MinuteEarth

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Reindeer meat could’ve entered North American cuisine and culture, but our turn of the century efforts to develop a reindeer industry were stymied by nature, the beef lobby, and the Great Depression.


Thanks also to our supporters on https://www.patreon.com/MinuteEarth
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Help translate this video: http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_video?v=owNMCTmbG9w&ref=share

FYI: We try to leave jargon out of our videos, but if you want to learn more about this topic, here are some keywords to get your googling started:

Reindeer - the smaller, (semi-)domesticated version/subspecies of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus)
Caribou - the wild, north American subspecies of Rangifer tarandus (Rangifer tarandus granti and others).
Wild reindeer - the wild, European/Asian subspecies of Rangifer tarandus.
Herding - bringing animals together into a group, maintaining the group, and moving the group from place to place
Rain-on-snow event - exactly what it sounds like! Rain that falls on snow, freezes into a thick layer of impenetrable ice over pastures, and causes mass starvation of reindeer (or caribou)
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Credits (and Twitter handles):
Script Writer: Alex Reich (@alexhreich)
Script Editor: Kate Yoshida (@KateYoshida)
Video Illustrator: Ever Salazar (@eversalazar)
Video Director: Kate Yoshida (@KateYoshida)
Video Narrator: Kate Yoshida (@KateYoshida)
With Contributions From: Henry Reich, Emily Elert, Peter Reich, David Goldenberg
Music by: Nathaniel Schroeder: http://www.soundcloud.com/drschroeder

Image Credits: Rangifer tarandus - Alexandre Buisse
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20070818-0001-strolling_reindeer.jpg
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If you liked this week’s video, we think you might also like:
Alaska Fish & Game Dept website for “Santa's Reindeer” species - http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=santasreindeer.main

A virtual guide to reindeer and the people who herd them - http://reindeerherding.org/

The Great Canadian Reindeer Project - http://www.canadashistory.ca/Magazine/Online-Extension/Articles/The-Great-Canadian-Reindeer-Project

How one storm killed 61,000 Russian reindeer in 2013: http://www.popsci.com/sea-ice-loss-is-imperiling-reindeer-herders-way-life

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References:

Special thanks to Professor Greg Finstad of the University of Alaska Fairbanks for lending his advice, expertise, and patience to the making of this video!

Christie, A., & Finstad, G. L. (2009). Reindeer in the “Great Land”: Alaska's Red Meat Industry. Journal of Agricultural & Food Information, 10(4), 354-373. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10496500903245651

Daniel, C. R., Cross, A. J., Koebnick, C., & Sinha, R. (2011). Trends in meat consumption in the USA. Public health nutrition, 14(04), 575-583. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/pdf/nihms-253312.pdf

Dubner, S. J. (2010, December 9). Beef or Chicken? A Look at U.S. Meat Trends in the Last Century [Blog post]. Retrieved December 1, 2016, from http://freakonomics.com/2010/12/09/beef-or-chicken-a-look-at-u-s-meat-trends-in-the-last-century/

Finstad, G. L. (2016). Personal Communication.

Finstad, G. L., Bader, H. R., & Prichard, A. K. (2002). Conflicts between reindeer herding and an expanding caribou herd in Alaska. Rangifer, 22(4), 33-37. https://www.ub.uit.no/baser/septentrio/index.php/rangifer/article/viewFile/1668/1559

Finstad, G. L., Kielland, K. K., & Schneider, W. S. (2006). Reindeer herding in transition: historical and modern day challenges for Alaskan reindeer herders. Nomadic Peoples, 10(2), 31-49. http://reindeer.salrm.uaf.edu/resources/journal_articles/Nomadic_Peoples10(2)31-49.PDF

Stern, R. O., Arobio, E. L., Naylor, L. L., & Thomas, W. C. (1980). Eskimos, reindeer, and land. https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/1205/Bulletin59.pdf?sequence=1

Willis, R. (2006). A New Game in the North: Alaska Native Reindeer Herding, 1890–1940. Western Historical Quarterly, 37(3), 277-301. http://oit-fhs-pws1.oit.duke.edu/Fellowships/Willis.pdf

Direct download: Why_Dont_Americans_Eat_Reindeer.mp4
Category:general -- posted at: 1:27pm EDT

Foraminifera – tiny, single-celled marine life forms – build gorgeous houses that record how much ice there is on the planet.

