp.21-45. The Survey. North

American Fauna no.19.

4. Sheldon, Charles. The Wilderness of Denali . N.Y., Scribner, 1930.

       

Belmore Browne

Animal Population Cycles

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0291                                                                                                                  
(EA-Zoo. Leonard Butler)

ANIMAL POPULATION CYCLES

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Lemmings	3
Arctic Fox	9
Red Fox	12
Snowy owl	14
Ptarmigan	15
Mice	16
Marten	17
Lynx	18
Mink	18
Muskrat	18
Other Animals	19
Caribou	19
Arctic Hares	19
Polar Bear	19
Ermine	20
Bibliography	21

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0292                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

       

LIST OF FIGURES

		Page
Fig 1	Arctic fox returns and lemming reports for Canada	9a
Fig. 2	Colored fox returns showing four-year and ten-year cycle	13a

001      |      Vol_III-0293                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Leonard Butler)

       

ANIMAL POPULATION CYCLES

        The number of animals in a certain region does not stay constant from year

to year but fluctuates between abundance and scarcity. Sometimes these fluctua–

tions are gradual and at other times they are sudden or eruptive. Many of these

fluctuations have a rhythmic periodicity, the time interval between two consecu–

tive periods of abundance being the same. The periods of abundance are spoken

of as peaks, and when these peaks are easily recognized and occur with sufficient

regularity the population is said to be cyclic. The average time between peaks

gives the length of the cycle, so that it is customary to speak of four-year

cycles (i.e., four years between each peak) and so on. Whether an animal popula–

tion exhibits regular cycles or irregular fluctuations depends upon both the

species of animal and the locality. The beaver population does not show cyclic

behavior, whereas foxes have a ten-year cycle. Marten in bush country have a

ten-year cycle, whereas in the Subarctic they have a four-year cycle.

        In a country where the natives depend in the main upon wildlife resources

for their living, fluctuations in animal population assume serious importance.

The most important and striking fluctuations in the Arctic are found in the

populations of arctic fox, lemming, snowy owl, and ptarmigan. The fox is impor–

tant because of the value of its fur and the fact that it apparently transmits

disease to sledge dogs, which are necessary to the normal mode of travel in the

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EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

North. The lemming is important because in many sections it is the main food

of the arctic fox. The snowy owl is useful as an index of lemming abundance;

when the owls are plentiful the lemmings are also plentiful, and when the

lemmings become scarce the owls move away, often undertaking long flights to

the south. Ptarmigan provide food for both man and fox.

        The periodic fluctuations in the members of lemming, ptarmigan, snowy owl,

and fox, all appear to ebb and flow together. The period of the fluctuations

or the length of time from one peak to the succeeding peak averages four years,

varying sometimes to three or five. The regularity of the cycle and the fact

that it affects several species were noted as early as 1780 in the writing of

Gmelin. P L ater Pennant (1784), Schrenk (1854), Collett (1895 ) , and many others ✓

referred to this p eh he nomenon. Wrangel (1839) and several others suggested that

the cycle is due to the permanent wandering of all foxes around the North Pole.

The migration was assumed to take four years, so that the animals would be

abundant in any particular place only once in four years. This theory was

disproved as soon as large-scale date were observed because it was noted that

there was no succession of peak years occurring at approximate intervals

around the Pole.

        The simplest theory of the ca su us al relationships between the cycles in

lemming, snowy owl, white fox, and ptarmigan is as follows: the lemmings, for

some reason at present unknown, increase in numbers and become abundant. This

increase makes the area attractive to the snowy owl, which feeds on lemmings,

and the snowy owl moves in. The young owls have a better chance to survive and

snowy owls become numerous in the area. The food supply furnished by the increased

number of lemmings also affects the resident fox. Its numbers increase either

because of larger litters or greater survival of the young cubs. The ptarmigan

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EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

becomes abundant either because the favorable factors affecting the lemming

also cause it to increase, or else the presence of abundant lemmings reduces

the predatory pressure on ptarmigan and allo w s them to increase. Later, the

lemmings decrease in number either because of lack of food, looses from preda–

tion, migration, or some other cause. The fox population also decreases,

through starvation or through being more easily trapped when in a weakened

condition; or their numbers may be reduced through disease, for at the peak of

fox abundance and epidemic can spread rapidly throughout an area. The snowy owl,

because of luck of food, moves to other areas which still have lemmings, or else

flies south in search of alternatives food. The ptarmigan, now preyed upon more

heavily, also decreases.

       

Lemmings

        The lemming cycle has attracted much attention because of the spectacular

migration which often occurs at the peak of the cycle. Most of these migration

reports come from Norway, where the lemmings live in the subalpine regions.

When they become excessively abundant they begin their migration, vast numbers

of them, regardless of obstacles, always advancing in the same direction in

which they originally started but following more or less the course of the great

valleys. Down the mountainsides and valleys they come, through the tree belt,

and out over the lowlands, crossing fields, swimming lakes and rivers, and even

passing through busy towns. Often they become so numerous around a town that

dogs and cats become exhausted from killing them and will eat no more. The

lemmings that survive move steadily onward until they reach the coast where

they plunge into the water and swim out until they drown or reach an island.

These creatures travel across powerful physical barriers and without fear of man,

yet they die easily of shook from the slightest injury. In the Arctic the migra–

tions are not as pronounced, although they have been recorded for several regions.

004      |      Vol_III-0296                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

        The lemming, a stout rodent which resembles a very large mouse, weighs

from 75 to 100 grams as compared with 20 to 40 grams for a mouse. The lemming

is variously colored: black, brown, yellow, or white. The short stumpy tail and

bustling gait make it an odd little creature. It is remarkable for its voracity

and its powers of reproduction. The lemming is mainly nocturnal and lives in

burrows from two to three feet long, ending in a ne x s t chambers, four or five

inches in diameter, lined with grass and moss. Near the nest there is often a

branch burrow which is used for sanitary purposes and as a place of refuge when

the main burrow is invaded. In the nests, during the early summer, the litter of

from two to eight young is born. There are several litters a year so that when

conditions are favorable the population can increase very rapidly from dearth

to abundance.

        Lemmings are active throughout the winter, making many tunnels along the

surface of the ground under the snow which are revealed when the snow melts in

the spring. These tunnels are their foraging road, safe from the storms of

winter. At times when gales blow the snowy covering off, the lemming wander

aimlessly about on top of the snow until they perish from cold or are caught

by some enemy.

        Lemmings feed entirely on vegetation, and many theories regarding this food

supply have been advanced to explain the fluctuations in lemming population s .

It has been suggested that at certain times the food is richer in vitamins and

minerals than at other times and that it is this extra richness which causes the

lemming to breed and survive better. It has been suggested that the food in

certain years contains a vitamin so potent that it leads to an orgy of reproduction

and finally to mass migration and self-destruction. Another S s upposition has it that

when the lemmings become overabundant they eat up all the available food and

then have either to move on or starve to death. None of these theories has any

experimental proof to substantiate it.

005      |      Vol_III-0297                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

        That the lemming has sufficient voracity to eat up its food supply is

shown in the writings of Elton and Freuchen. Elton (6) records an observation

in [ ?] w hich two Dicrostonyx (collared lemming) were released in a pen with a

surface area of 25 square yards. The ground in the pen had a lush covering

of grass and other vegetation about eight inches thick when the lemmings were

introduced on March 30. On about April 14, five young were born. By this time

there were numerous roads make in the grass and some of it had been nibbled

and eaten. By May 28, the lemming family of seven had, in eight weeks, destroyed

every vestige of vegetation in the pen. One factor contributing to the destruct–

tion was the lemmings’ habit of eating roots as well as stems and leaves.

        There are two main types of lemmings: brown lemmings and collared lemmings.

The brown lemming has the same brown coat both winter the summer, while the

collard lemming changes from its brown summer cost to a white one in winter.

Another main difference between the collared and brown lemming is that with the

change to the white winter coat, the collard lemming develops a thick, horny

pedlike growth on the underside of the two middle claws of the front feet.

These pads re molted in the spring when the winter coat is shed. The collar

lemming inhabits the high, dry ground, while the brown lemming inhabits the low,

moist spots.

        There are three main species of brown lemming, all belonging to the genus

Lemmus. The genus is circumpolar in distribution and fossil remains of lemming

are found as far south as Portugal, indicating that these rodents moved southward

ahead of the icecap. The northward retreat of the ice past the southern part of

the White Sea split the lemming population into two parts, at the same time

pushing them higher and higher up the mountainsides. These mountain lemmings

to not form one continuous connected population but live in normal years as

006      |      Vol_III-0298                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

separate breeding colonies isolated from one another by deep valleys. The

population to the west of the White Sea is confined chiefly to Lapland and the

mountains of Scandinavia; it constitutes the species Lemmus lemmus . East of

the White Sea, as far as Siberia, and in Novaya Zemlya, the species L. obensis

is found. The third species, L. trimucronatus , which closely resembles the

Siberian one, ranges from Alaska to Hudson Bay. The last-mentioned species

has three subspecies commonly known as Back’s lemming, Alaska brown lemming,

and tawn o y lemming. ✓

        The collared or varying lemming ( Dicrostonyx ) is represented in Canada

by two species and five subspecies. D. hudsonius , the Labrador varying lemming,

covers the barren ground of the Ungava Peninsula, extending down the coast of

Labrador and the east coast of Hudson Bay. The four subspecies of D. groenlandicus

cover the rest of Canada from Baffin Island to Alaska; the common names for the

subspecies are: Greenland varying lemming, Alaska varying lemming, Mackenzie

collared lemming, and Richardson’s varying lemming. The main point about this

distribution is that the brown and collared lemmings co-exist throughout their

Canadian range except in Quebec and Labrador.

        Most of the data on lemming cycles and their relationship to the predator

cycles are given in Elton’s book Voles, Mice and Lemmings (6).

        Of the many accounts by arctic travelers and naturalists on the increase

in lemming population and its subsequent decrease, the following taken from

Peter Freuchen’s observations is typical (7). As a member of Rasmussen’s

Fifth Thule Expedition, Freuchen spent several years in various parts of the

Melville Peninsula. He noted that during 1921 lemmings were not very numerous;

foxes and predatory birds were also scarce. “In 1922, however, matters were

quite different. There were lemmings everywhere, and there were traces of many

more foxes, rough-legged buzzards and owls, more peregrine falcons, and more ravens.

007      |      Vol_III-0299                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

The Eskimo brought large numbers of ermine skins to the trading posts, but

their catch of foxes was nothing extraordinary.” The natives claim that

often when lemmings are abundant, the foxes are hard to catch as they are not

attracted by baits. In this particular year, Freuchen notice s d that both caribou ✓

and hares were left entirely in peace by the wolves because there were sufficient

lemmings. In 1923, the lemmings swarmed in still greater numbers, even invading

the tents of the expedition’s living quarters.

        Then suddenly the lemmings seemed to disappear and, by December 1923,

Freuchen was able to notice a remarkable difference. The foxes caught were not

gorged with lemmings as had been the case in the spring of 1923, and in the

previous year. Predatory birds were very scarce and their stomach contents

contained on lemmings. This “crash” was also noted on Baffin Island the same

year.

        The best-documented source of information on the rhythmic ups and downs

in lemming populations in furnished by the Canadian Arctic Wildlife Enquiry.

Residents and travelers in the North are asked to record whether lemmings are

more abundant, less abundant, or no change as compared with the previous season.

These reports are assembled and analyzed by the Bureau of Animal Population at

Oxford (3). From these reports it is possible to get both regional and general

changes in the lemming population of Canada. The lemming population has had

peaks in the following years:

Year	1933-34	1936-37	1940-41	1944-45
Per cent observers reported increase	85	65	79	68

        It will be seen that adjacent peaks are 3 years, 4 years, and 4 years apart,

which is close to the orthodox four-year interval expected. In recent years the

country has not been treated as a whole, but grouped into two sections: the

008      |      Vol_III-0300                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

Eastern Arctic where the cycle is very pronounced, and the Western Arctic where

the cycle is not quite so definite. That there are differences between these

two regions is seen in the following comparison for the year 1942-43”

	Eastern Arctic	Western Arctic
Per cent observers reported increase	17	47
Per cent observers reported decrease	62	18
Per cent observers reported no change	21	35

        In the Eastern Arctic, 1942-43 was the second year of scarcity after the

1940-41 peak. The majority of places in northern Quebec and Baffin Island re–

ported decrease, while at Padlei and Baker Lake, on the edge of the Eastern

Arctic section, increase was reported. The third year of increase of lemmings

on the islands of the Western Arctic was in 1942-43, and increase was also re–

ported at Bathurst Inlet. At Cambridge Bay this was the peak year; numerous

lemmings in their fall coats were found dead on the ice in the spring.

