Flashback: Alaska

I posted some pictures from the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center back in 2014 when I visited it, but I somehow ignored this disconcerting creature.

Reindeer are not native to Alaska; as in South Georgia, they were originally imported as a food source. Alaska Native populations were starving because the whaling industry was disrupting their traditional food supplies, and arrangements were made to bring in reindeer from Russia to supplement the increasingly scarce caribou. Reindeer and caribou are the same species, but different subspecies, and since all of the reindeer in Alaska are semidomesticated, a century and a half of breeding has increased the visible differences between them.

There are fewer than 20,000 reindeer left in Alaska, and by law only Alaska Natives are allowed to keep them.

If I ever knew how these two ended up in the AWCC, I've long since forgotten it. Perhaps they needed rehab to learn to walk with those ridiculous antlers on their heads? They remind me of Max the dog in the original cartoon of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.