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In Episode 30, I admit a M I S T A K E, in that I did not realize Finland has a sizable moose population and so therefore assumed that although this thing looks like a moose, it must be a reindeer head. So because I made a M I S T A K E, the whole class is being punished by learning about reindeer and moose of Finland. Oh yeah, I'm back from my trip to Finland. I had a great time! Finnish forest reindeer: Barren-ground caribou: Finnish moose: Alaskan moose: Whee! Oh, here's a link to information about my new book! More details coming next week. Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This is the first episode I’ve put together since returning from Finland last week. I had a great time on my trip! WorldCon was amazing, I got to hang out with some good friends, and I had lots of positive feedback after the panel I was on. One day I went to a fun Viking-themed restaurant with my friends Emma and Dave (hi guys!), where I ordered reindeer. It was really good, and when I got my food I tweeted a picture of the plate along with a picture of a stuffed animal head across from me. I captioned it something like, “A reindeer is watching me eat reindeer.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t a reindeer head. It was a moose head. When I first saw it I knew it was a moose head, but I didn’t believe myself that it was a moose head because there’s no moose in Finland, right? Just reindeer. Five thousand replies correcting me later, I sheepishly admitted that I was wrong and swore I would in the future trust myself to ID moose heads versus reindeer heads without convincing myself I was wrong. And just to clear things up, here’s an entire episode on certain hoofed Ice Age megafauna that live in Finland. The reindeer living today are all one species, Rangifer tarandus, although there are a number of subspecies. Reindeer evolved about 3 million years ago and are closely related to moose. During the late Pleistocene, better known as the ice ages, reindeer were much more widely spread than they are today. You could have found herds of reindeer in Tennessee and Spain during the last glaciation around 12,000 years ago. These days, wild reindeer are found in Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Siberia, and in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. In North America, reindeer are called caribou. Wild reindeer and caribou numbers are in decline worldwide due to climate change and habitat loss. Most reindeer are migratory to at least some extent. Some populations of caribou in North America migrate 3,000 miles a year. The only mammals that migrate farther than that are whales. Mating occurs during autumn migration, and calves are born after spring migration in May or June. Reindeer have larger hearts than other ruminants of about their same size, which helps them run and swim for extended periods of time in cold environments. Reindeer knees click when they walk, and researchers believe this helps individuals keep track of each other in white-out conditions. Reindeer eat leaves, twigs, some types of grass, and mushrooms, but their primary food in winter is the reindeer lichen. Mammals don’t typically eat lichens, but reindeer have developed a special enzyme called lichenase that helps them digest it. In spring they may also eat bird eggs, fish, and rodents when they can catch them. Instead of secreting urea in their urine as almost all mammals do, reindeer retain it within the digestive system for the nitrogen it contains. Now, in my defense, the reindeer I’m familiar with are North American caribou, and many caribou have somewhat palmate antlers and heavy muzzles that kind of resemble moose. At least at first glance, especially if you’re convinced you’re looking at a reindeer head and not a moose head. Most reindeer in Europe have slenderer muzzles and more typically deer-like antlers. Reindeer have the largest antlers to body size of all living deer species,