Have you ever heard of the beast known as a muskox?
That’s okay if you haven’t, because I bet you’ve seen one a time or two before. If you haven’t, the good news is that we’re about to dive right into a video of two of the 800 pound animals battling one another.
Muskox look like bison that the Lord Almighty left a little too long in the “fluff machine.” The hairy animals have an extremely thick coat, which allowed them to survive through the Ice Age. And weirdly enough, they are related more closely to goats and sheep than they are oxen and bison.
If you were thinking, “Muskox is a really odd name for a wild animal,” you’d be right… and there’s a reasonable explanation for the unique name. Male muskox emit a horrible odor during the rut season, and some might even go as far to call it a “musk.” Hence the name musk-ox.
But it doesn’t matter what they look like, what their name is, or what they smell like when muskox decide to face off against each other. This clip is pulled from the Apple TV series Big Beasts, and puts the spotlight on two muskox battling for supremacy.
The horned behemoths put their heads down and ram right into one other, and though they have some adaptations to withstand such hits, that still has to hurt a bit. Or least result in a mild headache later on.
As to why the muskox were fighting, the caption for the post explained in a little more detail:
“Muskox bulls engage in fights to establish dominance within the herd. The victor gains breeding rights, mating with more females than subordinate males.
Losing a fight can be a disadvantage in smaller herds where hierarchy is stricter. In larger herds, dominance can be more fluid, and males might need to compete more frequently to maintain their position and mating opportunities.”
So if you weren’t familiar with muskox before, you should be now. Or at the very least, you got to enjoy a video narrated by Tom Hiddleston of two wild animals brawling. That’s not bad at all, right?
