The elk by right is considered the most beautiful large animal of the wood. Usually representatives of this look grow to two - two and a half meters in height, weight at the same time reaches six hundred kilograms. Though biologists divide elks into several subspecies, nonspecialists of difference between elks of the Canadian, Asian and European subspecies will notice hardly. What does this forest handsome eat?
Food of elks in hot months
In the summer this horned handsome should lead a nocturnalism. As well as people, elks do not love blood-sicking insects. And from midges and mosquitoes the elks hide in the afternoon, standing up to a neck in lakes or the rivers (sometimes even in dirt), and leave at night to be sated. However and during day standing in nearby waters the elks pinch from time to time coastal vegetation and seaweed, thanks to the ability to hold the breath. By the way, to get drunk, the elk should kneel. He has too short neck and long legs in order that there was an opportunity to get drunk usually.
As it was already mentioned, elks suffer from blood-sicking insects. And how far they are ready to come that to get rid of them? It appears, in search of young growth of a fir grove or a dense underbrush in which shadow it is possible to wait a heat and to escape from insects, elks are ready to pass rather long distance, or even to float two kilometers.
Vegetable food which is absorbed by an elk includes bark, needles, leaves and escapes. As you understand, this diet is not capable to provide completely this large animal with all necessary minerals. The most important problem from which elks – a lack of salt suffer. For this reason it is rather often possible to see elks on solonetzic soils – there they lick the earth, filling the organism with this necessary mineral. In the winter elks often come to the road for the same reason – they know that on large highways it is possible to find necessary salt solution. To prevent possible road accidents because of a meeting of the person with an elk the foresters often display the pressed cubes of salt in the winter forest and mix salt with the forage which is also left in a thicket.
Autumn diet
In the fall elks come for mushroom hunting. Most often elks eat spongy mushrooms – white, birch mushrooms and mossiness mushrooms. Also elks quite often eat fly agarics, mushroom poison does not act on these majestic animals. In the fall berries – bilberry, cowberry, blackberry and raspberry are added to a diet of elks. Before the onset of cold weather the elks try to eat strongly to increase fat deposits. So it turns out that in the summer adult individuals eat over thirty kilograms of a forage, and in the winter – at most fifteen.
Winter feeding
It turns out that the most favorable time for elks – summer. The elks living in the tundra eat mosses and lichens. Taiga elks eat a willow-herb, a sorrel, young escapes and a dense grass, water-lilies. And what remains to an elk for the winter? To what forced diet does he pass because of recession of temperature? If elks live in areas where snow lies is low, then they continue to lead settled lifestyle. From cold weather they disappear in coniferous forests where find to themselves livelihood. For example, a fir-tree, a fir or a pine – their favourite delicacy during winter frosts. If elks have to live in areas where snow covers are high, they migrate to warmer areas where there is a possibility of an otgrebaniye of snow for bark eating, and branches do not ice over.