Curated playlist
Mammals of Canada
- BobcatThe bobcat, Lynx rufus, has turned up in some surprising places. In early March 2010, animal control authorities captured one in a parking garage in downtown Houston. In 2018, another was captured on a tourist boat in downtown Pittsburgh,…
- American black bearIn Yosemite National Park, only 9 percent of American black bears are actually black. The other 91 percent are brown or blonde. The American black bear, Ursus americanus, is the smallest bear in North America and also the most widespread.…
- ElkEarly English colonists gave the elk a name that belonged to the European moose. Shawnee and Cree called it wapiti.
- CoyoteIn 2026, a coyote, Canis latrans, swam to the southern edge of Alcatraz Island. To get there, it crossed more than a mile of water from the nearest land in San Francisco. A swim like that would surprise anyone who pictures the coyote only…
- MartenNokia took its name from a type of marten. The Finnish company's name came by way of the river Nokianvirta.
- PronghornThe pronghorn can run 55 miles per hour over half a mile, faster than any other American land animal.
- Beluga whaleIn 1849, railroad crews laying the first line between Rutland and Burlington in Vermont dug up the bones of a beluga whale in the town of Charlotte. The workers did not know that, of course. They only knew that nearly ten feet below the…
- American bisonBy 1889, only 541 American bison were left in the United States. They once numbered an estimated 60 million.
- 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…
- WalrusAt the Tierpark Hagenbeck, walruses easily pulled a five-pound metal plug out of the bottom of their pool, even though it sat under 1.1 metres of water. The animal behind that feat is the walrus, Odobenus rosmarus, a large marine mammal…
- 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…
- NarwhalThe narwhal, Monodon monoceros, is a toothed whale of the Arctic, and the males carry a spiralled tusk that can stretch three metres. Why would a whale grow such a thing, and what is it for? The narwhal also spends much of its life in…
- Sea otterThe sea otter, Enhydra lutris, carries up to 150,000 strands of fur on a single square centimetre of its body. That is the densest coat of any animal. The sea otter is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North…