Animal · United States, Canada, Russia
Elk
Cervus canadensis — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The elk, or wapiti, is the second largest deer in the world, and in autumn the males call with a high whistling bugle that carries for kilometres. A big bull weighs as much as four grown men and carries enormous antlers.
Picture credit: Frank Schulenburg (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Martin Cathrae (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the elk live?
Home: Mountain meadows and open forests of North America and Asia.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Canada, Russia, Mongolia, China, New Zealand.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 2 to 2.7 m long, up to 1.5 m at the shoulder. It weighs about 280 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
Elk spend the summer high in the mountains and come down to the valleys when the snow arrives. They are grazers, like cattle, and an adult can eat around nine kilos of grass, bark and shoots in a day. Every spring a bull grows a new set of antlers, and while they are growing they are covered in a soft skin called velvet and get longer by about two and a half centimetres a day. In September the velvet is rubbed off and the bugling begins: a strange, thin whistle, far higher than you would expect from such a heavy animal, used to warn off rival bulls and gather a group of females. The antlers drop off again in late winter, and the whole thing starts over.
Find it on the globe
Elk is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
What is the difference between an elk and a moose?
They are two different animals, and the names are confusing. In Europe the word elk means the moose, the biggest deer of all, with flat shovel-shaped antlers. The North American elk, or wapiti, is smaller, reddish brown with a pale rump, and its antlers are branched like a tree.
Why do elk bugle?
Bulls bugle in autumn to show rivals how strong they are and to gather females. The call is a thin, high whistle that can be heard far across a valley, so two bulls often settle things without ever fighting.
Do elk lose their antlers every year?
Yes. The antlers fall off in late winter and a fresh pair grows back in spring and summer, getting about two and a half centimetres longer each day while covered in velvet.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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