What does a musk ox eat? Musculature in nature

Musk oxen are the only modern representatives of the same name in the world. Belong to the family of Polaroid animals. The distant ancestors of these creatures lived at the end of the Miocene epoch, inhabiting the highlands of modern Central Asia. Let's talk about this amazing animal in detail and find out what the musk ox eats, where it lives, how it looks and why it was called a musk ox.

At the origins of life ...

The ancient ancestors of the musk oxen existed at the end of the Miocene. The favorite places of their habitat at that time were the mountains located on the territory of modern Central Asia. Of course, paleontologists are not interested in what the musk ox feeds in nature and in captivity, but how it relatively quickly spread to completely unexplored territories.

Everything is indecently simple. About 3.5 million years ago the climate on our planet began to change: cold came. Especially they felt strongly in the high mountains. This caused the ancestors of modern musk oxen to descend from the Himalayas and to breed throughout modern Siberia and northern Eurasia. This we will talk in more detail later.

When the Illinois glaciation came, these large creatures penetrated into North America, while they crossed the Bering Isthmus. Then they settled all over Greenland. What does a musk ox eat today and what did he eat at that time? Here it should be said that in the late Pleistocene a sharp reduction in the number of these animals began. Do you think this is due to the lack of food? No! This is directly caused by global warming. Note that musk oxen along with reindeer are the only mammal animals living in the Arctic, which could survive the era of the late Pleistocene.

So, now we have smoothly got to the modern life of these horned handsome men. Let's find out what the musk ox eats, how it looks and where it lives.

How do they look?

Their whole appearance was completely adapted to life in severe arctic conditions. Today they can only be found in small quantities in the Arctic. These hairy giants are completely covered with dense and long coarse hair. Undercoat, on the other hand, is soft and silky. It perfectly protects the animal from the cold. It is thanks to him that musk oxen do not freeze in polar nights in the northern regions of our planet.

The musk oxen have huge and rounded hooves, designed for easy movement through the snow. On their backs they have a hump-scrotum located in the shoulder area and passing into the narrow back part. The head is massive and elongated. It has sharp and rounded horns with a large base. The males of the horn, of course, are much larger and more powerful than the females.

Where do they live?

Are you curious to know what the musk ox feeds on? Be patient, you will soon find out! So, these animals are pretty massive creatures. Their height at the withers ranges from 1.5 to 2 meters! Where can such giants live? As we have already noticed, initially they inhabited Central Asia, but after they left to the west to modern England and France and to the east - to Siberia.

In Eurasia at the present time you will not see them either, because there they have long been extinct. Exterminated almost completely, they are in America: the Eskimo hunters, as well as fur traders, have attached their hand to this. More recently, animals inhabited the Arctic in large numbers, but now they are very few there.

Where else live musk oxen?

In 1936 they were brought to the island of Nanivak, and in 1969 - to the island of Nelson, located in the Bering Sea, and to the reserve in the north-east of Alaska. This is where the musk oxen live mainly today: about 800 individuals trample the land of Alaska, about 3,000 live in the northeast of Greenland and more than 14,000 in Eastern Greenland. In addition, 1500 animals live in Canada and about 200 live in Spitsbergen.

What does a musk ox eat?

In the Arctic, as is known, there is absolutely nothing to profit. But musk oxen, like all cattle, are herbivores. In the basis of their diet - these or that herbs, for example, sedge or willow. In the course of their evolution, these creatures were able to adroitly adapt to the difficult and even meager fodder lands of the tundra. Summer lasts only a few weeks, so the lion's share of its boring life polorohie spend eating dry plants under the snow. That's what a musk ox eats!

In the tundra you can find herbs, if well to try. This is what the musk oxen do: they are intensively digging snow in search of rhizomes and stems. And before the beginning of the period of their active gong (the instinct of reproduction) in a snowless time, they try to visit natural solonetz soils to get all the necessary micro and macro elements.

Why they were called musk oxen?

Currently, the name "musk ox" is practically not applied to musk oxen, but once they were just called. Why they were given such a nickname? Scientists-historians say that the French traveler of the 18th century dubbed them so. He did not claim for any reason that the musk ox is capable of secreting a highly smelling substance, which at that time was widely used in perfumery.

As we know, spirits in the XVIII-XIX centuries were made from various essential oils and, of course, from musk. Then he was extracted from the secret glands of the musk deer, but this seemed to the scientist a little. Historians generally believe that he was eager to get money for his expedition, so he openly lied to everyone.