        These observations indicate that while there is general synchronism in the

cycles there is no absolute synchronism. The agreement between the Canadian

figures and those for Lapland and Norway is as close as between various sections

or Canada. The last three peaks for these countries recorded by Elton (6) are

1930-31, 1933-34, and 1938, all of which correspond closely with the figures

given above for Canada.

        It is well established that there is a rhyth e m in the population cycle of

the lemming and that peak populations do not occur at the same time throughout

the circumpolar region, but there is a synchronization of these peaks which, in

the whole region, often occur the same year. Whether the similarity in timing is

accidental or because the same [ ?] casual agent is exerting the same influence

throughout the region cannot be determined until more is known about the causes

009      |      Vol_III-0301                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

of cycles. The five factors that may cause or control the lemming cycle are:

( 1 ) climatic factors affecting the food or rate of reproduction of the lemming,

( 2 ) predators taking too large a toll of the lemming population, ( 3 ) epidemics

of disease, ( 4 ) migration, and ( 5 ) the removal through some unknown cause of

one generation of young. This last cause is a factor only when the animal has

a short life span.

       

Arctic Fox

        The life history of the arctic, or white fox (genus Alopex ) is dealt with

fully in the article “Fur Bearers of North America.” The figures for the

number of pelts collected at various trading posts give an index of the number

of animals present in that particular section in any year. This index is only

a relative one as there is no evidence to indicate that the percentage of the

population trapped each year is constant. In fact, there is a good deal of

evidence to indicate that at, or just after, the peak of the cycle a much larger

percentage of the foxes is trapped than at the bottom of the cycle. This is

borne out by the fact that at the bottom of the cycle it takes an expert trapper

to catch a fox whereas when they become abundant it is possible for a rank

amateur to trap them. As far as the cycles are concerned, it means that the

peaks are probably exaggerated but that their periodicity is the same as the

population periodicity.

        Figure 1 shows the total Canadian white fox catch from 1915 to 1946. This

illustrates the magnitude of the increases (for instance, from 19,000 in 1929

to 68,000 in 1931), and the regular periodicity of peaks being 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 4,

and 4 years apart. Most of these pelts are obtained from the Eastern Arctic, so

the graph shows the cycle which is in operation in the area east of Fort Ross on

the Boothi s a Peninsula. West of this point the cycle is not as regular but it ✓

followed by 9a

009a      |      Vol_III-0302                                                                                                                  


010      |      Vol_III-0303                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

does show violent up-and-down movements. The Alaskan data show no violent

fluctuations nor any sign of a cycle. In Greenland, there is also no sign

of a cycle, the pelts fluctuating, in general, from 1,000 to 3 0 ,000, with a

few exceptional highs of 5,000 pelts.

        The main causal factor in the white fox cycle is presumed to be the availa–

bility of the lemming food supply. An index of the lemming population in east–

ern Canada is plotted on the same graph along with the white fox data. This shows

a marked correlation between the two cycles, the peak of the white fox cycle

usually coming one year after the peak of the lemming cycle.

        If the lemming is the main causal factor, then in areas where the fox does

not feed to any extent on lemming, or where an alternative food supply is available,

the fox cycle should not be as definite. In general, this is true; on small

islands or other areas where a good deal of marine life is available for fox food,

there are no rhythmic population changes. In Greenland, Braestrup (1) divides

the foxes into two types: the lemming foxes of the north and the coast foxes of

the south. There is not a sufficiently large take of foxes in the north to indi–

cate whether or not these “lemming foxes” are cyclic or not. There is, however,

a cyclic tendency in the percentage of whites. Braestrup interprets this as

being the result of migrations from Canada where the white phase is more common.

The peak percentages of the whites seem to agree with the population peaks in

Canada.

        Within the Eastern Arctic of Canada where the white fox cycle is well

synchronized, there are minor abnormalities. The peaks in northern Baffin Island

and on the western shore of Hudson Bay occurred the same year until 1940-41. In

that year there was a peak catch at Repulse Bay, Baker Lake, and Chesterfield Inlet

on the west shore of Hudson Bay, while at Arctic Bay, Clyde, and Pond Inlet in

011      |      Vol_III-0304                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

northern Baffin Island, there was the lowest catch of the cycle. The following

year there was a decrease on the west shore of Hudson Bay and a peak collection

in northern Baffin Island. By 1945-46, both sections were showing similar

fluctuations in their white fox populations. During the same years, Sugluk , on

Hudson Strait, exhibited the same accelerated peak. It had its highest collection

at the same time as the west coast of Hudson Bay and one year ahead of the peak

in Baffin Island. By the next peak, it was back in step with the general cycle.

        There are several cases known of this speeding-up or retarding of peak years

in certain sections but none has been completely analyzed so the possible cause

is still unknown. It is interesting to note that the cycles usually synchronize

again at the next peak. It has been suggested that a local abundance of lemming

or other food may have encouraged migration into the area, or faster reproduction

of the indigenous stock, but the whole question of ptarmigan and marine sources

of supplementary food needs more investigation. All that can be said with

certainty is that, where lemming is the chief source of food, the arctic fox

exhibits a clear-cut cycle of extreme fluctuations in pelt numbers and that this

cycle runs one year behind the similar cycle for lemmings.

        Disease may also play an important part in the crash of the arctic fox

population. There have been numerous reports of disease in sledge dogs occurring

just at, or after, a peak year in foxes. These epidemics have at times been very

severe and have decimated the whole dog population of the area. Isolation of

dogs and restrictions on dog teams have not been enough to stop the epidemic

which seemed to break out simultaneously at several points and spread rapidly

through the country. The fact that these epidemics occurred at approximately

four-year intervals and that there appeared to be some connection between fox

peaks and dog epidemic led Elton to institute an inquiry. This showed that

012      |      Vol_III-0305                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

occasionally dead foxes were found and also sick ones were seen around the

settlement at the time of dog epidemics.

        The symptoms were extreme boldness, running or frothing at the mouth and

nose, glazing of the eyes, and the nonavoidance of obstacles in the fox’s path.

The disease was assumed to be of a virus nature and was classified variously as

distemper, encephalitis, pseudorabies, and crazy disease. Plummer (10) has

shown recently that the disease is true rabies and that it is present in both

dogs and foxes in the Canadian Arctic. It has been reported previously from

the Soviet Arctic population of arctic fox.

       

Red Fox

        The red fox (genus Vulpes ) is a comparative newcomer to the Canadian Arctic

(see “Fur Bearers of North America”). In strictly arctic regions, the red fox

has a four-year cycle which is very definite and in every way comparable to the

cycle of the arctic fox. In the Subarctic, the red fox has a ten-year cycle

similar to that of many of the bush animals.

        In Labrador, Elton has shown, the red fox has a definite four-year cycle.

In 92 years there were 23 cycles, and only once was the interval between peaks

as long as 6 years. In 92% of the cycles, the time interval varied from 3 to 5

years, with 4 years the most common interval. Various points on the Labrador

coast showed the same periodicity with identical peak years, indicating that the

total population was controlled by the same factors. When a peak at any point

gets out of step, the subsequent peak tends to fall back in line again. The peak

years for red fox were identical with those for the arctic fox.

        Prior to 1930, the fur statistics for Canadian arctic posts other than

Labrador showed t a ten-year cycle for red fox, indicating that the reds probably

did not breed to any extent north of the bush line but migrated to the Arctic in

013      |      Vol_III-0306                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

times of population peaks in the south. Gradually both the northern range of

the red fox and its numbers increased, as pointed out by Butler in his paper on

color phases in the wild red fox (2). With this increase in numbers there is a

suggestion s of minor peaks at four-year intervals imposed on a ten-year pattern, ✓

and, finally, interaction between four- and ten-year cycles. In Figure 2 the

red fox collection at Great Whale River, which is in the tundra, is plotted for

comparison with the collection at bush posts, three hundred miles to the south.

The dotted line on the graph gives the southern collection taken at Eastmain and

Rupert’s House and indicates a typical ten-year cycle. The peaks in this ten-year

cycle came in 1917-18, 1925-26, 1935-36, and 1944-45. The solid line on the graph

shows the Great Whale River collection which has the same characteristics as the

collections from Ungava Bay and other points to the north. The cyclic picture

here is much more complicated. It starts off with the typical ten-year cycle

with minor peaks due to the four-year cycle superimposed in 1921-22 and 1930-31.

By 1934-35, the population had begun to breed in the Arctic and the population

fluctuations changed into the typical four-year cycle. The white fox peaks for the ✓

Eastern Arctic are marked on the same graph and it will be seen that in all cases

the red fox peaks agree with the white fox. In 1925-26, a population peak was

reached by the southern red fox and they went north. Food and other conditions

were favorable, and the migrants were so prolific that the following year there

was a real peak in the north which, although one year later than the southern

peak, synchronized with the arctic fox peak. Similar conditions prevailed in

1945 and 1946. In 1935-36, the crash in the northern four-year cycle occurred

at the same time as the peak population of the southern red fox so that the only

influence s of the southern migrants was to make the catch larger than in previous ✓

or succeeding lows.

followed by 9a

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014      |      Vol_III-0308                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

        The colored fox is a predator of the white fox as well as a competitor

in their common search for food. Because of this relationship, the magnitude of

the cycle of an arctic fox population may be changed by the influx of red foxes.

Since, however, the length of the cycle and the timing of the cycle are the same

in both species, such predation and competition should not affect the interval

between peaks.

       

Snowy Owl

        The snowy owl, Nyctea nyctea , breeds in the tundra. When lemmings are

plentiful the owl population increases rapidly and observers who may scarcely

have been a snowy owl the previous season will report them as abundant. These

owls, when lemmings or other food become scarce, quickly move to where there is

a more plentiful food supply. Since most of the lemming populations diminish

simultaneously, the snowy owl is often forced to migrate south in search of food.

Many of these owls stay in southern Canada and the northern United States but

some go as far as the southern United States and even to Bermuda. These migration

years have been charted by A. O. Gross (8) and more recently by L. L. Snyder.

The years of migration show the same periodicity as was present in the arctic

fox and lemming populations. The year of migration corresponds to the peak year

in the pelt collection of the arctic fox. Most of these southward movements

have taken place in November and December; the last migration recorded was in

the winter of 1945-46, following a peak lemming population in the years 1944-45.

        Several other predatory birds have similar but less well-marked cycles.

The northern shrike, Lanius borealis borealis , which breeds immediately south of

the timber line, has a four-year cycle in the numbers that migrate southward in

winter, the years of maximum abundance coinciding with those of the snowy owl and

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EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

arctic fox. Long-tailed skuas and rough-legged buzzards also seem to show

the same type of cycle.

       

Ptarmigan

        The willow ptarmigan, Lagopus lagopus , and the smaller rock ptarmigan,

L. rupestris , are the birds of the greatest importance in the economy of the

North. Widely distributed to the most northerly islands, and prolific breeders,

they form an important part of the food of the fur-bearing carnivores. While

not killed by the natives in any l large numbers, they are a great asset as they

are virtually the only feathered game available during the severe months of winter.

In winter the ptarmigan migrate southward to the bush country where their food

of willow buds is available. Such migrations are not complete, some remaining

behind all winter. These southern migrations show a period rhythm which is the

same as the lemming’s. The peak migrations do not always occur all over the north

country the same year, nor do all parts of the country witness peak migrations.

There may be a peak migration in a certain section one year and then two peak

migrations may miss this section s , so that there may not be a large migration

in this section for about twelve years.

        It is not certain that a large southward migration indicates a peak population

of ptarmigan. It may indicate only that feeding conditions are bad in the Arctic

so that a greater proportion of the population has migrated. There is some

evidence, however, that the decrease in predation by arctic foxes, which accompanies

an increase in the lemming population, does allow the ptarmigan to increase.

        The ptarmigan population figures for Greenland give a slight indication of

a cycle but there are much larger fluctuations occurring at about fifteen-year

intervals which have obscured the short-term cycle.

