Climate Change Is Causing Moose to Go Bald?!

Over the past few weeks, it seems everyday there has been a new discovery of a previous unforeseen affect of climate change. Some we pretty much already had prepared ourselves (mentally) for, but this particular affect is definitely not one of those. In fact, researchers are reporting that Climate change is actually causing moose to lose their fur and effectively go bald!

How crazy is that? Now, this is not exactly one that you can puzzle out with a source of common logic, so thankfully we have experts to help on this one. While moose populations in the U.S. have been struggling at the hands of a host of unbelievable ailments, including brain worms and blood-draining ticks – the cases in Norway moose populations just get weirder.

Researchers in Norway have been tracking the astonishing, baffling hair loss of moose populations. We’re not talking a little “male pattern balding” here, but full on “enormous, horned…naked mole rats.” Not pretty.

So, what is behind this fur-recession? Researchers believe it’s a type of fly called the “deer ked.” Like ticks, deer keds live off the blood of their host. For the most part, deer keds are tolerable to moose…as long as the populations remain relatively low.

What researchers have discovered in the case of the naked moose is an abundance of deer keds, populations of 6,000 to 16,500 parasites. That is over twice the normal amount found on moose. While scientists can not definitely say how the keds are causing moose to lose their hair – inflammation and lose of circulation to hair papillae are options – they do believe Norway’s unusually warm winters are to blame. Warmer temperatures are much more “bug-friendly” and raising global temperatures are allowing bugs that were previously controlled by freezing winter temperatures to grow exponentially.

In a gallows-humor moment, it crossed my mind that warmer temperatures might be preferable to a bald moose, but besides making an uncomfortable pun, this particular unintended consequence of Climate change is just truly sad.

Image Source: Hagerty Ryan/Wikipedia Commons