Nov 14, 2009 – Two Native Americans wear elaborate costumes at a powwow in Post Falls, Idaho – Kirk Mastin / Aurora Photos

• Native Americans have been reclaiming their language, customs, and political agency…
  With some interesting results
• Want to hear something awesome?
  Go native — with a twist
• Lots of people use the term “pow-wow,” but not many people really know what it means.
  What’s the low-down on pow-wows?
• Where do these proud dancers perform?
  Find out

The moose (North America) or common elk (Europe), Alces alces, is the largest extant species in the deer  family. Moose are distinguished by the palmate antlers  of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a “twig-like” configuration. Moose typically inhabit boreal and mixed deciduous forests  of the Northern Hemisphere in temperate to subarctic climates.

Naming and etymology

The animal bearing the name Alces alces is known in Europe as the elk and in North America and New Zealand as the moose. The name elk is connected with several earlier European variants—Latin: alces, Old Norse: elgr, Scandinavian: elg, älg or similar, and German: Elch—all of which refer to this animal.

Confusingly, the word elk in North America refers to the second largest deer species, Cervus canadensis, also known as the wapiti. Early European explorers in North America, who were familiar with the closely related but smaller red deer of Central and Western Europe, believed that the much larger North American animal looked more like the European elk (i.e. moose), so they named it elk.

The word moose is derived from the Algonquian Eastern Abnaki name moz, loosely translated as twig eater.

Moose is both singular and plural, unlike goose, which in the plural is geese.

In North America, the moose range includes almost all of Canada, most of central and western Alaska, much of New England and upstate New York, the upper Rocky Mountains, Northeastern Minnesota, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Isolated moose populations have been verified as far south as the mountains of Utah and Colorado. In 1978 a few breeding pairs were introduced in western Colorado, and the state’s moose population is now more than 1,000.

In Europe, moose are found in large numbers throughout Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic States. They are also widespread through Russia. Small populations remain in Poland (Biebrza Nat. Park), Belarus and the Czech Republic.

Moose were successfully introduced on Newfoundland in 1904 where they are now the dominant ungulate, and somewhat less successfully on Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Ten moose were also introduced in Fiordland, New Zealand in 1910, but they were thought to have died off. Nevertheless, there have been reported sightings that were thought to be false until moose hair samples were found by a New Zealand scientist in 2002. In 2008 moose (or elk) were reintroduced in to the Scottish Highlands

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