        In Norway the willow ptarmigan is called the rype. Its populations show a

016      |      Vol_III-0310                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

definite four-year cycle in central Norway. The peak years and times of

scarcity from 1869 to 1927 were tabulated by Kloster. The “ rype ” cycle became

less regular after 1905, and several reasons have been advanced to account for

this. Brinkman noted that disease was frequent in rype population and sought

to explain it by the disappearance of predators, which might be expected to

maintain standards of rype fitness by weeding out the diseased and weaker birds.

Nordhagen suggested that there was a connection between the berry crop and the

winter survival of the birds. The chief berries eaten are the crowberry, bilberry,

bearberry, and c l oudberry, which fluctuate a great deal in abundance from year to ✓

year. unfortunately the data on the yearly fluctuations of the berry crop were

not sufficient to correlate with those on the fluctuations of rype.

        Disease appears to play a large part in the crash of the Lagopus cycle.

The chief disease is coccidiosis, which is especially severe in the young birds.

Since the outbreaks occur in widely separated parts of the Arctic at more or less

the same time, and since the crash usually occurs at the same time as the crash

in the lemming cycle, there must be some background influence which is common to

all.

       

Mice

        There are many species of mice in the arctic and subarctic regions. The

most common genera are: Microtus , Clethrionomys , Peromyscus , Synaptomys , and

Phenacomys . Most of these mice are not easily identified by the ordinary

observer, so that when mice are reported as being abundant in any particular

region it is not possible to tell with certainty which species is being reported.

The interrelations between the various species are little known, but it has been

shown that one species of mouse can be increasing while another is decreasing

or very scarce. Because of the lack of trained observers in the region, little

017      |      Vol_III-0311                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

is known about the fluctuations in the mouse populations. There appears to be

a cycle in the mouse populations which corresponds with that of lemmings but

it is not as definite nor as widespread. Certain areas will be reporting in–

crease in both lemmings and mice, while adjacent areas will report increase

in lemmings with no change or decrease in mice. Part of this lack of agreement

may result from the fact that adjacent areas are often occupied by different

species and that conditions which result in the increase in one species will

not cause a corresponding increase in another species.

       

Marten

        The marten (genus Martes ) usually exhibits the typical ten-year cycle of

the Canadian bush country, but in Labrador, it has been shown by Elton, there is

a four-year cycle. The great majority of good marten years either coincide with

or come one year after the corresponding peak in foxes.

        Some of the best marten country in Canada is found in the subarctic regions,

especially in the Mackenzie River section. In 1850, this section was producing

an annual catch of more than 30,000 pelts, but by 1930 the catch had declined

to less than 5,000. Simultaneously with the decline in catch, the regular

ten-year cycle, evident in the earlier figures, became less marked and harder

to decipher.

        The marten is a shy breeder and the young do not breed until they are two

years old. This low [ ?] reproductive potential makes it hard to account for the

four-year cycle in Labrador by any reason except the supposition that in good

mouse and fox years more young survive to maturity. Such a theory is borne out

by the data which show that the magnitude of the fluctuations is not as large in

the case of the other short-cycle animals.

018      |      Vol_III-0312                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

       

Lynx

        The Canada lynx (genus Lynx ) is the classi x c example of the ten-year cycle

because its fluctuations are great in magnitude and the peaks occur at very

regular intervals. The population changes are closely allied to those of the

snowshoe rabbit which is its main prey. In fact, it is often cited as a typical

example of the predator-prey relationship. An increase in the prey leads to

an increase in the predator because of better feeding conditions. A crash in

the prey population leads to a rapid decrease in the predator because their

large population is confronted with a scarcity of food.

        The lynx is confined to the bus y h country but it does occur in fair ✓

quantities in the Mackenzie River valley. There is definite evidence that the

lynx is being overtrapped so that the cycle is now hard to perceive. There

were well-marked peaks in 1916-17, 1926-27, 1935-36, and a less definite one in

1943-44. The cycle interval over the past 120 years is 9.7 years between peaks.

       

Mink

        Mink (genus Mustela ) are found throughout the Subarctic and in favorable

locations in the Arctic. They have a definite ten-year cycle and so far there

seems to be little evidence for assuming that they have a four-year cycle in

some localities. In northern Quebec there is often a minor peak four years

after the major one, which may indicate the possibility of the short-term cycle.

The peak years were in 1929-30 and 1940-41 in most of the Canadian Subarctic.

       

Muskrat

        In the bush country, the muskrat (genus Ondatra ) has a well-marked ten-year

cycle. There are some exceptions to the general cycle in any area and these are

often found in a delta region where the fluctuating water conditions often modify

019      |      Vol_III-0313                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Butler: Animal Population Cycles

the normal cyclic picture. Trapping pressure also seems to play a more important

part in the muskrat cycle than it does in the cycle of the other fur bearers.

This may be due to the fact that a greater percentage of the total population

is trapped than with other species, or it may be connected with the fact that

one of the main limiting factors in a muskrat population is intraspecific strife.

        The cycle in northern areas is not as definite as it is in southern ones

possibly because most northern muskrats come from delta areas, or it may be the

influence of the short-term arctic cycle. In the leading muskrat-producing

area of the Mackenzie Delta, Arctic Red River had peaks in 1929-30, 1939-40, and

1945-46. At Fort MacPherson in the same locality, there were peaks the same years

and other peaks in-between, indicating a modified type of four-year cycle. At

Aklavik, the farthest point north on the delta, there were only two peaks during

this period; they occurred in 1932-33 and 1940-41. Until more data are available

it is impossible to say whether there is, or is not, a muskrat cycle in northern

areas.

       

Other Animals

        Caribou (genus Rangifer ) are in much better condition some years than others

and they periodically change their migration routes. The cause of these changes

is unknown and it has not been ascertained whether the changes occur regularly

enough to be classed as cycles.

        Arctic hares (genus P L epus ) fluctuate to a large extent, but there is not

enough information to indicate a periodicity. They may have a four-year cycle

like the lemming and fox, or else a ten-year cycle like the allied snowshoe rabbits

in the forests of the south.

        Polar bear (genus Thalarctos ) fluctuate locally, but this is thought to be

due to the erratic movements of the sea ice rather than to over-all changes in

the population.

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        E r mine (genus Mustela ) appear to have the same short-term cycle as the

fox, but the peak years may not occur at the same time. The ermine population

of arctic regions is so small and the information on population changes so meager

that nothing definite can be said at this time.

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---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Braestrup, F.W. “A study on the arctic fox in Greenland,” Med.Grønland

vol.131, no.4, 1941.

2. Butler, Leonard. “The genetics of the colour phases of the red fox

in the Mackenzie River locality,” Canad.J.Res . vol.25,

pp.190-215, 1947.

3. Chitty, Helen, and Chitty, Dennis. “Canadian Arctic Wildlife Enquiry 1942-43,”

J.Animal Ecol . Vol.14, no.1, pp.37-45, May, 1945.

4. Collett, Robert. Norges Pattedyr . Kristiania, Ascheho n u g, 1911-12.

5. Elton, C.S. “Epidemics among sledge dogs in the Canadian Arctic and

their relation to disease in the arctic fox,” Canad.J.Res .

vol.5, pp.673-92, 1931.

6. ----. Voles, Mice and Lemmings . Oxford, Clarendon, 1942.

7. Freuchen, Peter. “Field notes and biological observations,” Degerb o ø l,

Magnus and Freuchen, Peter. Mammals . Copenhagen, Glydendalske

Boghandel, 1935, pp.68-278. Thule Expedition, 5th, 1921-24.

Report vol.2, no.4-5.

8. Gross, A.O. “Snowy owl migration 1930-31,” Auk , vol.48, pp.501-11, 1931.

9. Pennant, Thomas. Arctic Zoology . London, 1784, vol.1.

10. Plummer, P.J.G. “Further note on arctic dog disease and its relation to

rabies,” Canad.J.Comp.Med . vol.11, pp.330-34, 1947.

       

Leonard Butler

The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0316                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(William Rowan)

        Controversial-needs editorial

note before publication. See

Dunber letter of april 19-1951

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0317                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(William Rowan)

       

THE TEN-YEAR CYCLE IN THE SUBARCTIC

       

LIST OF FIGURES

		Page
Fig. 1	Lynx fur returns of the Northern Department, Hudson’s Bay Co., 1821-1913, and of equivalent area 1915-34	3a

001      |      Vol_III-0318                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(William Rowan)

       

THE TEN-YEAR CYCLE IN THE SUBARCTIC

        One of the most inexplicable phenomena of subarctic regions is what has

come to be known as the ten-year cycle, a periodic oscillation of marked regu–

larity in the numbers of many nonmigratory birds and various species of the

smaller mammals. As its name indicates, the interval is approximately ten years

between peaks of abundance which are conspicuous not only through the enormous

numbers of animals attained but in the precipitate decline — the “crash” — that

immediately follows. Thus juxtaposition of superabundance and scarcity creates

such a striking contrast in the resident fauna in the brief period of only a a —

year or two that it cannot escape attention. The phenomenon is universally

familiar to country dwellers of the Canadian northland.

        The periodicity of the cycle has been worked out from fur returns, chiefly

of the Hudson’s Bay Company, over the past 200 years. Fur records are subject to

so many irregularities owing to weather and transport difficulties, market fluc–

tuations, trapping activities, etc., that in their crude state they fail to reveal

the underlying accuracy of the ten-year interval. Elton and Nicholson (2), how–

ever, have sifted out these and other complicating factors from the Hudson’s Bay Co . mpany ✓

lynx returns over a period of 100 years, from 1830 to 1930; the true regularity

of the cycle is consequently revealed and shows itself clearly in their graph

(see Fig. 1). The long-term average periodicity works out at 9.6 years. The

002      |      Vol_III-0319                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Rowan: The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

relative constancy of the interval makes the ten-year cycle almost unique.

Whereas the sunspot cycle, for instance, averages around 11 years, with the

individual intervals between sunspot maxima varying from 7 to 15 years, the

interval between consecutive rabbit and grouse peaks varies little from the

ten-year span that gives the cycle its name. it may be 11 years on one occasion

and 9 the next; an d y given district may be a year or even two in advance of another, —

or possibly behind, but the over-all picture for the Dominion of Canada is a

cycle of extraordinary regularity of 9 or 10 years, with the long-term average

somewhere in between.

        Another significant aspect of the cycle is that it is confined to the

northern regions of the world and is apparently synchronous around the globe.

Since resident mammal life gets scarcer toward the pole and includes chiefly

marine forms, such as seal and walrus, or large land mammals, such as wolf, polar

bear, reindeer, and musk ox, which show no recognizable cycle as far as is presently

known, or lemmings and voles with a four-year cycle, the ten-year cycle is not as

conspicuous in the extreme north as farther south. It also gets less and less

apparent with decreasing latitude, becoming difficult to detect south of the

Canadian border. It still remains detectable, but shows relatively low amplitudes.

        The most conspicuous member of the cycling fraternity, the snowshoe hare or

rabbit ( Lepus americanus ), does not occur on the arctic islands and is scarce

along the coastal regions, being replaced by the arctic or polar hare ( L. arcticus ).

MacFarlane (5) was familiar with the ten-year cycle in the North but does not

credit this latter species with the vast fluctuations of the snowshoe.

        Through the vast Canadian forests and muskegs lying north of about latitude

52° N., the cycle reaches its most impressive proportions. Here, at ten-year

intervals, incredible numbers are attained by the snowshoe hare, various species of

003      |      Vol_III-0320                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Rowan: The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

grouse, and many fur bearers. The amplitude varies from decade to decade with

all of them as it does with the lynx (see Fig. 1). Lynx skins procured by the

Hudson’s Bay Company, for instance, have run during the past hundred years from

something below 10,000 at one peak to more than 60,000 at another. It is a

striking fact that the introduced Hungarian partridge and ring-necked pheasant

now show cycles synchronous with those of the native grouse.

        A complete cycle, commencing at the peak year with prodigious numbers,

shows the same general picture in each decade. In the case of the snowshoe

rabbit, Seton (7) estimates that this species may attain a density of several

thousand to the square mile in favored districts and a possible total population

in an area the size of the Province of Alberta of perhaps 100,000,000. Because

rabbits are normally of no commercial value, recorded figures are rare, but

some exist in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s archives. Only a few posts on the

shores of Hudson Bay apparently bothered with rabbit skins; the highest figure

for any one year appeared to be 143,930, in 1867.

