Elk

The elk is Finland's largest animal. Its length is 2-3 meters, weight 240-600 kg and height over the body is 150-230 cm. People have tried to make them domestic, also in recent years, and in the past they have sometimes been used for pulling things and in post transportation. The Swedish King Karl XI liked the elks so much that he even planned to make an artillery unit riding on elks. Elks are the fastest trotters, as fast as horses in competition. It is a good swimmer and can even dive to a couple of meters debth in looking for food. In the zoo of Helsinki no other animal has injuried staff of the zoo as much as elks kicking.

In the beginning of the 1900 the elks were time to time dying out and other times there were far too many of them. Since the middle of the 60'ties scientific research has investigated how to make the population more stable. However, this is a hart task as it is not easy to control nature. First should be decided how much elks and wild animals are needed, then how many elk accidents we accept on the roads and how much money we are ready to put on prevention of elk accidents at roads. Today the elk population is decreasing, the age and sex of the population is out of proportions. There are too young and few males which are being traced by nearly "retired" elk females. Perhaps the diversity of genes is already smaller but that is extremely difficult to prove.

Young females gives birth to one foal, later to twins. The foal is staying with its mother until next foals are being born. The last years foals are left in May and they are extremely dangerous when looking for their new place. Usually they cross roads frequently and there are many traffic accidents due to this in May month. Later young males gather in groups and may be seen grazing on feelds.