Curated playlist
Arctic land animals
- Red foxThe red fox, Vulpes vulpes, occupies a range of nearly 70 million square kilometres that stretches north as far as the Arctic Circle. It is the largest of the true foxes. It is also among the most widely distributed members of the order…
- Eurasian lynxIn 1975, a Eurasian lynx was sighted in the western Dhaulagiri massif of Nepal, high among the Himalayan peaks. The sighting suits a cat that lives in temperate and boreal forests up to an elevation of 5500 m. The Eurasian lynx, Lynx lynx,…
- Brown bearThe brown bear can run down a moose, yet 90% of its food comes from plants. Adults can weigh up to 600 kg.
- Arctic foxIn July 2019, the Norwegian Polar Institute told the story of a young female Arctic fox that had been fitted with a GPS tracker. Researchers released her on the east coast of Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard group of islands. She crossed the…
- MuskoxIn the Inuktitut language, the muskox is called umingmak, which means "the bearded one". Woods Cree speakers had two names for it. One was mâthi-môs, "ugly moose", and the other was mâthi-mostos, "ugly bison". Scientists know the animal as…
- ReindeerA walking reindeer clicks, and the sound can be heard from several hundred metres away. The noise comes from small tendons in the legs slipping over bony knobs called sesamoid bones. It happens as the full weight of a foot lands, or just…
- Grizzly bearWhen Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first described the grizzly bear, they wrote its name as grisley. That spelling can be read two ways. It can mean grizzled, as in hair tipped with grey. It can also mean grisly, something that…
- WolverineThe wolverine known as M-56 began his famous journey as a young male, tagged by Wildlife Conservation Society officials in Wyoming near Grand Teton National Park. Researchers tracked him south for almost three months. In June 2009 the…
- StoatThe stoat, known to science as Mustela erminea, is a small meat-eating member of the mustelid family. By 2024, the Orkney Native Wildlife Project had spent £7.9m trapping more than 6,300 of them. Stoats have lived on that archipelago north…
- MuskratThe muskrat, Ondatra zibethicus, can stay underwater for 12 to 17 minutes on a single breath. That is longer than most people could hold a conversation without checking their phone. This medium-sized rodent lives in wetlands across North…
- AdderThe adder, known to science as Vipera berus, lives farther north than any other snake. Its range reaches beyond the Arctic Circle. From there it spreads east across Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and it turns up on Sakhalin Island, in North…