        During World War II, however, owing to lack of shipping facilities from

Australia, an unexpected demand for rabbit skins from Canada developed in the

United States. From Alberta alone, mainly from the Peace River country, nearly

6,000,000 skins were shipped out in 1942, a peak year. contracts for the follow–

ing season, however, when the cra c s h hit, had to be cancelled for lack of rabbits; —

there were not enough left to make collections worth while (6). The episode

well illustrates the precipitate nature of the crash. A percentage generally

survives the first year, but two years after the peak it may be impossible to

find a single winter rabbit track over miles of territory. Slowly the animals

recover, within ten years, to reach another stupendous peak, when the story

repeats itself. In rough outline, this is the fate of all the cycling fraternity-

003a      |      Vol_III-0321                                                                                                                  

004      |      Vol_III-0322                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Rowan: The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

upland game birds, fur-bearing mammals, and such birds as magpies.

        Grouse are probably never as abundant as rabbits, but they nevertheless

exist in millions when the peak has developed. The greatest movement on record

occurred in 1932, when a heavy influx of grouse, supposedly from the Hudson Bay

region, flooded southern Ontario and Quebec (8). In spite of their vast numbers,

the grouse never established themselves, for the subsequent years were crash years

when a hoodoo seemed to pervade the North, and none of the cyclic species appeared

to hold its own.

        The outstanding feature of the ten-year cycle is its synchronous nature

across Canada, affecting the whole Dominion approximately simultaneously. It

is also synchronous as to certain species. The snowshoe rabbit and all species

of grouse, for instance, come and go together. Many of the fur bearers lag

behind by a year, or two years, or several years, but their peaks occupy the same

relative position in the cycle decade after decade. The regularity is such as to make

forecasts of oncoming peaks at least a reasonable p r robability.

        Certain species offer peculiar complications, among the foremost being the

muskrat and beaver. Both are dependent on water levels for subsistence. While

the rat has to take things as they come, the beaver can, up to a point, conserve

its own water supply and is less directly affected. Yet it is obvious that this

dependence on water must modify the cycle in both species. The large mammals seem

to be entirely immune, while mice, as already mentioned, have a much briefer

periodicity of approximately four years. Foxes, and probably coyotes, which

indulge in a mixed diet running from insects and mice to carrion, also show com–

plications, depending possibly on their feeding habits. Possibly there is only

one fur bearer that is wholly dependent on rabbit, the lynx, which has been

described as “merely an animated rabbit.” The lynx chart (Fig. 1) is consequently

005      |      Vol_III-0323                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Rowan: The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

a close duplicate of the rabbit curve. Next to the lynx, the various species of

grouse and the Hungarian partridge, and possibly the magpie, show an almost

equally precise coincidence with rabbit numbers, and it is in this apparent

correlation that the chief scientific interest of the ten-year cycle centers.

What controls this remarkable periodicity? What is the common factor that keeps

the cycles of so many species, including certain insects (e.g., grasshoppers),

birds, and mammals, in incessant phase decade after decade?

        The answer is unknown, but there seems to be two possibilities: ( 1 ) weather,

and ( 2 ) some cosmic factor. The possibility that numbers alone are responsible

for synchrony can be dismissed. In the first place, there is no reason to

suppose that the rate of the increase of numbers would be the same in different

areas or in different species, and secondly there is a clear disparity in peak

populations from period to period. If 1,000 rabbits to the square mile form a

sufficient crowd to permit disease to destroy the hordes, why should three or

four times that number survive during some subsequent and much greater peak?

It as least suggests the probability that the number does not lie in numbers

alone. The impression is heightened by the fact that numerous diseases (not

just one) affect rabbits and grouse at the time of crash, suggesting that re–

sistance may then be at a low ebb, due possibly to vitamin or other deficiencies.

The investigations of Dr. R. G. Green of Minneapolis on the snowshoe rabbit

strongly support this view(3).

        As to the possibility of weather as the common factor, the probabilities,

are almost wholly against this explanation, for it is impossible to believe that

the marked discrepancies of weather across the 3,000 miles of Canada’s breadth,

with drought frequently prevailing in the west simultaneously with floods in

the east (or vice versa), could do anything but disrupt the synchronization

that is so typical of the cycle. It could hardly induce it.

        A cosmic factor of some sort could theoretically provide the perfect key

006      |      Vol_III-0324                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Rowan: The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

to the ten-year cycle. The chief difficulty is that no such factor is known to

exist. There are, however, some suggestive scraps of information, such as the

records of atmospheric ozone, made in London and Paris during the years 1880

to 1910 (4). They show very marked peaks that coincide almost precisely with

those of Canada’s rabbit population. Unfortunately, they are the only records

of their kind in existence. Some authorities might say that the ozone records

are European while the rabbit records are Canadian, and that there is probably

no connection between them. When, however, one recalls that the grouse maxima

and minima — as far as they are known — of northern Europe appear to coincide

with those of Canada, there may after all be a correlation. If one adds to this

the known association of the terrestrial ultraviolet supply with the ozone layers

of the upper atmosphere, one can perceive a possible biological factor of great

importance that could conceivably provide the key to the entire ten-year cycle.

All of this must be considered speculative at present, but it suggests an approach

that might be most remunerative.

        The main facts of the ten-year cycle are now sufficiently well known for

general acceptance. It is clear that the cycle is a phenomenon of the North

with basic repercussions on human as well as animal life. When grouse, rabbits,

and other smaller mammals in the Subarctic die off in millions at the time of

crash, a vacuum is left in the fauna that cannot help but have a destructive

effect on all predators (except marine forms), and man is a predator. The

explorers and surveyors who today fly into the northern wilderness amply supplied

with canned foods may be entirely immune, but such is not the case with the

native population of nomadic Indians who depend neither on the sea (like many

Eskimos) nor on the amenities of civilization for survival. They, like the

rabbits, show a ten-year cycle of welfare: periodic starvation and disease are

007      |      Vol_III-0325                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Rowan: The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

equally their lot. From that viewpoint alone, the ten-year cycle becomes a

matter of direct human concern.

008      |      Vol_III-0326                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology. Rowan: The Ten-Year Cycle in the Subarctic

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Christian, E.V. Unflinching . London., Murray, 1937.

2. Elton, Charles, and Nicholson, Mary. “The ten-year cycle in numbers of

of the lynx in Canada,” J.Animal Ecol . Vol.11, no.2, pp.215-44,

Nov. 1942.

3. Green, R.G. “Shock disease and the snowshoe hare cycle s ,” Science , vol.87, ✓

pp.298-99, 1938.

4. Huntington, Ellsworth. Mainspring s of civilization . N.Y., Wiley, 1945.

5. Mair, Charles, and Macfarlane, R.R. Through the Mackenzie Basin , Toronto,

Briggs, 1908.

6. Rowan, William. The Ten-Year Cycle. 2nd ed. Enl. And new (rev) . Edmonton, ✓

University of Alberta, Dept. of Extension, 1948.

7. Seton, E.T. The Arctic Prairies . Lond., Constable, 1912.

8. Snyder, L.L. A Study of the Sharp-Tailed Grouse . Toronto, Univ. of Toronto

Press, 1935. Toronto. Univ. Studies Biol.Ser . No.40.

9. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. The Friendly Arctic . New ed. N.Y., Macmillan, 1943.

       

William Rowan

Fossil Mammals of the North

001      |      Vol_III-0327                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Edwin H. Colbert)

FOSSIL MAMMALS OF THE NORTH

        At the present time the Arctic is the abode of a considerable

mammalian fauna. In the north circumpolar region are found various

mammals well adapted for life in these high latitudes. On land there

is the usual ecological balance between herbivorous mammals and the

carnivores that prey upon them, here exemplified on the one hand by such

animals as reindeer or caribou, moose, musk oxen, mountain goats, and

various rodents, especially lemmings; and on the other hand by wolves,

foxes, and wolverines. In the oceans and along the shores are polar

bears, seals, and various cetaceans, preying in part upon one another and

in part upon fishes and other denizens of the waters. The great pageant

of life is enacted here as it is in more southerly regions, but on a re–

stricted scale.

        There is reason to think that similar mammalian associations were

characteristic of the arctic region in the immediate geologic past, while

in more distant geologic epochs the mammalian life of the Far North was

even more abundant and varied than it is now. This last statement is

based upon two considerations. In the first place it is known from

geologic evidence that climates were much milder during most of Cenozoic

times than they are today. Until the beginning of the Pleistocene period,

002      |      Vol_III-0328                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Colbert: Fossil Mammals

when there was a widespread refrigeration of the Northern Hemisphere

consequent upon the advance of the first great continental ice sheet,

zonal climates would seem to have been less sharply established than they now

are, and temperate conditions would seem to have extended to very high lati–

tudes. Thus it can be supposed that characteristic temperate-zone mammals

then lived in the Far North; that the adaptations to an arctic environment

had not yet taken place.

        Secondly, the fossil record shows that there were extensive intercom–

tinental movements of mammals by way of a trans-Bering land bridge between

Eurasia and North America during Cenozoic times. Such a northerly migration

route would have led to the northern spread of mammalian faunas during the

time the intercontinental land connection was in existence.

        Unfortunately, however, there is virtually no fossil record of

mammalian life in the Far North during the pre-Pleistocene phases of the

Cenozoic era of earth history. Perhaps future explorations, especially in

Siberia, may bring to light some truly northern pre-Pleistocene mammalian

faunas, but at the present time we must face the fact that our knowledge

of this aspect of mammalian evolutionary history remains a blank. In most

northern regions the Pleistocene glaciations effectively removed any records

of pre-Pleistocene mammalian life, if such existed. Therefore, our knowledge

of former mammalian life in the North, as based upon an adequate fossil

record, is confined to the Pleistocene period. Here the record is well

known and rather widely spread. Pleistocene mammals are known from Alaska,

parts and rather widely spread. Pleistocene mammals are known from Alaska,

parts of northern Canada, Siberia, and the Scandinavian Peninsula.

        The Pleistocene fossils of the north circumpolar region show that

mammalian life during the great ice age was rather similar to what it is now,

003      |      Vol_III-0329                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Colbert: Fossil Mammals

but more extensive. In other words, there were various mammals then

inhabiting the North which no longer exist; life in that region at the

present time is impoverished as compared with the life of the Pleistocene.

This is the result of a taxonomic reduction in the mammalian faunas of the

North during the transition from Pleistocene to Recent conditions.

        Ecologically, the Pleistocene period was a time of fluctuating environ–

mental conditions in the arctic region. During the times when the great

continental glaciers advanced southward, extreme arctic environments pre–

vailed in the northern part of the earth. During the interglacial phases,

when the glaciers retreated to the north, temperate environments extended

into high latitudes. These alternations are reflected in the distribution

of Pleistocene faunas by the extension of arctic mammals to the south during

glacial stages, and to a lesser extent by the advance of temperate mammals

to the north during interglacial stages.

        Zoogeographically, the Pleistocene was a period of broad circumpolar

mammalian distributions, a condition that has been continued into Recent

times. Of course there were certain differences between the Pleistocene

faunas of Eurasia and those of North America, as there are today, but

generally speaking the resemblance far outweighed the differences. Con–

sequently, in Pleistocene times as today there was a great holarctic fauna

that inhabited the land masses around the North Pole. Similar or even

identical species extended from northern Europe through northern Asia,

across to Alaska, and through northern Canada.

        In Pleistocene times various large herbivores were prominent in the

faunas of the northern latitudes. Among the artiodactyls, or even-toed

hoofed mammals, it is evident that large herds of reindeer or caribou

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( Rangifer ) roamed the arctic tundras through northern Eurasia and North

America. The musk ox, Ovibos , also had a wide circumpolar range in

Pleistocene times; and during glacial stages this animal moved as far south

as latitude 40° N., as did [ ?] so many arctic mammals. In addition to Ovibos ,

there were other Pleistocene musk oxen belonging to several distinct genera

distributed over the northern part of North America.

        Bison were varied and numerous during the Pleistocene period, and the

fossil record shows that at times they extended into northern latitudes.

For instance, abundant remains of bison have been found in Alaska. These

for the most part belong to a species now extinct, a very large bison with

enormously long, curved horns. It should be emphasized here that the bison

was of Eurasiatic origin and that the migration of this animal into North

America (of which region it is commonly regarded as typical) took place

across the trans-Bering land bridge during early Pleistocene times. As

the bison spread through North America in the Pleistocene period it divided

into a number of species, of which only one, Bison bison , has survived into

Recent times. The sol d e surviving Old World bison, which was widely spread

in northern Eurasia in the Pleistocene period, is the aurochs, Bison bonasus .

