“For me, it’s simple. The world is made up of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to remain herbivores, then the carnivores will win, and we will be a market for them…”
-Emanuel Macron, November 6, 2024
Just below the 7,500 foot peak of Snohetta, in the National Park of Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella, Norway, a herd of musk oxen nervously grazed.
It was mid-November. Temperatures had dropped well below freezing, and the herd knew what awaited them—a long, fiercely cold, dark winter.
But they were well equipped for winter. Their coats were thick. As heterothermic mammals they could shut down thermal regulation to their extremities to reduce the loss of body heat. Like their companion reindeer, their hemoglobin had evolved over millennia to permit a low enthalpy. The binding of oxygen to the hemoglobin molecules in their blood stream released less heat relative to other mammals.
The musk oxen could handle an arctic winter.
It was not the prospect of cold that made them nervous.
Nor was it, per se, the distant howling of wolves nor the faint smell left a few days before by a passing brown bear.
True, wolves and brown bears were their most feared predators. But the musk oxen had developed an effective defense against predation—community.
When sensing danger, musk oxen band in communal defense. Faced with a single predator, they form a formidable line. Confronted by a pack of wolves or several bears, they close ranks into a circle, with the most vulnerable among them—calves and smaller females—on the interior.
So long as they remain packed together, their defense is impregnable. But should one or more of them run scared, they will be easily devoured, in the process shrinking the herd’s size and making the remaining animals more vulnerable.
In particular, the loss of the dominant bull can be fatal for the survival of the herd. For occasionally the dominant male must rush from the circle to frighten off predators. His size, girth, and power are a deterrent, even to a pack of hungry wolves or a menacing bear.
The herd was unsettled, with calves, cows, and young juvenile males repeatedly lifting their heads, watching for danger, trying to sniff for its scent. Musk oxen have an acute sense of smell, even if its primary function is to find food beneath layers of snow.
What made the herd anxious was the sudden, unexpected departure earlier that day of their alpha male, the dominant bull.
Among the herd, he was known as Djtelon, an ancient, if uncommon, Norse name. Djtelon had only recently emerged as the dominant male, having defeated an older rival with whom he had sparred for nearly a decade. During mating season from August to October, Djtelon had easily driven off younger bulls, gathered his harem, and with prodigious virility had impregnated all the estrus females.
Male musk oxen have red manes, but Djtelon’s was more prominent than most. It stood on end, making it glint more orange than red in the fading arctic sunlight.
And then he was gone.
The cows and even some of the juvenile males speculated about his sudden absence. Had he wandered off and been killed by a large bear? Had he slipped and fallen off a cliff?
But those who knew him best doubted that Djtelon had met his fate. Rather, they suspected he had abandoned the herd for another. Djtelon, some of the older cows remembered, had never shown allegiance to the herd, though he demanded that of them. Rumor had it that Djtelon had occasionally left his pregnant cows in search of younger females in more distant herds.
The howling of the wolves faded away.
Good, thought the remaining herd, the wolves have found other prey, perhaps some reindeer.
Still, they were nervous. How could a herd of musk oxen comprised only of cows, calves, and young males defend itself, particularly from the great bear known to live to the east? A bear that at one time had been thought extinct, but who had merely been in prolonged hibernation.
Now, before winter forced the great eastern bear back to its den, it was ravenous. It was already slaughtering herds of reindeer to the east.
But the great eastern bear was headed their way, in search of the largest source of protein, fat, and carbohydrates it could find to fatten itself for winter—the musk ox.
And just then, carried along by a cold gust from the east, came the scent the herd feared most.
The bear approached. Danger lurked.
Djtelon was gone. He had abandoned his herd to the great eastern carnivore. Along with his prize female cow, he had slipped away to safety over the high range to the west.
Abandoned, the herd formed a line.
Then a circle.
And then they ran.
