![]() I couldn’t tell which was the calf, and which the mother.” However, they both let out a series of high-pitched calls, almost like squeaks, as they stayed in touch. “I could not see them a lot of the time,” he said during our conversation, “and they certainly could not see each other all the time. On another occasion, in early June Roy watched a cow and her small calf feeding in some willows. ![]() ![]() I wonder if the cow and bull ever got together, as happened in this picture taken in Prince Alberta National Park by Gerhard Stuewe. The cow took off at a great rate, down the meadow and through the willows, crashing though the bushes and letting out the same call as she went. It was a lion’s roar with a deep loud belch mixed in. At that point “she let out the loudest sound I've ever heard escape the lungs of any animal. I called him and as we chatted about his experience he told me that the cow suddenly became aware of him, although there was no wind to speak of. She continued to call for about an hour while her calf seemed to be playing-fits of running about then standing still for a while.” “Even though they were only a few meters away,” he wrote, “I could barely discern their shapes. There was no moon that night and by the time the animals arrived in the meadow just below the knoll only the stars gave any light. She would call every five or ten minutes, each time getting closer and each time getting answering grunts from a bull at the far end of the lake.” It started high and went down the register for about 10 seconds, closely repeated several times, each shorter than the last, until it ended in a couple of short grunts. “I was sitting there as it got dark and I heard the cow call. “I was camped at the end of Grayling Lake, south of Teslin Lake, an area of regrowth that had the highest moose density in the Yukon.”Īs he sat on a three-metre tall knoll at the end of the lake in the gathering autumn dusk he listened as a cow accompanied by her calf came to the shore from quite a distance away."Īs I read Roy’s subsequent emailed graphic description of the next ninety minutes I got goose bumps. In mid-September 1983, at the height of the rut, “I was in what's locally called the Teslin Burn,” he said. The grunt of the rutting bull and the moan of the cow are not the only sounds that moose make.Īs we sat over a beer during our recent writer’s retreat at the Sage Hill Writing Experience naturalist and long-time moose watcher Roy Ness of Whitehorse told me of two encounters with moose during which he heard more than just the moans of a cow. As Terry said in that same BBC interview, “Human females have far more opportunities for mate choice than do female moose because of differences in mating systems.” Bowyer he told me that one of his colleagues, who read the manuscript, said to him, “This is not unique to moose, I have seen it in bars in Wisconsin.” I replied,” Not just Wisconsin, I saw it during my student days in Glasgow.” Of course we both acknowledged that this comparison is an oversimplification. In this regard it echoes shades of human behaviour and clearly shows that there is a considerable element of female choice during the rut. Protest moans allow females to exert some female choice in a mating system where males restrict choice of mates through male-male combat.” In fact, As Terry said in the interview “Male aggression was more common when females gave protest moans than when they did not, indicating that this vocalization incited male-male aggression. When that happens females moan more and this triggers aggression in larger males. He and his team showed that the moan is used as a tool to attract bigger bulls if a small male approaches. ![]() His paper was recently published on line in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology. What Bowyer showed, after many hours of observation, was that the moan has a second surprising purpose. Davies had interviewed Dr Terry Bowyer, who used to work in Alaska before moving to Idaho State University. Then a BBC Nature story written by Ella Davies appeared about a second reason for the moan. I also knew that cow moose make a moaning call during the rut and had believed it to be a protest to courting bulls, especially youngsters. I wonder if this bull, painted by the late Tony Bubenik, was grunting. I had known that during the rut bulls make a noise that has been variously described as a grunt, a hiccup and even, somewhat bizarrely, as sounding like “a human being in the throes of seasickness.” This last description was made by Frederick Selous, the famous hunter of African big game who came to Canada in the early 1900s. In the past week I have learned a whole lot more about moose calls. ![]()
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