        In this connection it should be said that other large artiodactyls in

addition to bison were of Old World origin and cross ed the trans-Bering land

bridge into the New World in early Pleistocene times. The reindeer and the

musk ox, already discussed, are examples of such a distributional history.

Another example is Oreamnos , the mountain “goat” (actually a rupicaprine

antelope), found in Pleistocene deposits in Alaska. Another is the moose,

Alces . Still others are the bighorn sheep, Ovis , and the wapiti, Cervus ,

these two not so generally arctic as the forms previously considered.

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        Certain artiodactyls crossed from northern Asia into Alaska in

Pleistocene times, but never extended beyond the Alaskan area. Thus

their distribution was dominantly palearctic or Old World, rather than

holarctic or circumpolar. Prominent examples of artiodactyls that reached

Alaska but got no farther in the Pleistocene period are the saiga antelope,

Saiga , and the takin, Budorcas .

        The perissodactyls, or odd-toe s d mammals, are represented in the

arctic region durin f g the Pleistocene period by a horse, Equus , and by two

rhinocero s ses, the woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta , and the elasmothere,

Elasmotherium .

        The Pleistocene horse, Equus , originated in North America, from which

region it migrated into Eurasia by way of the trans-Bering land bridge at

the beginning of the Pleistocene period. Thus its origin and distributional

history constitute a record just opposite to the records for the various

artiodactyls which have been discussed. The horse is and probably always

has been a subtropical to temperate-zone mammal, so that presence of

fossil horses in Alaska is an indication of relatively warm conditions

there at the time the horses inhabited that area. Perhaps hoses lived in

arctic latitudes during interglacial stages, as probably did some of the

artiodactyls such as the bison, the moose, and the takin. It is interesting

to see that the horse eventually became extinct in the land of its origin,

but continued successfully in Eurasia.

        One of the characteristic Pleistocene mammals of the Old World was

the woolly rhinoceros. This animal, related to the modern white rhinoceros

of Africa, was clothed with a heavy covering of long hair, an obvious

adaptation to arctic conditions. It lived in northern Eurasia, where fossils

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have been found, including some mummified remains, and where excellent

cave drawings made by early men have been preserved.

        The woolly rhinoceros seems to have been perfectly adapted for wide

wanderings across the circumpolar continents, yet this animal never crossed

the Pleistocene land bridge into North America. The woolly mammoth, closely

associated ecologically with the woolly rhinoceros in Eurasia, readily made

the crossing into Alaska, from whence it spread widely across North America.

If the mammoth could do this, why could not the rhinoceros? The failure

of the woolly rhinoceros to enter the New World is one of the many puzzles

of Pleistocene paleontology.

        The other northern rhinoceros, Elasmotherium , a large and highly

specialized rhinoceros characterized by a gigantic single horn on the

forehead, was even more limited in its north Eurasiatic distribution than

was the woolly rhinoceros.

        Perhaps no mammal is more characteristic [ ?] of the Pleistocene period

in the Northern Hemisphere than the woolly mammoth, Elephas primigenius .

This long-haired elephant was well known to early man in Europe, who has

left us many drawings of the animal on the walls of caves. Moreover,

frozen carcasses of the woolly mammoth have been found in Siberia and in

Alaska, so we have a rather full knowledge of the soft anatomy of this beast,

and even of the food it ate.

        The woolly mammoth was closely related to the m modern Asiatic elephant,

and was similar to the modern elephant in size and general proportions. It

was characterized, however, by its heavy coat of reddish-brown hair, which

enabled it to live in arctic climates, and by its unusually long, curved

tusks, especially large in the males. The tusks of the woolly mammoth have

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been found in such great abundance in Siberia as to constitute an important

source of ivory in past years. Evidently these animals were abundant during

Pleistocene times; probably they traveled in great herds as do the Asiatic

and African elephants of the present time.

        As mentioned above, the woolly mammoth crossed from Eurasia into North

America in early Pleistocene times and rapidly spread through the northern

part of the New World. Consequently this animal had a wide distribution

through much of the Pleistocene period.

        [ ?] Another proboscidean that reached northern latitudes in the

Pleistocene period was the American mastodon, Mastodon americanus . This was

a heavier animal than the mammoth, not so tall at the shoulder, and with

gently cur b v ed tusks. Like the mammoth, the American mastodon had a heavy

covering of hair, which enabled it to live in cold climes.

        Remains of the mastodon have been found in Alaska (they are very

abundant throughout the United States and southern Canada). There is some

indication that the mastodon may have crossed into Siberia, but, if so, it

did not become firmly established in northern Asia. It was essentially a

North American mammal.

        So far we have been concerned with the large herbivores that lived in

the arctic or subarctic region during Pleistocene times. These animals

certainly constitute the bulk of the northern Pleistocene faunas, partly

because they were large. Their bones were less easily destroyed than were

the remains of smaller mammals, and therefore were more li k ely to be preserved

as fossils.

        However, there obviously were many small mammals, especially rodents and

hares, that lived in the arctic region during the Pleistocene period. For

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instance, lemmings are especially charactistic of the Arctic and the

present time, and such was probably the case during the Pleistocene period.

Beavers, Castor , have been found in the Pleistocene of Alaska, and it is

reasonable to think that hares were abundant in the arctic in Pleistocene

times, as they are today.

        The record of the rodents is obviously incomplete, as it usually is

in fossil faunas. Perhaps careful collecting in the future will add greatly

to our knowedge of these small mammals as they lived in far northern regions

during the Pleistocene period.

        In a normal mammalian fauna the presence of large herbivores, such as

perissodactyls and artiodactyls, is balanced by the presence of large and

highly predaceous carnivores, while the presence of small herbivorous and

omnivorous mammals like rodents and hares is balanced by the presence of

small carnivores. Consequently, there were large and small carnivorous

mammals in the arctic region similar to the carnivores that still live in

this area.

        Perhaps the most ubiquitous of the large carnivores was the wolf, Canis ,

which ranged through the arctic portions of Eurasia and North America, as it

does today. This predator harried the large mammals, with the possible

exception of such giants as the rhinoceroses, the mammoth, and the mastodon.

Also present as an aggressive predator was the wolverine, Gulo . Foxes

belonging to the genera Vulpes Vulpes and especially Alopex (the arctic fox) preyed

upon the rodents and hares.

        Bears, Ursus , were prominent in the northern faunas of Pleistocene

times. These large carnivores were obviously as omnivorous in their feeding

habits in Pleistocene times as they are today; consequently they must have

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lived upon berries, fish, small mammals, and occasional large mammals, as

do their modern descendants. In Europe the giant cave bear, Ursus spelaeus ,

was a contemporary of Pleistocene man. It ranged into northern Europe, and

it quite possibly extended into the arctic region, although the evidence for

this is not definitive.

        The extension of the ranges of large Pleistocene felines into arctic

areas cannot be definitely decided, upon the basis of present knowledge.

In Europe the cave lion, Felis spelaea , was found in England and comparable

latitudes, but whether this large ca r t ever reached areas north of latitude

60° N. is at present unknown. The same might be said for the large cats in

North America. However, it is probable that some small cats, especially

the lynxes, inhabited the subarctic and arctic regions in Pleistocene times,

as they do today.

        The discussion up to this point has been concerned with the Pleistocene

terrestrial mammals of the North. These are the forms for which the fossil

record is most satisfactory. Something should be said now of the aquatic

mammals, of which scattered fossils are known.

        The evidence would seem to indicate that the aquatic mammals of

Pleistocene times were essentially the same as they are today. In the deeper

oceanic water were various cetaceans, while along the shores and the ice

borders were several genera of seals, the walrus, Odobenus , and the polar

bear, Tha r l a r ctos . The ecological relationships of these mammals — with

each other and with their environment — are well known, and need not be

elaborated at this place. One element in the Pleistocene and Recent aquatic

fauna of the Arctic is now missing. This is the northern or Steller sea co s w ,

Rhytina , which became extinct a scant two hundred years ago.

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        The end of the Pleistocene period in the Northern Hemisphere is

generally defined by the retreat of the last great continental ice sheet –

the Wisconsin glaciations in North America and the Wűrm glaciation in

Europe. This glacial retreat evidently began about thirty or forty

thousand years ago in the lower latitudes that mark the extreme advance

of the ice. Naturally from south to north the disappearance of the con–

tinental glacier occurred at progressively later dates, so that in the

extreme northern latitudes this even took place only a few thousand years

ago. Consequently, it is impossible to assign a precise date for the end

of Pleistocene times.

        However that may be, the fact is that the extinctions of certain large

mammals, commonly regarded as taking place at the end of the Pleistocene

period, actually did not occur until after the beginning of the glacial

retreat. In fact, from the fresh condition of many Pleistocene fossils

(with the frequent preservation in arctic regions of hair, muscle tissue,

and other perishable details of soft anatomy) there is good reason to think

that some mammals, now extinct, were living a very few thousand years ago.

Therefore, properly speaking, their extinction was a post-Pleistocene event.

        Whether the extinctions occurred slightly before or slightly after the

close of the Pleistocene period is a matter of academic importance. The

crucial fact is that various mammals did disappear from the earth during

the gradual transition from Pleistocene to Recent times, and it is the

disappearance of these mammals that marks the dictinction between Pleistocene

and Recent faunas.

        In the arctic regions of the northern continents the notable extinctions

that took place near the close of the Pleistocene period were as follows:

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( 1 ) The woolly mammoth, widely distributed and very numerous in arctic

Eurasia and North America became extinc e t everywhere. ( 2 ) :Likewise the

American mastodon disappeared completely. ( 3 ) The woolly rhinoceros of

northern Eurasia became extinct. ( 4 ) The elasmothere also disappeared;

this extinction may have taken place well before the end of the Pleistocene

period. ( 5 ) The horse disappeared from the New World, but it continued

in Eurasia. ( 6 ) All musk oxen except the genus Ovibos became extinct.

( 7 ) Various species of bison disappeared, leaving only Bison bonasus in

Eurasia and Bison bison in North America. (Farther to the south, still

other large mammals became extinct, but they are outside the scope of the

present discussion.)

        Such extinctions as those listed above were indeed of great import, and

since they affected large and numerous elements of the northern faunas they

emphasize the differences between the faunas containing them and subsequent

ones. They point up the fact that the modern arctic faunas are indeed

impoverished as compared with those of Pleistocene times.

        Why should there have been such broad extinctions at the end of the

Pleistocene period? This is a question to which there is no satisfactory

answer. The problem of extinction is a baffling one, and as yet we have

but little insight to help us solve this problem. So far as we can see,

many of the large mammals so typical of the Pleistocene period should have

continued into Recent times, yet they became extinct completely and rather

suddenly.

        It is interesting that early man was associated with these now extinct

mammals in the Old World, and that he certainly entered the New World before

the Pleistocene or post-Pleistocene extinction took place. Was man a

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significant factor in any of these extinctions? This is something to

speculate about. Whether or not man had anything to do with the extinction

of mammals at the end of Pleistocene times, the sad fact is that he is a

potent force that threatens to blot out various contemporanesou species of

mammals.

       

BIBLIOGRAPHY

        This list of references is not intended to be complete. Boule and Piveteau,

and Romer, are general works on fossil vertebrates that include the genera of

fossil mammals characteristic of the arctic Pleistocene. In Osborn, 1910, there

is a long chapter on the Pleistocene, in which some attention is given to the

Pleistocene of the far north. The large monograph by Osborn on the Proboscidea

discusses the distribution of mammoths and other proboscideans in the circum–

polar regions. The monograph by Tolmachoff, while concerned primarily with

mammoths and rhinoceroses, does contain and extensive bibliography in which there

are included works of a more general nature that have to do with the Pleistocene

mammals of the arctic region. The same is true of the monograph by Skinner and

Kaisen.

---

1. Boule, M., and Piveteau, J. Les Fossiles: Elements de Paleontologie . Paris,

1935.

2. Buckland, William. “On the occurrence of the remains of elephants, and other

quadrupeds, in the cliffs of frozen mud, in Escholtz Bay, and in

other distant parts of the shores of the arctic seas,” Beechey, F. W.,

Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering’s Strait . London,

1831, vol.2.

3. Digby, George Bassett. The Mammoth and Mammoth-Hunting in Northeast Siberia .

London, Witherby, 1926.

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[ ?]

4. Fischer de Waldheim, G. “Notice sur les boeufs fossiles de Siberie,”

Soc.Imp.Nat.Moscou, Bull ., seconde annee, art.6, 1830.

