Talk:Reindeer

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[edit] Vandalism, Nov. 2005

User 83.70.220.59 vandalized this page on 5 November 2005, adding inane comments about his friend Steve to the article. I am removing them, and will report this. --Writer@Large 05:02, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Translation of peoples

I'm unsure of some translations from Swedish into English. This is my suggestion:

Swedish English Location
Sami Sami/Lapplander (Nordic)
Samojeder Samoyedes/Nenets (west Russia)
Evenker Evenks (Jenisej and Ochotska sea in easter Siberia)
Chanter Khants/Ostyaks (western Siberia)
Jukagirer Yukaghirs (north-east Siberia)
Tjuktjer ?Tatars? (the most north-east Siberia)
Korjaker ????? (easter Siberia)

How about Native North Americans? Do they herd reindeers? // Rogper 17:24, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] There needs to be some clarification.

I saw that the entry for "Caribou" transfers directly to that for "Reindeer." While both caribou and reindeer are rangifer tarandus, North American and European useage of "caribou" and "reindeer" are pretty different. In North America, "caribou" refers to wild rangifer tarandus, while "reindeer" refers to domesticated rangifer tarandus. While there is no speciation, reindeer have been bred as meat or draft animals, and so tend to be shorter and heavier than caribou. Moreover, in Alaska, there is legal difference between the two. According to AK Fish and Game regs, there are limits on how caribou can be hunted and how caribou meat and hides can be sold. This is why you'll see a lot of reindeer sausage at supermarkets and restaurants in AK, but you won't see as much caribou on the menu unless you're buddies with a hunter.

I understand that in European useage, "reindeer" is used to describe both wild and domestic rangifer tarandus, but this is not the case in North America. There are also subcategories. In the far north, caribou are often identified as "barren ground caribou." The tundra habitat causes a shift in diet and results in generally smaller animals. I believe that the antler growth and drop dates are also different in these populations, with bulls dropping their antlers around January and cows shortly after spring calving.

  • I've added a short statement on the physical differences between caribou and reindeer and a note on loss to wild herds. Deirdre 01:05, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

"The numbers of Russian herders have been drastically reduced since the fall of the Soviet Union." Can anyone explain why this is the case? --babbage 19:10, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question on species names

I read in an obituary from 1937 that R. tarandus granti -- "Grant's Caribou" -- is named after eugenicist/conservationist Madison Grant. Is there any way to confirm this for sure? It's somewhat interesting to me, since Madison Grant was a pretty nasty guy, and I'd like to know for sure that this was named after him specifically. I'd also be nice to know when it was named after him. But I don't know where to get information like that. --Fastfission 16:58, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Threatened Woodland Caribou

It is not correct to say that the only unthreatened woodland caribou herds are in Quebec/Labrador. The Yukon and Alaska also have a number of flourishing herds (and a couple of threatened ones — the Chisana and the [www.taiga.net/projectcaribou/ pdf/casestudies/southern_lakes_study.PDF Southern Lakes herds]). The same is probably true of the northern part of the western Canadian Provinces and of the Northwest Territory. It is true that it has disappeared fromt he southern part of its range, but we need to look into this. Luigizanasi 08:04, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] distinctions from Moose

I was reading a book called Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer which is about a young man who goes into the Alaskan brush to live by himself (excuse the poor summary, google it). But anyway, while living in solitude, he shoots and kills what turns out to be a Caribou (which is concluded from remains from his campsite). However, the young man misidentifies the animal as a Moose in his journals.

Anyway this error sparked my interests and got me to thinking about what the actual difference between the two animals is. Perhaps someone with more time than myself could write a little section on distinguishing characteristics of the Moose from Caribou. From my quick scanning, all I could find was the greater size of the Moose.

Perhaps I might be getting ahead of myself in thinking that this is important, but I'm sure that if I was to identify a Moose or a Caribou, I would be lost.

I hope I'm not being redundant by posting this in the Talk:Moose too.

