Charles also gave me an account of a remarkable sort of play between a
Red Fox and a small buck Caribou. He had witnessed it in September,
1943, about 18 miles north of Windy River, from a distance of half a
mile. The Fox would approach the Caribou closely; the latter would then
walk up to the Fox, which would retreat, not allowing the Caribou to
come close enough to touch it. Neither animal was afraid of the other.
They kept up this performance for about 5 minutes. The Fox then went
among some bushes, where the Caribou tried to follow it. The larger
animal was still there, feeding, when Charles passed on out of sight. He
regarded the whole performance as a matter of playfulness. His recital
put me in mind at once of a slightly similar play between a Newfoundland
Caribou and a Red Fox, as recorded by Millais (1907: 302-303).
Stefánsson (1921: 623-624) describes a game of tag between an Arctic Fox
and several yearlings of _Rangifer pearyi_ on Melville Island.
_References._--Blanchet, 1925: 34; Birket-Smith, 1929(1): 101;
Critchell-Bullock, 1930: 143; Munn, 1932: 278; Ingstad, 1933:
90, 157-159; Freuchen, 1935: 128; Banfield, 1951a: 36.
_Relations to Wolves_
Aside from man, the principal predatory enemy of the Barren Ground
Caribou is undoubtedly the Wolf. A comparison of a distributional map of
Caribou by Banfield (1949: 479, fig. 1) with a distributional map of
Wolves by Goldman (1944: 414, fig. 14) indicates that the latter species
is a considerably more plastic animal. No less than six subspecies of
Wolves seem to occur in parts of the currently recognized range of a
single subspecies of Caribou (_Rangifer arcticus arcticus_), as follows:
_Canis lupus arctos_, Prince of Wales and Somerset islands; _Canis lupus
manningi_, Baffin Island; _Canis lupus bernardi_, Victoria Island;
_Canis lupus hudsonicus_, Keewatin, eastern Mackenzie, northern
Manitoba, and northeastern Saskatchewan; _Canis lupus mackenzii_,
northern Mackenzie; _Canis lupus occidentalis_, southern Mackenzie and
northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
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