A giant herd of cattle are not huddled together to get away from evil oil companies or other things that have overwhelmingly improved the ecosystem in Alaska, these Northwest caribou are avoiding nature.
Namely, mosquitoes.
"The bugs on the North Slope are pretty ferocious," Kyle Joly, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service based in Fairbanks, Alaska, told Our Amazing Planet. "The mosquitoes just harass them 24 hours per day." The warble flies and nasal bots that are out now are even worse in some ways, he said; the warbles try to lay eggs on the animal's sides and the bots try to fly up caribou nostrils to deposit eggs.
After nature stops spoiling...nature, the caribou splinter as quickly as they came together and spread out throughout the Brooks Range and North Slope before coming together again to migrate south during the fall.
Photos: 300,000 Caribou Huddle Together To Avoid Insects, by Douglas Main, Our Amazing Planet