Thanks in advance!

Teimu.tm 21:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

A moose is much larger, the weight is several times that of a reindeer. And, the moose lives in the forest, while the reindeer thrives in the alpine tundra. The reindeer (caribou) often lives in large herds (can be more than a hundred), not so with the moose. The reindeer can travel large distances in a year. Orcaborealis 22:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Living in the Yukon and having seen both caribou and moose many times, the differences are immediately obvious. By the way, Caribou does not only live in the tundra. Barren-ground caribou usualy migrate to forested areas during the summer, and both moose and woodland caribou live in the boreal forest.
  1. Moose are much larger.
  2. Only bull (male) moose have antlers, while they are present in box sexes in the caribou/reindeer.
  3. Moose are almost always uniformly brown, while the Caribou tend to be lighter on the belly and a more greyish colour
  4. Moose have a "beard" and a large hump, (more obvious in the male),
  5. The largest feature on the antlers on bull moose is a large "palm" from which most of the points radiate. The caribou have two small palms, one at the bottom and one at the top.
  6. the snout is completely different and immediately obvious. Moose have a rounded droopy snout, while the caribou resembles that of other deer in being more pointy.
Luigizanasi 03:03, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Please do not add a paragraph to reindeer explaining how to distinguish it from a moose! Next thing, we'll need a note under elephant explaining how it differs from a rhinoceros ... Hugh2414 08:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Uh, how exactly does a reindeer catch a bird???

[edit] Sentence on teeth

I've removed the following sentence from the article:

An unusual feature of the reindeer is that it has front teeth only on its bottom jaw; there are molars on both the top and bottom.

for the following reason: as far as I'm aware, this is a characteristic of all deer (and so perhaps should be added to the deer article... The thing that struck me as the worst offense in the sentence, however, is that this is characterized as an "unusual feature"... Having grown up with goats (no, not like Romulus and Remus with the wolves :-p cute tho... ;-) ...and yes, I know that goats aren't deer! ), I can authoritatively say that reindeer having only bottom teeth and molars on both the top and bottom is hardly "unusual". I'm guessing that the 3/4 of the world's population that's familiar with goats will concur that this doesn't really qualify as an oddity. Tomertalk 09:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

All ruminants have that, without exception. Surely you've seen a cow? :-)

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:01 CEST | 2006/5/13

[edit] Cultural insensitivity

Calling an active, everyday customary measure used by an indigenous people "Trivia" in the section title is frankly beyond the pale. -- Cimon avaro; on a pogostick. 20:16, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, come off it. Nobody was insulting Laplanders, and the amount of use something sees is irrelevant. It's as much a piece of trivia as any other local word/etymology is, regardless of who uses it. If you have such a problem with it, you can find a better way to integrate it into the article. --Xanzzibar 20:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Fix it, then. Show us, by doing it, where it is best placed. Though I frankly don't see it as being insensitive at all. -- 204.69.40.7 21:25, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

It also seems insensitive to refer to these noble people as Caribou rather than Inuits.--195.93.21.97 23:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

This particular bit of information, the length of travel before needing to take a pee break for the deer, really fits more into a reindeer/caribou husbandry article. Re referring to a "noble people" (what are we doing here, talking aristocracy? noble savages? what's with this term?) as caribou, I don't see where that was done in the article. The Gwich'in refer to themselves as "people of the caribou", or of the deer, as they are descended from the caribou per the tribal tradition/history/mythos (not sure of the details, but the people are related to caribou). I don't know that Sami are Inuit--the latter term is used in Canada to refer to First Nations People, and therefore encompasses a broad range of language groups and tribes from different migrations and origins. 'Spose I could look some of this up. Deirdre 19:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I looked it up. Sami are definitely not Inuit; the latter term refers to Inupiat, Yup'ik, etc.; culturally similar peoples in the Arctic ranging from Greenland to Canada to Alaska to Siberia. At least, according to Wikipedia. Deirdre 19:56, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong image

