Monday, February 21, 2011

Bison/Muskox





As I said yesterday, we were rushing through the Animals of North America section of the Calgary Zoo when I visited there in May 2010. In fact we were going to skip that section all together, but decided to try and fit it in. I was glad I did because I had never seen a muskox other than on TV. I had seen bison before, but I was able to get pretty close to a couple of them that afternoon.

To think that bison were almost hunted to extinction during the late 19th and early 20th century is unbelievable. They are such large creatures, but I guess their size was no match for rifles. I am glad their numbers have rebounded in recent years. It would be a shame to lose this animal forever. I was close enough to the bison to make an image of its eye with long full lashes!

The muskox is similar to the bison, but is adapted to living in Arctic North America. Both these animals were losing their winter coats when I made these photographs last Spring.

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