Reindeer

Reindeer Facts

Classification:

Kingdom: Animalia

Subkingdom: Bilateria

Phylum: Chordata

Subphylum: Vertebrata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Artiodactyla

Family: Cervidae (deer)

Genus and species:Rangifer tarandus (reindeer and caribou)

Geographical location: Northern Europe, Asia, Canada, and Alaska

Habitat: Open plains (tundra), forests, grasslands, and mountainous areas

Gestational period: Eight months

Life span: Twelve to fifteen years

Special anatomy: Antlers, ruminant stomach

Reindeer are large deer, native to subarctic and arctic regions of northern Europe and Asia. They are related to North American caribou, as both are variants of the species Rangifer tarandus. Reindeer can be domesticated and have long been a valuable resource to humans in those regions of the world. They yield meat, cheese, butter, clothes, and draft animals able to carry heavy burdens.

Many Eurasian reindeer still run wild and are trapped for domestication. Whether wild or domesticated, reindeer are herbivores, eating only plants. Their diet is grass, moss, leaves, twigs, and lichens. They often obtain food by scraping snow cover with their antlers and hooves. Reindeer are diurnal, meaning that they are active only during the day. They spend most of their time seeking food. Their preferred habitats are barren, open plains (tundra), forests, grasslands, and mountains.

Physical Characteristics of Reindeer

Reindeer differ from most deer in having large, deeply cleft hooves, hairy muzzles to help to keep them warm, and antlers on both males and females. Reindeer have long bodies and legs. Their hooves are broad to provide footing on snow and ice. Male reindeer are four feet tall at shoulder height and weigh up to six hundred pounds. Females are shorter but reach similar maximum weights. Both genders grow up to seven feet long. Their thick, waterproof fur is brown in summer and gray-brown in winter. White fur covers their rumps, tails, and the lower portions of their legs. Males have white neck manes during mating season. Reindeer do not see well, but they have an excellent sense of smell.

Reindeer antlers have pointed branches (points). In females, they grow to two-foot lengths, while males’ antlers reach five-foot lengths. Very large male antlers have forty points. Those of females only have a few points. As in other deer, reindeer antlers are shed and regrown each year. Males lose their antlers in winter, and females lose their antlers in late spring. The antlers that grow back are larger than those replaced. Antlers are important during mating season when males fight for mates. Fights can damage antlers, so if they were not shed and regrown each year, many males would be unable to fight well, lose fights, and be unable to mate.

Reindeer are ruminants, animals that chew and swallow their food more than once. After a little while, food that was swallowed reenters the ruminant mouth from the stomach. Reindeer and other ruminants chew the food, swallow it again, and the food enters a different stomach for additional digestion. The process, also called cud chewing, helps reindeer to get maximum amounts of nutrients and vitamins from their difficult-to-digest food.

Reindeer are social animals. They live in groups of about twenty most of the year. The groups consist of a male, his mates, and their young. Reindeer migrate great distances each fall and spring to feeding and mating grounds, traveling in herds of up to 100,000 and migrating about twenty miles daily.

Reindeer mate mostly in October. Gestation is about eight months long. The female leaves the herd to give birth to one calf in May or June. The calf weighs up to twenty pounds. Mother and calf then rejoin the herd, and the calf nurses for six months. A calf can mate when three years old. The life span of reindeer is up to fifteen years.

North American Reindeer Imports

Reindeer are excellent sources of food, clothes, and draft animals, as the Sami people of Lapland in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia have long known. To provide a reliable food source for the Inuit of Alaska, who live in a comparable environment with a similar social structure, the US Office of Education imported thirteen hundred reindeer from Siberia near the end of the nineteenth century. Several million reindeer are now found throughout Alaska. In 1935, the Canadian government set up a herd of reindeer in the Yukon Territory to benefit American Indians and Inuit. This herd also flourished, and American Indians and Inuit now own all reindeer herds in North America. The deer satisfy many of their basic needs, becoming a valuable North American resource.

Environmental Threats

Reindeer have few natural predators, with wolves preying on them in the most significant numbers. Polar bears and brown bears can also take reindeer but typically focus on young or weakened individuals. Likewise, wolverines and golden eagles are known to prey on reindeer calves. The most pressing threat to reindeer is habitat loss due to climate change, with the animal's historic range already reduced and some subspecies endangered or extinct. For this reason, since 2015, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists reindeer as a vulnerable species on its Red List of Threatened Species.

In particular, reindeer are threatened by global climate change through warming temperatures in their Arctic and subarctic environments, which disturbs the ecological balance in numerous ways. Among the key issues is the decline in snow conditions that are favorable to reindeer feeding; freezing rain and exposed ground that thaws and then freezes can prevent reindeer from reaching the lichen and moss they need and therefore lead to starvation. Similarly, warming temperatures mean that reindeer are more prone to breaking through ice and drowning. Meanwhile, hungry semi-domesticated reindeer herds may be displaced from their grazing areas, creating complications for their herders. Finally, a warmer Arctic region has led to an increase in human activity in the area, and encroaching construction, prospecting, and other development further stresses the traditional conditions and movement of reindeer.

Principal Terms

Domesticated: trained and raised by humans for specific uses.

Gestation: term of pregnancy

Herbivore: an animal that eats only plants

Ruminant: a herbivore that chews and swallows plants, which enter its stomach for partial digestion, are regurgitated, chewed again, and reenter the stomach for more digestion

Bibliography

Deshayes, Pierre-Henry. "Reindeer at Risk from Arctic Hot Spell." Phys.org, 21 Apr. 2017, phys.org/news/2017-04-reindeer-arctic-hot.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

Gerlach, Duane, Sally Atwater, and Judith Schnell, eds. Deer. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1994.

Lepthein, Emilie U. Reindeer. Chicago: Children’s Press, 1994.

“Reindeer Fact Sheet” PBS, 6 Dec. 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/reindeer-fact-sheet. Accessed 11 July 2023.

Russell, H. John. The World of the Caribou. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1998.

Syroechkovskii, E. E. Wild Reindeer. Translated and edited by David R. Klein. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.