This video was supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation. To learn more, visit https://www.heisingsimons.org/

Special thanks to Professor Lee Kump of Penn State University and Professor Howie Spero of UC-Davis for lending their advice, expertise, and patience to the making of this video!

Thanks also to our supporters on https://www.patreon.com/MinuteEarth


Help translate this video: http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_video?ref=share&v=oaOfeSJZ3lY

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FYI: We try to leave jargon out of our videos, but if you want to learn more about this topic, here are some keywords to get your googling started:

foraminifera: a class of single-celled marine organisms – protists, not animals – that live either near the surface ("planktonic foraminifera") or on the seafloor ("benthic foraminifera"). Called forams for short.

climate proxy: something that tells us what the climate was like in the past, such as data from the thickness of tree rings, the composition of gases trapped in ancient ice, historical human records of annual bloom times (eg the long-recorded bloom dates of cherry trees in Kyoto, Japan), or the ratios of certain stable isotopes found in shells, corals, or other biogenic substances

oxygen-18: a stable isotope of oxygen that contains 8 protons and 10 neutrons, rather than the 8 protons and 8 neutrons of "regular" oxygen (oxygen-16). The ratio of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 in seawater (and sea shells) can be used as a proxy for the global average temperature

ice sheet: a permanent layer of ice covering land, as found in polar regions (and as distinguished from sea ice, like the stuff that floats at the north pole in the Arctic ocean). Combined, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets contain more than 99% of the total freshwater ice on Earth.

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If you liked this week’s video, we think you might also like:
The Tiniest Fossils by the AMNH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLSa8cGJixQ

Orbulina feeding on Artemia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYQNt52tiVU

Mysterious Web Masters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0WbN34Mh7k

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Credits (and Twitter handles):
Script Writer: Emily Elert (@eelert)
Script Editor: Kate Yoshida (@KateYoshida)
Video Illustrator: Ever Salazar (@eversalazar)
Video Director: Emily Elert (@eelert)
Video Narrator: Emily Elert (@eelert)
With Contributions From: Henry Reich, Alex Reich, Peter Reich, David Goldenberg
Music by: Nathaniel Schroeder: http://www.soundcloud.com/drschroeder

Image credits:

Cribrohantkenina inflata - Paul Pearson
https://museum.wales/articles/2007-08-03/Up-close-with-nature/

Elphidium macellum, Bulimina and Calcarina hispida by foraminifera.eu
http://www.foraminifera.eu/

Globigerina - Hannes Grobe
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/our-work/biodiversity/planktonic-forminera.html

_________________________________________

Like our videos?
Subscribe to MinuteEarth on YouTube: http://goo.gl/EpIDGd
Support us on Patreon: https://goo.gl/ZVgLQZ

Also, say hello on:
Facebook: http://goo.gl/FpAvo6
Twitter: http://goo.gl/Y1aWVC

And find us on itunes: https://goo.gl/sfwS6n
___________________________________________

REFERENCES

Hays, J. D., Imbrie, J., & Shackleton, N. J. (1976). Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages. Science, 194(4270), 1121-1132.
Abstract: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/194/4270/1121

Kendall, C., & McDonnell, J.J. (1998). Fundamentals of Isotope Geochemistry. In Isotope Tracers in Catchment Hydrology (pp. 51-86). Eds: Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam.
Link: http://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/isoig/isopubs/itchch2.html#2.3

Kucera, M. (2007). Planktonic Foraminifera as Tracers of Past Oceanic Environments. In Developments in Marine Geology, Volume 1, (pp. 213-262).
Link: http://pmc.ucsc.edu/~apaytan/290A_Winter2014/pdfs/2007%20Proxies%20Chapter%20six.pdf

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for Annual 2015, published online January 2016, retrieved on November 28, 2016 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513.

Sachs, J., & Steig, E. (2010) Lecture on Isotopes and Air Temperature. University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Link: http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/AirTemperatureLecture2_2010.pdf

Shanahan, T. (2010). Lecture on Oxygen Isotopes. University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Link: http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/302c/L16-N.pdf

Direct download: ME_100_-_How_This_Sea_Shell_Knows_the_Weather_in_Greenland.mp4
Category:general -- posted at: 12:17pm EDT

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