5. Gilmore, C.W. “Smithsonian exploration in Alaska in 1907 in search of

Pleistocene fossil vertebrates,” Smithson.Misc.Coll . vol.51, pp.

1-38, 1908.

6. Hay, O.P. “The pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals

from the States east of the Mississippi River and from the Cana–

dian Provinces east of longitude 95°,” Carneg.Inst.Wash. Publ .,

no.322, 1923.

7. ----. “The Pleistocene of the middl e region of North America and its verte–

brated animals,” Ibid ., no.322A, 1924.

8. ----. “The Pleistocene of the western region of North America and its

vertebrated animals,” Ibid ., no.322B, 1927.

9. Osborn, Henry Fairfield. The Age of Mammals in Europe, Asia and North

America . New York, 1910.

10. ----. Proboscidea: a Monograph of the Discovery, Evolution, Migration and

Extinction of the Mastodonts and Elephants of the World . N.Y.,

Amer.Mus.Nat.Hist., 1936-42, 2 vols.

11. Pallas, Peter Simon. “De ossibus Sibirias fossilibus,” Acad.Sci.Imp.

Petropolitanse, Novi Comment ., vol.13, 1769.

12. Pavlova, Marie. “Description of fossil mammals collected by the Russian

Arctic Expedition, 1900-1903,” Akad.Nauk.Classe Phys.Mat., Mem .

Zapiski , ser.8, vol.21, 1906. (In Russian.)

13. Pfizenmayer, E.W. Mammutleichen und Urwaldmenschen in Nordost-Sibirien .

Leipzig, 1926.

14. Quackenbush, L.S. “Notes on Alaskan expeditions of 1907 and 1908,” Amer.

Mus.Nat.Hist., Bull . vol.26, pp.87-130. 1909.

15. Romer, A.S. Vertebrate Paleontology . Chicago, 1945.

16. Skinner, Morris, F., and Kaisen, Ove C. “The fossil Bison of Alaska and

preliminary revision of the genus,” Amer.Mus.Nat.Hist. Bull .,

vol.89, art.3, pp.123-256, 1947.

17. Tolmachoff, I.P. “The carcasses of the mammoth and rhinoceros found in

the frozen ground of Siberia,” Amer.Phil.Soc. Trans ., vol.23,

pt.1, art.1, pp. 11-74, 1929.

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18. Tscherski, I.D. “Beschreibung der Semmlung posttertiärer Säugethiere.

(Die wissenschaftliche Resultate von der Kaiserlichen Akademie

der Wissenschaften zur Erforschung des Janalandes und der Neusi–

birischen Inseln in den Jahren 1885 und 1886 susgesandten Ex–

pedition),” Akad.Nauk. Mem . ser.7, Vol.40, 1890.

19. Wilkerson, Albert S. “Some frozen deposits in the goldfields of interior

Alaska. A study of the Pleistocene deposits of Alaska,” Amer .

Mus.Novit . no.525, 1932.

       

Edwin H. Colbert

Siberian Mammoth

Unpaginated      |      Vol_III-0341                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Eugene A. Golomshtok)

SIBERIAN MAMMOTH

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Distribution	2
Preservation of Carcasses	3
Siberian Discoveries	4
Adams’ Mammoth	5
The Berezovka Mammoth	7
Other Discoveries	9
The Taimyr Mammoth	11
Physical Characteristics	12
Feeding Habits	14
Mammoth and Prehistoric Man	15
Early Description and Folklore	17
Ivory Industry	20
Bibliography	22

001      |      Vol_III-0342                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoology

(Eugene A. Golomshtok)

       

SIBERIAN MAMMOTH

        The Siberian or woolly mammoth ( Elephas primigenius ) is an extinct

circumpolar form of elephant which lived during Quarternary times. It is

considered to be one of the final members of a long series of special and

ascending mutations extending back through the entire Pleistocene period,

and first recognized in the upper Pliocene of Italy as Elephas primigenius

mut. astensia . It was described by Deperet and Mayer in 1923. More speci–

fically, the north Siberian mammoth developed from the south Siberian or

European animal in the same way that the latter had originated from Elephas

trogontherii and E. antiques , i.e., through decreases of the dental plates

and the thickness of layers of enamel.

        The name “mammoth” corresponds to the Russian mamont or mamut , a word

of uncertain origin. Besides numerous popular and semipopular designations,

the scienti s f ic name for the northern mammoth underwent many changes. One of

the earliest was the term Elephas mammonteus (Cuvier, 1796). Although the

current designation E. primigenius was assigned by Blumenbach in 1806, other

names ( E. primaevus , E. mammouth , E. jubatus , E. paniscus , E. giganteus and

Mammut sibiricus ) were used for awhile. In 1924 the great American specialist

H. F. Osborn insisted that the fundamental cranial and dental characteristics

and proportions clearly distinguish the mammoth from the modern genus Elephas ,

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as typified by the Indian elephant. Consequently he introduced the generic

designation Mammoteus , typified by Mammonteus primigenius — the Siberian

mammoth which includes Mammonteus primigenius americanus , Mammonteus

primigenius compressus , and other subspecies of the northern steppes and

tundras. Another species, apparently existing at the same time as Elephas

primigenius in European Russian, is a dwarf form E. stenotoechus .

       

Distribution

        The mammoth, which appeared at the end of the Pliocene era, is

definitely associated with cold and arctic conditions. During the inter–

glacial periods, it migrated to the north, following the receding ice fields.

        The Siberian mammoth (including American and Alaskan subspecies) appears

to have ranged almost exclusively a north of latitude 40° N. from the British

Isles across northern Europe (except the Scandinavian Peninsula), northern

Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada. In western Europe the mammoth followed

the path of the glaciers and it is known that at one time it migrated as far

south as the Mediterranean, where its remains have been found. In France

mammoth remains have been found in archaeological sites from the Acheullean

period to the upper Paleolithic period, after which it disappeared. In Siberia,

especially on the New Siberian Islands, the mammoth existed during the last

glacial and postglacial periods.

        Conditions during the last glacial age were evidently favorable for the

existence of the mammoth, and its disappearance coincides with the retreat

of the glaciers toward the Baltic. Here the finds are much rarer, and farther

northwest they disappear completely. Climatic and geological changes which

subsequently took place are the main causes for the disappearance of the

mammoth. The change in climate was accompanied by severe snowstorms which

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caused great quantities of snow to accumulate in the valleys, and the

transformation of this snow into fossil ice prevented the mammoth from

obtaining sufficient food. The extreme degree of specialization (incurving

form of the tusks) and general clumsiness, which made the mammoth easy prey

for Paleolithic hunters, may be considered as contributory factors in its

extinction. Some writers, including George B. Digby, consider the large

number of mammoth finds in Siberia to be the result of a migration of the

animals fleeing from European hunters.

       

Preservation of Carcasses

        Most of the remains of the mammoth have been found in Siberia, including

complete frozen carcasses which were often in a surprisingly good state of

preservation. Carcasses are usually found on top of bluffs buried near the

surface in the layer of ever-frozen ground. The mammoth-bearing deposits

sometimes reach a thickness of several tens of feet, but sometimes they are

very thin. In northeastern Siberia layers of fossil ice underlie these

deposits. Contrary to the assertion of some writers, mammoth e remains are

never found in the fossil ice. Thus both stratigraphically and structurally

the mammoth belongs to the youngest generation of the fossil elephant family.

        There are many theories explaining the excellent state of preservation

of mammoth carcasses in Siberia. One of the most widely accepted is that the

animal may have fallen into the soft mud bed of a stream caused by the thawing

of frozen ground and fossil ice. Such streams usually contain extremely soft

and sticky mud, which is the product of loam layers covering the fossil ice.

These mud beds are absolutely impassable. One trapped in a moving mud stream,

the bulky body of the mammoth formed a sort of dam against which mud piled up

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until it covered the whole animal and suffocated him. Several recorded

cases of death from asphyxia support this theory. Such must have been the

fate of the Berezovka mammoth and one found near Moscow.

        Another possibility is that the mammoths had drowned in rivers and lakes,

especially during winter or early spring, and were either buried on the spot,

or drifted downstream to be buried somewhere in the lower parts of the rivers

within their deltas or embouchure sediments. Such was the case of Adams’

mammoth.

        The widespread theory that mammoth flesh may be eaten by human beings

has been discarded by many authors. The meat usually has a strong smell of

putrefaction, the result of decay which set in after it was exposed. In

addition, a slow process of decay was taking place in the carcass even when’

it was frozen. Soon after the animal’s death, by alternate exposure to

weak sunlight and cold air during the day, and freezing at night, a slow

drying-up process began, thus insuring preservation, but a sufficient degree

of decay took place to make the flesh unpalatable to men, although dogs are

reported to eat it readily.

       

Siberian Discoveries

        The first western European mention of the mammoth is presumably that

of Josias Logan, who in 1611 brought to London and “elephant” tusk which had

been found by the Samoyeds in the region of the Pechora River. Later, in

1644, Mikhail Stadukhin reported that according to the Yakuts the islands

now called New Siberian Islands were rich in “great elephant” bones.

        The first written acount which introduced the knowledge of preserved

mammoth bodies to western Europe was apparently that of Nicolas Witsen, in

Noord en Oost Tartaryen , published in Amsterdam in 1692. A more detailed

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description was given by Evert Y a s brants Ides in Driejaarige Reize Naar China s

(Amsterdam, 1704). He described the finding of mammoth remains in the Lena,

Yenisei, and other rivers, when the ice broke up in spring and the floods,

washing away the banks, revealed bones, tusks, and sometimes preserved flesh.

He reported that his companion, whose business was the collection of mammoth

ivory, “found the head of a mammoth uncovered by a fall of frozen earth.

When they dug it out they found most of the flesh was putrefied…”

According to Ides, the foreleg of the mammoth was found somewhere On the

Yenisei and was taken to Turukhansk.

        Subsequently, a number of other travelers (D.S. Messerchmidt in 1719.

Khariton Laptev in 1739, and the Gmelin brothers in 1765) reported mammoth

finds. The descriptions by Witsen, Ides, and others were generally dismissed

as fantastic and incredible, and little attention was paid to them. A

scientific work on the subject was published in St. Petersburg in 1771 with

the title D e reliquiis animalium exoticorum per Asiam borealem repertio

complementum .

        In 1787 the body of a mammoth washed out by spring waters was discovered

in an upright position near the village of Alazeia, 65 miles from the town of

Sredne-Kolymsk. It retained its skin, and, in some places, its hair. Unfor–

tunately, Lieutenant Sarychev, who received the news of the discovery, could

not reach the place before the carcass had disappeared.

        Adams’ Mammoth . The famous Adams’ mammoth, the basis for the first

scientific description of the animal, was found by a Tungus hunter in 1799

in the delta of the Lena River. The body was exposed gradually and was

reported to be nearly complete. In the fifth year after the discovery the

tusks became exposed and the Tungus hunter chopped them off and sold them.

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It was not until 1806 that the zoologist M. F. Adams, a member of the

Russian Academy of Sciences, arrived at the site of the discovery, only to

find that the body had suffered a good deal from the ravages of wolves, bears,

and dogs. It was a long-maned male animal. The trunk and tail, which had

been seen and sketched by an eyewitness, Boltunov, were gone. One of the

ears, measuring over ten inches in length, was found, and one eye, which

still retained its color. The color was lost, however, during the drying

process later on. The skin on the head, on one foot, and on the side of

the animal which was lying on the ground were the only soft parts which

survived. It is said that the Yakuts had fed their dogs with mammoth flesh

during famines.

        Adams brought with him almost a complete skeleton, with ligaments,

about 35 pounds of hair, and some entrails. He purchased two other tusks

to replace the missing ones, which were reported to have been ten feet long

and to have weighed 360 pounds. Samples of the hair of this m ammoth have

found their way to various museums in Europe, and the skeleton is in the

Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Between the teeth and in the

stomach, needles of coniferous plants and young shoots of leaf-bearing

shrubs were found. The most important results of Adams’ expedition were

published in the Journal du Nord, vol. 32, in St. Petersburg, 1807. It was

established that the mammoth had been found in permanently frozen ground.

