Radio Script
1998

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Musk Ox Love
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INTRO: Musk ox, like a lot of animals in the Arctic this time of year, are in the mood for love. This is especially true for the male musk ox, who pays a rather high price for his important role in perpetuating the species. Arctic Science Journeys reporter Doug Schneider has more.

STORY: PENCE: "Tundra, come on Tundra!"

Attracted by the sound of fresh grain rattling around inside a coffee can, Tundra—a large male musk ox—casts a sideways glance toward animal handler Suzy Pence.

PENCE: "Come on Tundra Boy! Come on Tundra!"

Tundra takes several half-hearted steps, and then stops.

A distant relative of the goat, musk ox have been around since before the last ice age—some 20,000 years. Short and stocky, a bony plate covers their forehead and stubby horns stick out from each side. Long, shaggy brown hair drapes from a humped back all the way to the ground. Perry Barboza, an animal scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says musk ox are part goat, part cow—and part furniture.

BARBOZA: "They're such a weird looking animal. They're a couch with legs and they do some very interesting things. They have the gut of a cow, head and all the armaments of an ox, the eyes of a goat, and feet that look like snowshoes. So they're a very strange animal. And then they also produce wool. You've got a mixture of all these attributes that you would never really expect to find, and all it means is that it's the best solution it's converged upon for a whole series of problems."

PENCE "There, he just rumbled a little. Come on Tundra!"

On almost any other day, rattling grain would bring Tundra lumbering over. But not today. Mating season is in full swing, and Tundra, now seven years old and in prime breeding condition, is more interested in sex than food. Only Tundra's conquests aren't played out on the high Arctic tundra, but here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station. Some 72 musk ox live on the farm, located on the north end of the campus.

And while partially domesticated, these musk ox still know what it takes to impress the ladies. The older bulls act like tough guys, intimidating the smaller, younger bulls. Their aggressive antics stimulate the release of hormones in females that in turn excites the males even more. Perry Barboza says the males' battles for dominance come to a head—literally—when two love-crazed bulls run full-tilt into each other. Whoever doesn't get a headache wins.

BARBOZA: "Their whole body, their neck musculature and orientation of the front of the body, is all in line so they can take a front-on collision and transmit all that force down the vertebrae and cushion it. They're able to impact quite successfully without too much damage."

Another musk ox, Thor, is four years old. Not quite ready for prime time—but not too young to make a statement, either. Knowing he can't win in a fight with the big males, he settles for beating up the chain link fence.

Large fence posts nearly 30 centimeters (12 inches) in diameter give against the brute strength of Thor's 450 kilograms (1,000 pounds) of bulk. Perry Barboza grimaces as he watches the hairy vandal trash the fence. You can almost see the dollar signs flashing before his eyes.

BARBOZA: "A significant part of our budget is for replacing the fences because the more bulls we have, the more damage we have. And also young bulls have to work out how strong they are and they use the fences to figure out that. Old bulls do it for advertising. Everyone beats the fences up."

Scientifically, a musk ox in love is a musk ox under a lot of stress. Perry Barboza likens their experiences of fighting off other musk ox, guarding territory, and being constantly alert—with that of being at war.

BARBOZA: "This is a time when their steroids are really high, and they are behaving like they are in combat. They're working like soldiers on the front line, and they are under continuous stress. We actually do lose bulls at this time of year. We get animals that go down with a variety of strange infections. What we're finding is that their white blood cell counts and things like that seem to be going down as they go through rut. We think this may be something that we will be able to relate to chronic stress conditions in humans."

For the musk ox, though, the only thing that matters is propagating the species. In a few weeks, mating season will come to an end and musk ox here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks farm will settle in for a long winter. But if next spring is anything like the past spring, about seven new musk ox will be born in late April and early May.

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