The muskox is one of the oldest herbivores alive today, with an ancestry that can be traced back at least 150,000 years in North America. During the last ice age, muskoxen roamed the ice-free Beringian steppes with the long gone mammoth, woolly rhino, and mastodon. Today’s tundra muskox, or Ovibus moschatus, is the last survivor of those days, numbering about 100,000 worldwide. Although it looks a bit like a bison, the muskox is more closely related to sheep and goats. In fact, its closest relative is the goral, a goat-like animal found in mountains of eastern Asia.
More than half the worldwide population of muskoxen lives in wild herds in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The muskox was eliminated from the northern Yukon and Alaska in the mid-1800s, largely as a result of hunting. In recent years, however, a small population of perhaps 150-200 animals has wandered onto the Yukon North Slope from a reintroduced muskox population in Alaska.
Muskoxen are herd animals and form tight family bonds. Muskox herds vary in size, partly depending on the season. They tend to be larger in winter, when sites with good forage are harder to find, and smaller during the rut, when the bulls compete with each other for access to cows. When a member of the herd is threatened, the adults will form a circle with the weak or young in the centre. If the herd is small, they may form a line with the vulnerable herd members behind the line. A muskox bull, in particular, will charge anything it perceives as a threat, but issues a warning first by rubbing the scent gland on its front leg with its nose.
As one of its adaptations to life in the cold, the muskox has fine, cashmere-like, under-fur that is soft and warm and keeps cold winds and snow out. The fur, called quiviuk, makes high quality and expensive yarn.