        In 1805 Captain Potapov, who was bringing supplies to the Kruzenstern

hydrographical expedition, saw the body of a mammoth on the shores of the

Arctic Sea. He collected some hair and sent it to Blumenbach. About 1820

a mammoth was found in the Yakutsk region, and a well-preserved leg was seen

by Schrenk. In 1839, on the steep shore of a tundra lake south of the Yenisei,

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a body, less preserved than Adams’ mammoth, was found. It was brought to the

Moscow University Museum where it was studied by Gliebov. A. F. Middendorf,

in 1843-44, found a fairly complete skeleton in a poor state of preservation

on the Taimyr Peninsula. Other discoveries before 1910 are noted on a

map in Les Mammouths de Siberie , by E. W. Pfizenmeyer (Paris, 1939).

        The Berezovka Mammoth . The most important discovery, up to 1947, was

that of the well-preserved body of a mammoth found in northeastern Siberian

by a Lamut hunter, Tarabykin, in 1900. It was located 200 miles northeast

of Sredne-Kolymsk on the Berezovka River, the right tributary of the Kolyma.

        At first Tarabykin found a tusk which weighed 166 pounds, and then nearby

he found the head of a smaller specimen with a smaller tusk. He cut the tusk

off and sold it to a Russian Cossack who reported the find to the authorities.

As a result of the report, an expedition of the Academy of Sciences set out

from St. Petersburg to Yakutsk in 1901, whence they traveled over 1,500 miles

to the site of the discovery, a three months’ journey. It took a month to

complete a skilful excavation.

        The carcass was found in the best imaginable state of preservation and

was almost untouched by wild animals. The mammoth’s pose, with the forelegs

thrust out, suggested that it had made great efforts to free itself from

some trap into which it had fallen. It was thought that perhaps it had

broken through a crevice or plunged into soft ground and died from the

resulting injuries. This theory is supported by the fact that the pelvis,

a forefoot and a few ribs were found broken. The possibility of death by

suffocation in the mud still exists.

        This specimen was a young male animal with a small tusk (the other tusk

had been removed before the expedition arrived.) The trunk and the skin on

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the head had been eaten away by animals, but most of the skin was preserved

and was suitable for tanning. Most of the fur had fallen out but lay near

the body and was gathered up. The flesh was so well preserved that it was

soft and its outward appearance reminded one of boiled beef. The dogs ate

it willingly. The remains of partially masticated food were found between

the teeth. The tongue was preserved, but it had dried out. The brain, liver,

and alimentary canal had decayed. The analysis of dried clots of blood

showed that the red blood corpuscles and hemoglobin had completely disappeared.

The stomach with its contents was completely preserved.

        The skeleton was complete except for the missing tusk. The Zoological

Museum of the Academy of Sciences undertook a series of studies of the remains,

which were brought there in a frozen state. They also prepared the specimen

for mounting in the original pose in which it had been found. The results of

the study of the frozen portions of the tissues were published in Transactions

of the Academy of Sciences.

        A number of [ ?] scientists participated in the study of the

Berezovka mammoth. The general report was made by the head of the expedition,

O. F. G H er g t z. Osteology and tooth structure were described by B. Zalenski,

geology and stratigraphy of the find by I. P. Tolmachev, anatomy by N. M.

Maliev, microscopic investigation and histology by F. A. Bialinitski-Birulia,

and the contemporary flora by V. N. Sukachev. A good over-all description of

the discovery and excavation appeared in E. F. Ffizenmayer’s Les Mamouths

de Siberie .

        The results of the histological and microscopic studies of the material

brought to St. Petersburg demonstrated that one cannot speak of the complete

preservation of tissues, at least not in the case of the Berezovka mammoth.

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It was established that some changes took place due to decay, though at t

a much slower tampo than normally, perhaps soon after the death of the

animal. Some of these changes are of the type which can be expected when

the process of decay occurs at a low temperature with considerable moisture

present and without a sufficient amount of air. These would correspond to

the conditions to which the body was exposed as it lay for a long time in

cold running water. It is probable that the temperature of the surrounding

ground was periodically raised and lowered, allowing a certain amount of decay.

Later, in the permafrost condition, the thawing stopped altogether and the

body remained frozen until historic times, when the shores of the lakes and

rivers, undercut by water, fell and exposed the Berezovka mammoth as well as

other specimens.

        On the basis of Zelenitski’s description, O. P. Hay in his Observations

on Some Extinct Elephants , Washington, D. C., 1912. Identified the Berezovka

find as a new species, Elephas beresovkius , a term which was not adopted by

the Russians.

        Other Discoveries . Subsequently a number of finds of carcasses in a

good state of preservation were reported, but either they proved to be false,

or the investigating group arrived too late to gain any valuable knowledge.

At present more than forty localities are known where parts of frozen mammoth

carcasses have been found. In addition to these frozen specimens, a large

number of mammoth bones and more or less complete skeletons are known to

have been found in Siberia and the European part of the U.S.S.R.

        In 1924 an unknown Tungus hunter found the well-preserved and of a

mammoth’s trunk in the permanently frozen soil on the shore of the Bolshaia

Bazaikha River in the Kolyma district. The trunk passed from hand to hand,

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and someone cut off the tip and kept it, throwing the rest away. This

tip, the tissues dried and hardened, was accidently discovered in 1929

among the curios of a housewife in the town of Sredne-Kolymsk, and was

brought to the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences.

        The specimen measured 28 centimeters in length, and was dark brown in

color. The inner side was darker than the outside. While it was similar

in general to the trunk of the modern elephant, it had certain significant

anatomical differences, which may be considered adaptations to a different

mode of living. The “lip” at the extreme and tapers gradually to form a

finger-like appendage without any abrupt contraction. This appendage is

much longer and wider than that of any modern elephant species, and gives

the entire tip a two-lobed structure, which enabled the mammoth to pluck

large bunches of grass and moss with greater ease.

        The original hairy covering had long since disappeared b y u t microscopic

examination showed where two sizes of hair were once rooted. There was no

hair on the inner or outer surface of the lips.

        In addition to its paleontological interest, the trunk tip confirmed

anew the keen powers of observation of the ancient cave men, as well as

their ability as accurate draftsmen. The bilobal trunk shown in drawings

of memmoths in Paleolithic caves of Europe had always puzzled archaeologists,

who considered these representations to be inaccurate, in conformity with

current paleontological concepts which assumed the shape of the tip to be

like that of the modern elephant.

        On the America a n continent frozen remains of the mammoth have been

found, either washed out by rivers or uncovered by mining operations. One

of the most interesting finds was the skin of the face, the trunk, and the

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foreleg of a baby mammoth found in Fairbanks Creek, Alaska, on August 28,

1948. This is described by Harold E. Anthony in Natural History , September 1949.

        The Taimyr Mammoth . In 1948 the Leningrad Academy of Sciences was informed

that the skeleton of a mammoth had been discovered on the Taimyr Peninsula, and

an expedition was sent in May 1949 to make a thorough investigation.

        The skeleton was found to be complete except for the tail vertebrae and

a few ribs, which may have been torn away by carnivorous animals soon after

the mammoth died. The bones were almost entirely devoid of flesh; some tufts

of hair, fragments of hide, and a few soft parts were found, but there was

no trace of the stomach.

        A permanently frozen peat bog and a deposit of gravel surrounded the

skeleton, and layers of peat adhering to the bones indicated that at the time

when the animal was buried the development of peat bog in the tundra was much

more rapid than at the present time; therefore the climate must have been

warmer. Further proof of this was shown by the presence of large trunks of

willow trees in the deposits of the first terrace of the Mamontova River.

The investigators came to the conclusion that the gravel in which the skeleton

was found did not represent the spot where the animal had originally lai a n .

It must have died on a river terrace and fallen when the river changed its

course and washed the bank away.

        For the first time the discovery of mammoth remains was accompanied by

a detailed study of conditions of stratification in the Quaternary period

and a comparison of vegetation with that of the past. According to these

investigations, it appears that the last habitat of the mammoth was charac–

terized by a type of tundra and forested tundra which is now found in more

southerly regions. Scientists hope that the material collected by this

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expedition will help to clarify the hitherto unsolved problems of the

conditions of life of the mammoth and the reasons for its disappearance.

       

Physical Characteristics

        The mammoth was an elephant-like animal about 10 feet in height. Its

body was built in different [ ?] proportions from that of the present-day

Indian elephant; the head constituted about one-third of the body. The head

was pointed, with a bulbous or well-rounded forehead rising like a sloping

dome at the top. The entire length of the skeleton of Adams’ mammoth, from

the fore head ward ar e c of the tusks to the tuberosities of the ischium was 15 feet,

the vertebral column was 9 to 10 feet long. Other measurements were as

follows: height , 9 feet 3 inches; tusk, 9 feet; humerus, 3 feet 4 inches;

ulna, 2 feet 11 inches; femur, 3 feet 10 inches; tibia, 2 feet 4 inches.

The cranium exhibits fore and aft compression resulting in bathyc e phaly

and hypsicephaly.

        The body covering consisted of two types: ( 1 ) soft, wooly hair about

an inch long, varying from faded yellow to h y ellow-brown; ( 2 ) much coarser

hair, dark rust-brown in color, often reaching a length of 20 inches. This

longer hair was especially well developed on the sides of the lower part

of the body and formed a fringe, similar to that of the yak, which covered the

cheeks, shoulders, rump, and legs down to the horny ends of the toes.

        The skin was unusually thick, with a 3-inch layer of fat just below

its surface.

        The tusks were from 9 to 10 feet in length and were curved to form the

shape of a crescent moon. In adults and ends of the tusks curved inward

and in many cases they crossed in the middle line. They could not used

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for digging, fighting, or uprooting, because of their extreme curvature.

These tusks weighed from 180 to 200 pounds, on the average.

        The trunk was extremely well developed, and its tip was different from

that of the Indian elephant, with the two-lobed structured which has been

described.

        The ear was somewhat smaller than that of the Indian elephant; it

measured 15 inches in length and 6 1/2 inches in breadth, and was covered

with a thick coat of short wool and long hair.

        The tail was conical in form and about 23 inches long. It was about

14 inches in diameter at the root and ended in a sharply pointed bunch of

stiff dark-colored bristles about 8 to 14 inches in length.

        The chewing apparatus consisted of massive teeth weighing about 18

pounds each. These teeth had thin layers of enamel on the chewing surface

which formed from 14 to 16, and 18 to 28 sharp corrugated plates on the

second and third molars, respectively. These were like millstones and

were used to masticate coarse food like twigs and grasses. The worn mid–

coronal surface is sometimes fully horizontal, i.e., at right angles to the

perpendicular ridge plates. The typical ridge formula of the third molar

is 24/24, or near that of the Jeffersonian mammoth’s 25/25, but the third molar

is shorter and deeper. As compared with Elephas columbii and Archidiskodon

imperator the 10 ridge plates of Elephas primigenius are compressed into

a line 100 millimeters in length with a minimum of 8 plates in 100 millimeters

and a maximum of 13 plates in 100 millimeters.

        The E. primigenius differs from Parelephas jeffersonii , the more southerly

species, which was, perhaps, also of a hairy type but lacked the heavy

undercover of wool, and Archidiskodon imperator , the still more southerly

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species, which was hairless and had great incurved tusks attaining

gigantic size.

        In a period marked by frequent torrents of sleet, rain, and snow, the

sloping hindquarters of the mammoth were well adapted to shedding water.

The bulbous accumulation of fat on the forehead and the layer of fat under

the skin served as a supply of energy for the winter months. During the

summer these portions were extremely full in appearance, but by spring

they assumed their normal shape.

       

[ ?]

       

Feeding Habits

        Valuable information about the feeding habits of the mammoth was obtained

when a large wad of food was discovered between the upper the lower teeth

of the Berezovka mammoth. Apparently the animal met its death quite

suddenly and did not have time to swallow the food. In addition, the entire

stomach, containing about 12 kilograms of undigested food, was found. An

analysis of this material permitted identification of the contemporaneous

flora, which consisted of foxtail grass, sweet grass, several types of sedge,

wild thyme, field oxytrope and alpine poppy, also Hypnum fluitans ,

Aulacomniun turgidum , Alopecurus alpines , Beckmannia cruciformis , Agropyron

cristatum , Hordeum violaceum , Carex lagopina , Ranunculus scros , and

Oxytropis sordida . All of these species are typical representatives or

the meadow flora of northern Siberia at the present day.

        In winter the animals probably ate the bark and twigs of birches, fir

trees, and other types of low-arctic vegetation. They grazed in large herds,

mostly on lowlands near watering places.

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Mammoth and Prehistorin Man

        The mammoth must have attracted prehistoric man by the great mass

of flesh, fat, brain, and bone marrow which its carcass could supply.

