Radio Script
1998

__________________

Musk Ox Farm
__________________

STORY: CLAUDIA IHL: "Now that little baby there is a girl. And that's a boy. We have another one who's back there with her mom. One is two weeks old, and the other is ten days old. At this age they're running around. In fact they get up off their feet within an hour after they're born.

Graduate student and tour guide Claudia Ihl shakes a can of grain to coax Shumagin and her newborn--and as yet unnamed calf--closer. On a farm outside Fairbanks, Alaska, recently, students in Clair Keogh's first-grade class press against the fence for a better look at the strange looking animals grazing in the pasture beyond.

IHL: "What do the newborn babies eat? Milk? Right, they eat milk. Ingrid here has an udder between her legs. Did you hear a grunt? Mom is talking to her baby."

At first glance, the farm looks average enough. A narrow dirt road winds through pastures to a farmhouse, a red barn, and several outbuildings.

Yet for these 20 or so first-graders, and for the thousands of visitors who come each year to the Large Animal Research Station here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, this farm is anything but typical. Instead of dairy cows, reindeer and caribou nibble new shoots of grass. Where you'd expect to see sheep, there are instead dozens of shaggy-haired musk ox. Shumagin is among three female musk ox that have recently given birth to new calves. Bill Hauer is the farm's supervisor.

HAUER: "We've got animals spread all over the place. We have about 130 acres of fenced pasture and boreal forest. Right now with these three calves we've got 72 musk oxen out here, which is the largest captive herd of musk oxen in the world. So this is a really unique resource."

As Bill Hauer enters the pasture, several musk ox lift their horned, woolly heads to stare, but none seem to mind his presence.

HAUER: "They are sensitive to new people and new situations. We can walk closer and we can do that with relative assurance because Ingrid here is a four-year-old female. She was bottle-raised as a calf and she was donated to the university by the San Francisco Zoo. It is a good opportunity for us to increase our genetic diversity here."

Musk ox are relics of the ice age some 20,000 years ago. They lived at a time when saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths roamed the arid steppes of the high Arctic. Just how they managed to survive so long, and how they continue to thrive in the barren, treeless expanse of the Arctic, is the subject of ongoing research at the farm. Scientists are trying to understand basic questions, like how is it that such large animals can survive where there is so little to eat, to more complex questions like how will they fare if the Arctic climate continues to warm.

HAUER: "The knowledge is just interesting in itself. You see these animals living in parts of the world where you don't see any other large mammals. What is special about them that's allowed them to eke out a living in those types of habitat."

Turns out musk ox have adapted quite well to their harsh Arctic surroundings, as field assistant Michelle Durant explains to the first graders touring the farm.

DURANT: "So do you think we bring the musk ox inside in the winter? No, that's right. We leave them out. They have very thick fur. Their outside hair is called guard hair, the very long hair on the back. And then leading up to winter they start growing underwool which is called qiviut. (Pronounced: KIV-EE-UT) Has anyone ever heard of that before?"

This is the part of the tour that first grade teacher Clair Keogh most enjoys.

KEOGH: "I get something out of it every time. I just like to see them and I enjoy hearing about their fur and how expensive it is. I always make sure they tell the kids what it's called."

Though the price of quiviut is more than $175 a pound, demand by knitters for the wool far outstrips the supply. To fill that demand, there's growing interest in domesticating the musk ox. But will the quality of quiviut from captive animals be as good or better than that of wild musk ox? University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Morgan Robertson is trying to find out.

ROBERTSON: "Last November I got to go up to Banks Island in Canada and we collected about 300 samples off wild animals of different sex and age classes. And then we also collected samples off the entire herd here and we sent them off to a fiber lab in Texas. We're hoping to get back some interesting results. You know they do feel the same. It's such a fine fiber, it's one of the finest fibers out there. It's real hard to quantify just by looking at it because it all seems very fine and light and soft."

IHL: "Let's take a couple more questions, and eventually, we should migrate over to the caribou and look at those guys."

As the questions, continue, the musk ox, seemingly bored with the whole affair, shuffle off to the shade of several birch trees. Perhaps they know they must pace themselves. As sandhill cranes call to each other, another tour bus arrives at the gate of this most unusual farm.

OUTRO: OUTRO: For Arctic Science Journeys, this is Doug Schneider, reporting from Fairbanks, Alaska.