The Porcupine Caribou in Alaska
Another unassuming animal that you may stumble upon in your trip to Alaska is the Porcupine caribou. This Alaskan animal is a caribou subspecies that lives among the animals in Alaska. They have these massive concave hoofs necessary to support the animal in the snow and soft tundra and work as paddles for when they need to swim. They tend to live in large herds of about 169,000 animals. The porcupine caribou even embarks on a migration. It’s not just a small migration, but an extremely long one. It is approximately 2,400km from where their wintering area is to their calving grounds.
This type of caribou is the only member of the deer family that both sexes grow antlers, but they are easy to identify because of their sizes. An adult bull is large and bulkier, and the adult cows are shorter and usually irregular and thinner. Their size and weight are different depending on the area they live in. The ones in northern and southwestern Alaska tend to be smaller than those that live in the state’s interior and southern parts. However, their average weight is still big, with an adult bull weighing from 350 and 400 pounds while the females can average around 175 to 225 pounds.