{"id":10646,"date":"2021-12-24T21:39:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-24T21:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/?p=10646"},"modified":"2021-12-16T21:49:55","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T21:49:55","slug":"are-reindeer-and-caribou-the-same-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/en\/are-reindeer-and-caribou-the-same-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Reindeer and Caribou the Same Animals?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Don&#8217;t worry&#8230;it&#8217;s all in the family.<\/h2>\n<p>The good news. Rudolph\u2019s got family right here in Canada. The bad news. They\u2019re not siblings. Researchers mapped the genetic diversity of the <em>Rangifer tarandus<\/em> over a 21,000 year history and found that although they belong to the same species, caribou and reindeer are only closely related cousins.<\/p>\n<h3>The Rift<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10647\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/wuDec2014_reindeer_caribou.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"715\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/wuDec2014_reindeer_caribou.jpg 715w, https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/wuDec2014_reindeer_caribou-640x426.jpg 640w, https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/wuDec2014_reindeer_caribou-530x353.jpg 530w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 715px) 100vw, 715px\" \/><br \/>\nSo here\u2019s what happened. The last ice age forced caribou herds to seek refuge in southern regions that were between glaciers. As a result, they became isolated from other caribou herds and they were forced to interbreed. Some were stuck in Eurasia, while others were stuck in North America; hence the genetic differences between caribou and reindeer.<\/p>\n<h3>The Twist<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-standard wp-image-10648\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/norwegian-reindeer-1341272675-1100x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1100\" height=\"640\" \/>We all have this image in our heads of what Santa\u2019s reindeer look like. Majestic. Strong. Large\u2026\u2026except\u2026.we might be grievously mistaken. Before 1823, Santa didn\u2019t have reindeer. He was still a rather jolly Saint, but he didn\u2019t visit children on Christmas Eve to give toy trains and dolls. It was not until Clement C. Moore published his poem, \u201cA Visit from Saint Nicholas\u201d anonymously in the <em>Sentinel<\/em> that we heard about eight tiny reindeer pulling Santa\u2019s miniature sleigh.<\/p>\n<p>Tiny? That doesn\u2019t sound very characteristic of the reindeer we have engrained in our memories. It\u2019s possible, therefore, that Moore imagined Santa\u2019s reindeer as the <em>R.t. platyrhynchus<\/em> subspecies that live in the Svalbard islands off of Norway. These reindeer are the only reindeer that really could be described as tiny \u2013 they weigh about half as much (males weigh in at approximately 65 to 90 kilograms) and are a foot shorter than the average reindeer.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-excerpt\">Don&#8217;t worry&#8230;it&#8217;s all in the family. The good news. Rudolph\u2019s got family right here in Canada. The bad news. They\u2019re not siblings. Researchers mapped the genetic diversity of the Rangifer&hellip;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":3297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[631],"tags":[281],"class_list":["post-10646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-connect-with-nature","tag-caribou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10649,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions\/10649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}