The Barren Ground Caribou is a migratory animal and spends its life walking thousands of miles in large herds between winter and summer ranges. This allows it to search for the best food supplies and most preferable habitat for each season. In the summer it prefers the open tundra where it can eat fresh grasses and escape insect predators with help of the wind. In the winter the taiga forest offers cover from the wind and a more abundant supply of buds and lichens.
Caribou fun facts: Caribou will eat meat and bone although they are herbavores. They often eat discarded antlers and when lemmings are abundant they will eat lemmings (small rodents). Caribou have special digestive enzymes that allow them to digest lichen. Lichen is a much more abundant food source in winter when snow and ice cover the ground because it grows on trees and rocks. Caribou have hollow hair which provides excellent insulation against the cold and added flotation when swimming. Caribou are good swimmers. Their big hooves help them swim into the current of rivers; they also act like snowshoes in the winter.
Caribou are the largest of the deer and the only deer which both males and females have antlers. The word caribou may come from the Micmac word 'xalibo' which means "the one that paws through the snow for its food." Caribou have a keen sense of smell that helps them find food through the snow in winter.
The Caribou's main predators are the wolf and man. Caribou is a major food source for the native inhabitants of Canada; including the Dene, Dogrib and Inuit peoples.
