"Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution is true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred-page book. On the Origin of Species turned the mysteries of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science." -- Jerry Coyne
Monday, December 25, 2017
Today is December 25, 2017 so it would be appropriate to have a post about reindeer also known as caribou in North America. The antlers are the most interesting things about them.
As usual Wikipedia is my friend.
Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the deer family. They are true bone and are a single structure. They are generally found only on males, with the exception of the caribou. Antlers are shed and regrown each year and function primarily as objects of sexual attraction and as weapons in fights between males for control of harems.
The reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), also known as caribou in North America,[3] is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to arctic, subarctic, tundra, boreal, and mountainous regions of northern Europe, Siberia, and North America.[2] This includes both sedentary and migratory populations. Rangifer herd size varies greatly in different geographic regions. The Taimyr herd of migrating tundra reindeer (R.t. sibiricus) in Russia is the largest wild reindeer herd in the world,[4][5] with numbers varying between 400,000 and 1,000,000. The second largest is the migratory woodland caribou (R.t. caribou) George River herd in Canada, with variations between 28,000 and 385,000.
Some reindeers have names, for example Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen.
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2017/12 DECEMBER,
my favorite creatures
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