Ready For Your Closeup, Mr. Caribou: Cameras Discover Fortymile Herd Behavior

A recent study done by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute chronicled a fascinating study of Fortymile Herd caribou, which were captured by special collar cameras.

Here’s more from the UAF story that ran in the Anchorage Daily News:

Libby Ehlers, a Ph.D. student at the University of Montana who watched hundreds of video clips to see what plants caribou cows were eating, is the main author of a recent paper in which she highlights the experiment.

She had a few memorable moments during her hours of watching the view from the underside of a caribou’s throat:

“The mother is feeding on lichen and her baby, probably a couple weeks old, comes into view and quickly licks her muzzle a couple times to likely smell, taste and learn what the mother is eating. It was really neat to witness and capture this learned behavior taking place in a nine-second video clip. We had one adult animal die, and we were able to see a variety of different animals feed on her dead body — grizzly bears, ravens and others.”