The animal in "Caribou from Wagon Trails.jpg" cannot possibly be a caribou, it looks like an albino young male wapiti (elk). The shape of the antlers is far from that of a caribou, as they would not have two daggers on the front but more branched ramifications, and the back branches should point forward sensibly and be more branched. It also lacks the small branch that males develop on the forehead: http://www.8wwc.org/images/credits/caribou%20horizontal%20hart.jpg http://www.wyomingoutdoorsradio.com/hauck%20caribou%20horns%20ready.jpg Compare with the wapiti: http://www.scsc.k12.ar.us/2004outwest/Projects/ReynoldsJ/Images/Elk%2002.JPG http://www.txt.btinternet.co.uk/photo/Elk.jpg The muzzle shape is that of a wapiti too, the nostrils of a caribou should point sideways and the head should be overall thicker: http://www.all-creatures.org/aw/caribou-001.jpg Also the fur is so short, especially on the ears and muzzle, that in order to be a caribou or reindeer it would have to be a completely sheared one, ears included. --Scale 22:19, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Avalanche kills 200 reindeer

I am not sure abouth if this should be included in the main article, but some of you wikis might be interested. An avalanche in Dovre National Park in Norway caught aprox. 200 reindeers, maybe more. Most of the dead seems to be pragnant females, which only ads to the tragedy. The link is in Norwegian, but the pics speak for them selves.. --Njård 10:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Famous reindeer

It's interesting to note that all of these animals are fictional. I don't know whether or not we should mention this in the article, but I think it says something about Wikipedia. --Smack (talk) 23:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Good point. They're also only famous in a couple of cultures. Deirdre 00:19, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think this section should either be deleted, or retitled as something like Reindeer in Fiction. Deirdre 19:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reindeer husbandry

I have corrected erroneous information about reindeer husbandry; the claim that reindeer have been traditionally bred in captivity is nonsense. Moreover, I also deleted the following passage:

"The Laplanders, who use trained reindeer extensively to pull sleighs, use a measurement called poronkusema which loosely translates into "reindeer piss". This is because a reindeer cannot urinate when it is pulling a sled and is prone to urinary tract clogging if it is not allowed to urinate with regularity. A poronkusema is generally 10 to 15 kilometers or about 30 minutes of riding."

First, it makes no sense to include completely peripheral information such as this when the discussion on the whole topic is little more than a stub. Second, in reality the concept of poronkusema is not Sami ("Laplandish"), and even the cited word is actually Finnish and not Sami. --AAikio 09:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Local names

Local names

In Sami, the male is called sarve, a castrated bull (which in old time was performed by a bite) hierke and the female sex is called vaya. The name Caribou is thought to come from a Mi'kmaq word that means "one that paws (the ground)".

Where is this taken from? What Sámi language? Does the reference to castrating reindeer bulls through biting them off really belong in this article? How does this differ from how other animals have been castrated before?

If someone would truly like some actual names for reindeer in Northern Sámi, try Magga's Powerpoint presentation or this vocabulary.

And no, the names are not the same from one Sámi language to the next, just as they are not the same from one language to the next in Alaska and Canada and from one dialect to the next: http://www.livingdictionary.com/search/viewResults.jsp?language=en&searchString=caribou&languageSet=all

-Yupik 10:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

You're right. I deleted the sentence about Saami names, as it was absolute nonsense. The word sarve is South Saami, but it means "elk". The word hierke refers to North Sami heargi "reindeer bull" or one of its cognates (but South Saami hierkie, at least, means "horse"). The word vaya does not exist in any Saami language. --AAikio 12:23, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subspecies of the wild reindeer in southern Norway?

I was reading trough this article, and at reading the "subspecies" section, I realiced that I could not find out what subspecies the previously mentioned wild reindeer in southern Norway belongs to. It is my opinion that this is somewhat important, as it is the last remaining wild reindeer in Europe. I am hoping someone who knows will add the information to the article.Neltah 22:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

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