Muskox; the Ice Age animal that survived the melting

During the last Ice Age, known as the Pleistocene epoch, we had many large mammals living in most parts of the world. This epoch ended roughly 12,000 years ago, when the mammoth steppe ecosystem that dominated most of the world became more and more rare. Eventually most of it disappeared, and pretty much all of the Pleistocene megafuna disappeared along with it. In these mammoth steppes we would expect to find woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave lions, smilodon (commonly known as Saber-toothed tiger) and the muskox (Ovibos moschatus).

A muskox (Ovibos moschatus). Image by Wikimedia user Quartl, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

During the Pleistocene we would mainly find the muskox living in the now almost extinct mammoth steppe. However, this ox managed to migrate further north along with the increase in the temperature, and eventually settled in the Canadian Arctic as well as on the island Greenland. There are also a small population of muskox in Alaska, Norway, Sweden and Siberia, but these have all been relocated from the big populations in Canada or Greenland in more recent times. I have some knowledge about the Norwegian population, and I am planning to visit the nature reserve where they are located next year if my schedule allows for it.

It is too bad that neither the mammoth or the woolly rhino managed to migrate just as far north during the melting of the ice, because who would not love to have them roaming around on Greenland? Still, we have the muskox alive, and I think that it is really cool to know that we have one of the megafauna species from the Ice Age still alive in certain parts of the world today.

The musky odor of the muskox

The name muskox comes from its musky smell, which is mainly used to attract females during the mating season. People who have been close to these animals in real-life claim that the small from the males is “rank”, “musky”, and “strong”, and they were able to smell it even from a distance. It is kind of funny that the first person who described these animals named them for their foul smell!

The Norwegian muskox population

As I mentioned above, I mainly have knowledge about the Norwegian population of muskox, which is frequently in the media over here. The species were imported from Greenland to the mountain area known as Dovrefjell in 1932. The basis for this importation was that the railroad workers in the mountain found lots of muskox bones and fossils during their construction, and the government figured it would be cool to get the species back to where it once roamed freely.

A muskox in Dovrefjell. Image by Wikimedia user Pethr, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Despite having imported 10 muskox in 1932, they all died due to hunting during World War II, when poor people hunted them for their meat. The government tried again in 1947 after the war had ended, and this new group thrived. We now have about 200-300 animals in the population, and a small portion of it even migrated to Härjedalen in Sweden, so Sweden actually kind of got a naturally migrated Ice Age species in their country.

There are some problems with the Norwegian population. Firstly the alpine vegetation they have is not as good as the vegetation they would have in the mammoth steppes. It is doing pretty fine despite this, but the population often have problems getting enough food during the winter. Another problem is inbreeding depression, which we would expect to see in such small populations. There have been some deaths that could be related to this problem, but it might be a bigger issue in the future once the gene pool gets even smaller.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for reading my short post about the Ice Age mammal that survived the end of the ice age! I hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to leave a comment below :)