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The Peary caribou ( Rangifer arcticus pearyi) is a subspecies of Reindeer found in the Canadian high Arctic islands of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories in Canada. They are the smallest of the North American caribou, with the females weighing an average of and the males . In length the females average and the males .
Like other caribou, both the males and females have . The males grow their antlers from March to August and the females from June to September, and in both cases the Velvet antler is gone by October. The coat of the caribou is white and thick in the winter. In the summer it becomes short and darker, almost slate-grey in color. The coat is made up of hollow hair which helps to trap warmer air and insulate the caribou.
The males become sexually mature after two years and the females after three years. Breeding is in the fall and depends on the female having built up sufficient fat reserves. The gestation period last for seven to eight months and one calf is produced.
Peary caribou feed on most of the available grasses, Cyperaceae (sedges), lichen and . In particular they seem to enjoy the purple saxifrage and in summer their Snout become purple from the plants. Their hooves are sharp and shaped like a shovel to enable them to dig through the snow in search of food.
The caribou rarely travel more than from their winter feeding grounds to the summer ones. They are able to outrun the Arctic wolf, their main predator, and are good swimmers. They usually travel in small groups of no more than twelve in the summer and four in the winter.
The Peary caribou population has dropped from above 40,000 in 1961 to an estimated 13,000 adults in 2016, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). During this period, the number of days with above freezing temperatures has increased significantly, resulting in ice layers in the snow pack. These ice layers hinder foraging and are the likely cause for dramatic drops in caribou population in the future.
The Peary caribou, called tuktu in Inuinnaqtun/Inuktitut, and written as ᕐᑯᑦᓯᑦᑐᒥ ᑐᒃᑐ in Inuktitut syllabics, is a major food source for the Inuit and was named after the American explorer Robert Peary.
Like all caribou they have hollow hairs that help trap warm air and insulate their bodies.
Aulavik National Park at the northern end of Banks Island is also home to the Peary caribou. The Thomsen River runs through the park and is the northernmost navigable river (by canoe) in North America. Aulavik National Park, a fly-in park, protects about of Arctic lowlands at the northern end of the island. In Inuvialuktun Aulavik means "place where people travel" and caribou have been hunted there for more than 3,400 years, from Pre-Dorset cultures to contemporary Inuvialuit.
Archaeologists have found bones of pearyi-sized caribou that occupied Greenland in the Illinoian-Wisconsin interglacial and through the LGM and early Holocene (Meldgaard 1986).Meldgaard M (1986) The Greenland caribou - zoogeography, taxonomy and population dynamics. Vol. 20,Kommissionen for Videnskabelige Undersagelser i Grønland, Meddelelser om Grøinland, Bioscience, Univ. Copenhagen, zoologisk museum, Denmark, 88 pp. Degerbøl (1957)Degerbøl M (1957) The extinct reindeer of East-Greenland: Rangifer tarandus eogroenlandicus, subsp. nov.: compared with reindeer from other Arctic regions. Acta Arctica 10: 1-66. described R. t. eogroenlandicus, a small caribou that became extinct about 1900, from a relict enclave in north-eastern Greenland (Fig. 2). However, Anderson (1946)Anderson RM (1946) Catalogue of Canadian Recent mammals. National Museum of Canada Bulletin No. 102, Biological Series 31, Ottawa, Ontario, 238 pp. thought that the small caribou that were occasionally found in northwest Greenland were Peary caribou and implied the same for east Greenland caribou. Bennike (1988),Bennike O (1988) Review: The Greenland caribou-zoogeography, taxonomy and population dynamics, by Morten Meldgaard. Arctic 41: 146-147. doi: comparing bones and noting that Peary caribou have been documented crossing Nares Strait to Greenland, doubted that pearyi and eogroenlandicus were subspecifically distinct. That Peary caribou shared certain mtDNA haplotypes and morphological similarities with it (Kvie et al. 2016)Kvie KS, Heggenes J, Anderson DG, Kholodova MV, Sipko T, Mizin I, Røed KH (2016) Colonizing the high arctic: mitochondrial DNA reveals common origin of Eurasian archipelagic reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). PloS one 11: e0165237. casts further doubt on the validity of R. t. eogroenlandicus. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (traditional or community knowledge) records that Peary caribou do, occasionally, cross to Greenland.Taylor ADM (2005) Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit about population changes and ecology of Peary caribou and muskoxen on the High Arctic islands of Nunavut. MA Thesis, Kingston, Ontario: Queen’s University In any case, the last live caribou reported from northern Greenland were most likely Peary caribou that had strayed from Ellesmere Island. They were last seen in Hall Land in 1922.Morten Meldgaard, (1986) The Greenland Caribou - Zoogeography, Taxonomy, and Population Dynamics'', p. 44
, Ottawa, Ontario, 92 pp.
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