Nature Bulletin No. 400-A   December 19, 1970
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:REINDEER AND CARIBOU

Clement Clarke Moore's only known poem is so familiar to American 
children that its opening words, "'Twas the night before Christmas ", 
instantly call up visions of a team of reindeer. Of all the animals in the 
world Santa Claus could not have picked a better one for whisking his 
sleigh load of toys down from the Far North on Christmas Eve. With 
their broad hoofs, speed and endurance no other draft animal can 
travel so far or so fast in the snow. Youngsters of the Old Stone Age 
must have dreamed about reindeer, too, because we find wonderful 
pictures of them drawn on the walls of caves, -- 30,000 years ago.

Reindeer is the name given the Old World Caribou by the early Lapps 
or Finns and merely means "the animal that pastures. " Because it was 
the only grazing animal known to these people of arctic Europe, no 
further description was necessary. In Lapland and neighboring 
countries where over the centuries it has become a domestic animal 
there are still many people who depend on it almost entirely for their 
livelihood. At one time the Old World Caribou ranged from the 
Scandinavian Peninsula eastward to the Bering Straits but now the 
only remaining wild ones are found in northern Siberia. Many 
thousands of years ago, before it was domesticated, the "Reindeer 
Men", as they are called by archeologists, followed the milling herds 
of caribou as they moved back and forth between their summer and 
winter pastures.

To the people of Lapland as well as in northern Norway, Sweden, 
Finland, Russia and Siberia, reindeer are the chief wealth and staff of 
life. They stand 40 inches high at the shoulder and weigh 300 pounds. 
Requiring no fences, barns, hay or other maintenance except herding, 
they forage for themselves. When the summer diet of grass is covered 
with snow they use their horns or sharp hoofs, which cut ice like 
skates, to uncover shrubby willows, moss and especially the lichen 
called "reindeer moss". A working reindeer in Lapland can carry 90 
pounds or pull a 450-pound load forty miles a day in one of their boat-
like sleds.

A female gives about three cups of milk daily which is as rich as 
cream. This is drunk fresh, churned into butter, or made into cheese. 
The flesh is eaten, the bones cracked for marrow, the antlers used to 
make tools, and the hair used to stuff mattresses. The hides are sewn 
into parkas, gloves, trousers, shoes and tents using thread made from 
the sinews. If an owner wants a drink of milk or to take a ride he goes 
out and lassoes one.

The caribou of North America, quite similar to the reindeer and Old 
World caribou, range from the North Woods and into the tundra, often 
beyond the Arctic Circle in Alaska and Canada, farther north than any 
other hoofed animal except the muskox. American caribou are divided 
into three races or species -- the Barren Ground, the Woodland, and 
the Mountain Caribou.

Unlike other members of the deer family both sexes of caribou have 
picturesque antlers that sweep back and up and then bend forward. 
The stags shed their antlers in autumn but the does carry theirs until 
after the dappled fawns are born in May. They travel with a fast-
swinging trot that they can continue almost indefinitely and easily 
outdistance wolves. Even when swimming they are very fast, keeping 
pace with an expert canoeman. Still abundant in the Canadian Rockies 
and the Barren Grounds, they once were vastly more numerous in the 
past. The naturalist, Seton, described a single herd of 25 million in 
Canada that took 4 days and nights to pass by in a stream 20 miles 
wide.

We wish you a very MERRY CHRISTMAS with this 400th issue.