Mooses are absurdly huge!

in wildlife •  4 years ago 

image.png

I love that there's an evolutionary niche for herbivores that get so absurdly large that almost no predator is willing to mess with them. Each moose is 1,000 pounds of meat, made entirely from leaves and twigs. Moose eat up to 70 pounds of leaves and twigs per day, and take roughly 4-5 years to reach maturity, so each moose very roughly represents the transition of about 100,000 pounds of leaves and twigs into 1,000 pounds of moose and 99,000 pounds of poop and respired carbon. They're not even in the top 10 largest land animals, all of which are herbivores.

They're not afraid of humans, which means there's always a dumb human or two who will get way too close to them, at which point the human discovers why the moose are not scared of them. Don't do it. This photo was taken from about 60ft away, which was three times the distance that some of the other humans on the trail were from them.

My favourite part about them was their fuzzy antlers. The fuzz is actually called "velvet" and is a protective coating that allows the antlers to grow, starting in springtime. The antlers develop and expand through the summer, then the velvet is shed around the beginning of fall. The antlers stay in place through the rutting period, as they're used to fight and compete for mates. Then the moose will shed them around mid-winter.

So if you're wondering whether they grow their antlers every year, the answer is yes they do!

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!