It was hunted extensively, as can be seen from the numerous remains found

in Paleolithic sites of Europe and Siberia.

        Paleolithic man hunted the mammoth with club, da r t, and spear, and

probably most often stalked young, sick, or trapped animals. The unwieldy

bulk of the mammoth, and the fact that its tusks were useless for defense,

made hunting relatively simple, Use was made of pits dug on paths leading

to watering places, with sharp-pointed poles at the bottom. Sometimes the

animals were driven toward narrow gorges where they would fall easy prey

to the hunters. The use of vegetable prison has been suggested by some

writers, but cannot be proven.

        Hunting had to be done by a group, perhaps members of the same camp site;

otherwise it would have been impossible to transport portions of mammoth

bodies weighing up to one ton to the sites where, on a number of occasions,

articulated bones of the animal have been found. Sometimes the animal was

killed too far away from the settlement and a feast took place on the spot.

Remains of such a temporary camp were found near Tomsk, with an almost

complete skeleton, traces of fireplaces, and numerous flint implements.

        A fondness for brain and marrow is the only explanation for the presence

near camp sites of the long bones and skulls of mammoths, extremely heavy

and difficult to transport, which were always found split to extract the

marrow. Often large stones which had been used to split these bones were

found nearby.

        In the Aurignacian and Solutrean sites of eastern and central Europe

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and Siberia large piles of mammoth bones, representing dozens or even

hundreds of animals, were found. These accumulations of bones are too

large to be merely refuse piles; it is believed that they represent a supply

of bone used for some definite purpose. On some occasions (for example, on

the site known as Kostenki I, Central R.S.F.S.R.) such supplies were kept

in a specially dug-out pit.

        The mammoth was a source of building material and fuel, as well as food,

for Paleolithic man. The use of bones as material for walls of semisubterranean

huts, and as fuel for fireplaces, was demonstrated in a number of sites. We

may assume that mammoth skin and hair were also used in primitive economy.

        Mammoth tusks were highly valued because they furnished excellent material

for bone implements, the manufacture of which began to develop in the upper

Paleolithic period. Piles of tusks stored separately from other bones were

found in western and eastern European loess sites. The use of mammoth ivory

for implements and carvings was widespread. Large adzes (presumably for

splitting wood), spear points, needles, and a variety of decorations such

as pendants, plaques, bracelets, and earrings have been found. A large

number of animal and human figuriess carved out of mammoth ivory appear in

archaeological sites all the way from western Europe to eastern Siberia:

several such female representations were discovered at Malta, near Irkutsk.

        Paleolithic man was well-acquainted with the mammoth and he pictures

it in carvings, engravings, and paintings. The caves of southern France

furnish excellent examples of mammoth representation in the form of line

engraving on the soft limestone walls of caves, monochrome outline drawings,

and even polychrome paintings with gradations of color and shading. The

figures outlined in black are the earliest. Next in age are drawings washed

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in red, which are followed by incised drawings. Finally there are poly–

chromes, boldly sketched in three colors and representing the finest

example of Paleolithic art. The most famous of these are from French caves

at Combarelles and Font-de-Gaume.

       

Early Descriptions and Folklore

        Early concepts of the mammoth visualize it as a gigantic subterranean

animal. Thus K’ang-his (1654-1722) emperor of the Manchu dynasty in China,

quoting older sources, called the mammoth fen-shu or [ ?] yu-mu (the

hidden mouse) or shu-mu (mother of mice). He said that the Manchu call it

ice rat and adds that “in the north in the land of the Russians, these rats,

as large as elephants, live in the ground. When air, sunlight or moonlight

touches them they die immediately. The flesh of this animal is ice-cold and

very efficaciou x s in fevers. There are fen-shu which weigh up to 10,000

pounds. Their teeth are like those of elephants and the people of the

north make vessels, combs, knife-handles and other articles of them.”

        Another Chinese book (1771) says: “The ice-rat, or the mountain stream

rat lives in the ground under the thick ice of the northern regions. Its

flesh is edible. It hair is several feet long and is used to make a woven

material which keeps out dampness.”

        Early European travelers such as Witsen (about 1692) concluded, on the

basis of native information, that “the great puzzle of g the earthquake

is easily explained by the movement of this gigantic rat.” He quotes the

Muscovites as believing that the mammoth is a southern animal, and considers

it proof that the earth made a complete turn.

        Russians believed that the mammoth lived underground, split the waters

when crossing them, and brought misfortune to anyone who saw it. Some of

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their traditions describe it as the animal brought by the Deluge from

India to Siberia, or as the vestige of the “march of the Israeli a tes,”

who “passing through the warm lands brought along a great many elephants

who perished from the bitter cold of Siberia.” It is also said that the

mammoth was [ ?] so large that Noah’s ark could not harbor it and it perished

during the Deluge. Another story was that the mammoth was saved by Noah

in the ark, but perished later, after it left the ark because the soaked

soil could x not bear such a ponderous animal and it sank into the underground

where it has been found. Others saw in the mammoth the remains of the

elephants which ran away from Hannibal.

        Numerous Siberian tales of the mammoth were recorded by Tatshchev,

one of the first and best investigators of this animal, in 1730. He cites

native beliefs that the mammoth is an underground animal who feeds on the

earth, lives far from human habitations, and dies when exposed to daylight.

        Siberian Ostiaks believe that the mammoth exists now, lives in the lakes,

and can pass underground from one lake into another. The Yakuts call it

“water bull,” the Tungus call it the giant animal, and Yukaghirs consider

mammoth remains to be bones of a gigantic bird.

        Like most of the other Siberian natives, the Chukchi are afraid of

mammoth remains and consider the animal to be a kind of evil spirit. They

believe that if mammoth tusks are seen above the ground it is a bad omen,

and if incantation is not uttered something unpleasant will happen to the

observer. In former times the search for mammoth ivory was taboo. Later

the finder of a mammoth tusk was required to make various sacrifices to

the spirit of the place in which the tusk was found, in order to appease it.

According to one of their folk tales, some Chukchi men found two mammoth tusks

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protruding from the earth. They began to beat the drum and performed

several incantations, and the whole carcass of the mammoth came into sight.

The people ate the meat, which was very nutritious, and they lived on it

all winter. When the bones were stripped of all meat they put them together

again, and in the morning they were again covered with meat.

        The widespread belief in the medicinal value of mammoth tusks was

not confined to North America, Siberia, and the European part of Russia,

but was also found among Romans, Venetians, Mexicans, Indians, Spaniards,

French, Italians, Germans, and peoples of the Arabic world. Until the

seventeenth century, [ ?] European medical men believed in the [ ?]

curative value of the tusks. The Roman emperor Augustus collected them for

his Museum on the Island of Capri.

        Mammoth tusks were venerated either as the remains of kings or saints

or as freaks of nature, and as such were placed at the entrance of churches

in western Europe (Helmstaadt, Haudersheim, Brunswick, and Vienna.)

        Fantastic reconstructions of mammoths were made both by scientists

and charlatans. Leibniz recreated it as the one-tusk animal Unicorne fossil .

The physician Masurie in 1613 showed mammoth bones for money as the bones

of the Tevtobokh, the kin d g of the Kimvrs.

        Even when the difference between the elephant and the mammoth was

established by Cuvier, a number of theories suggested the original home of

the mammoth to be in Central Asia – the convenient home of many puzzling things —

and it was supposed that mammoth bodies “floated down” Siberian rivers to

the northern area, where no one could imagine that any such animal could

have lived.

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Ivory Industry

        While the fossil ivory (called in Russian mamontova kost - mammoth

bone) was long known in Siberia, it did not become a regular object of

trade there until about 1582, the date of the conquest of Siberia by Yermak,

and it first reached western Europe in 1611, being brought by Logan who

purchased it from Samoyeds on the Pechora River.

        The use of mammoth tusks a material for manufacturing objects is

quite old. It was known to the Greeks and Arabs who bought some of it on

the Volga in the ninth and tenth centuries. Another route was through

Archangel and Novgorod, and in the eighteenth century Khiva and China became

the centers of trade. Collection of mammoth ivory was very widespread and

the Tears tried to establish a monopoly over this trade.

        A great hunting ground for mammoth ivory was discovered in the New

Siberian Islands in 1712. In 1809, the Cossack Sannikov brought 9,000 pounds

of ivory, representing 80 to 100 animals, from there. Another collector in

1821 brought 18,000 pounds from the same locality. During the first half of

the nineteenth century about 36,000 pounds of ivory were sold yearly in

Yakutsk, and between 1825 and 1831 this amount reached 72,000 pounds. In

addition about 3,000 pounds each came from Obdorsk, Tobolsk and Turukhansk.

Middendorf estimated that in the course of eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries the tusks of more than 20,000 mammoths were sold, and Nordenskiöld

considers this figure too low. Taking the latest figures into consideration,

Tolmachev estimates that since the time of the Russian conquest at least

46,750 animals must have been discovered.

        Siberian natives have used mammoth ivory as material for various objects.

The Yakuts make rings, combs, boxes of fine fretwork, powder horns, match

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boxes, knife handles, parts of harnesses for horse, reindeer, and dogs,

and many other articles from ivory. Also wall executed are their models

of summer huts and of sledge with either an ox or a reindeer harnessed

to them. The Yakut combs, of two types, are especially well made. The

smaller one 2 1/2 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide is usually cut from

the “bark” of the tusk, and the side edges in many cases consist of a gray–

brown, bluish or red-brown strip of the actual surface. The longer ones

measure 6 by 4 inches and are decorated in the middle with fretwork designs,

initials of the carver or animal representations. Tobacco pipes have

knife-carved ivory handles and barrel-shaped bowls lined with native steel

beaten very thin. Ivory hunting-knife handles have grooves cut in them

and are filled with rings of blackish horn to prevent slipping.

        Koriaks make fishhooks, harpoons, and arrowheads out of ivory. The

Chukchi make an ivory coat of mail out of plates sewn together with leather

thongs, and arranged in three rows. [ ?] Each plate measures 12 centimeters

long, 4 centimeters wide, and about 1 centimeter thick. They also make

buckles and hooks.

       

Eugene A. Golomshtok

022      |      Vol_III-0363                                                                                                                  
EA-Zoo. Golomshtok: Siberian Mammoth

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Adams, M. “Relation d’un voyage a le mer glaciale et decouverte des

restes d’un mammouth,” Jour.du Nord , vol.32, 1807.

2. Anthony, H.E. “Nature’s deep freeze,” Nat.Hist . 1949 (A separate.)

3. Bialynitsky-Birulia, F.A. Histological and Microscopical Observations on

the Tissues of the Berezovka Mammoth . St. Petersburg, 1907.

(In Russian.)

4. Digby, George Bassett. Mammoth and Mammoth-Hunting in Northeast Siberia .

London, Witherby, 1926.

5. Efimenko, P.P. Primitive Society . Leningrad, 1940. (In Russian.)

6. Golomshtok, E.A. “La trompe du mammouth Siberien,” L’Anthropologie , vol.42,

no.5-6, 1932.

7. ----. “The old stone age in European Russia,” Amer.Phil.Soc. Trans ., vol.29,

part 2, 1938.

8. Hay, Oliver P. Observations on Some Extinct Elephants . Wash., D.C., 1922.

9. Illarionov, V.T. Mammoth . Gorkii, 1940. (In Russian)

10. Osborn, Henry Fairfield. Procboscidea . Amer.Mus.Nat.Hist., N.Y., 1942, vol.2.

11. Pevlova, Mary. “Description of fossil mammals collected by the Russian Arctic

Expedition, 1900-1903,” Akad. [ ?] Nauk. S.S.S.R., Classe Phys.Math.,

Mem.Zapiski , ser.8, vol.21, no.1, 1906. (In Russian.)

12. Pfizenmayar, E.W. Les Mammouths de Siberie . Paris, Payot, 1939.

13. Tikhomirov, B.A. “Ne Taimyr za momontom.” (To Taimyr after the mammoth.),

Vokrug Sveta , no.8, p.42, 1950.

14. Tolmachoff, I.P. “The carcasses of the mammoth and rhinoceros found in the

frozen ground of Siberia,” Am.Phil.Soc., Trans ., vol.23, pt.1, pp.

12-14, 1929.

15. Zenzinov, V.M. On the trade in the North of the Territory of Yekutsk . Moscow,

1916. (In Russian.)

       

Eugene A. Golomshtok