As Climate Changes, Sami Herders Need to Feed Reindeer as Rain Creates Ice Layer 

Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)
Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)
TT
20

As Climate Changes, Sami Herders Need to Feed Reindeer as Rain Creates Ice Layer 

Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)
Reindeer that belong to Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 65, eat supplementary feed pellets near Geadgebarjavri, up on the Finnmark plateau, Norway, March 13, 2024. (Reuters)

Driving slowly on his snowmobile, reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara spreads animal feed for hundreds of his reindeer gathered in the Finnmark mountain plateau in Arctic Norway - something he wished he did not have to do.

"This is an emergency situation," said the 65-year-old Indigenous Sami herder. "I am not supposed to feed them. They are supposed to feed me."

Normally reindeer find their own food, digging through the snow with their hooves to eat the lichen buried underneath.

But every winter for the past decade Sara has had to buy animal feed to supplement their diet so they can make it through winter, when temperatures can drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit).

Until recently Finnmark experienced stable, below-freezing conditions, meaning precipitation came as snow only in winter. But in recent years, there have been milder periods, with temperatures rising above freezing.

That means rain, rather than snow, falling on the ground, which then freezes when it gets colder, creating a layer of ice that makes it tough for the reindeer to reach the lichen.

"It is especially hard for the younger reindeer as their hooves are not strong enough to break through," Sara said.

One morning in March when temperatures reached minus 10 C, Sara and his nephew Nils Olav Lango spread 1.6 metric tons of tiny brown pellets across the pastures where the family's herd graze. They have been doing it every other day since February.

"I should really be doing this every day but economically it does not make sense," said Sara.

Feeding the animals also leads to unintended consequences.

Later that day, Sara spots hundreds of reindeer that are not his family's on his district's pastures - each herding group has the right to use a specific area and each keep to their own.

Sara races on his snowmobile to talk to the herder in charge and ask him to move the animals away. They had been attracted by the smell of the feed that Sara had spread.

In addition, feeding the reindeer, which are semi-wild, turns them progressively into fully domesticated animals and thus turns herders into farmers, going against centuries-long Sami traditions.

"When we feed the reindeer, they change their behavior and become more accustomed to humans," Sara said. "This is not our way."



Killer Whales Spotted Grooming Each Other with Seaweed

This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
TT
20

Killer Whales Spotted Grooming Each Other with Seaweed

This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)

Killer whales have been caught on video breaking off pieces of seaweed to rub and groom each other, scientists announced Monday, in what they said is the first evidence of marine mammals making their own tools.

Humans are far from being the only member of the animal kingdom that has mastered using tools. Chimpanzees fashion sticks to fish for termites, crows create hooked twigs to catch grubs and elephants swat flies with branches.

Tool-use in the world's difficult-to-study oceans is rarer, however sea otters are known to smash open shellfish with rocks, while octopuses can make mobile homes out of coconut shells.

A study published in the journal Current Biology describes a new example of tool use by a critically endangered population of orcas., AFP reported.

Scientists have been monitoring the southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, between Canada's British Columbia and the US state of Washington, for more than 50 years.

Rachel John, a Masters student at Exeter University in the UK, told a press conference that she first noticed "something kind of weird" going on while watching drone camera footage last year.

The researchers went back over old footage and were surprised to find this behavior is quite common, documenting 30 examples over eight days.

One whale would use its teeth to break off a piece of bull kelp, which is strong but flexible like a garden hose.

It would then put the kelp between its body and the body of another whale, and they would rub it between them for several minutes.

The pair forms an "S" shape to keep the seaweed positioned between their bodies as they roll around.

Whales are already known to frolic through seaweed in a practice called "kelping".

They are thought to do this partly for fun, partly to use the seaweed to scrub their bodies to remove dead skin.

The international team of researchers called the new behavior "allokelping," which means kelping with another whale.

They found that killer whales with more dead skin were more likely to engage in the activity, cautioning that it was a small sample size.

Whales also tended to pair up with family members or others of a similar age, suggesting the activity has a social element.

The scientists said it was the first known example of a marine mammal manufacturing a tool.

Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University not involved in the study, praised the research but said it "went a bit too far" in some of its claims.

Bottlenose dolphins that use marine sponges to trawl for prey could also be considered to be manufacturing tools, she told AFP.

And it could be argued that other whales known to use nets of bubbles or plumes of mud to hunt represent tool-use benefitting multiple individuals, another first claimed in the paper, Mann said.

Michael Weiss, research director at the Center for Whale Research and the study's lead author, said it appeared to be just the latest example of socially learned behavior among animals that could be considered "culture".

But the number of southern resident killer whales has dwindled to just 73, meaning we could soon lose this unique cultural tradition, he warned.

"If they disappear, we're never getting any of that back," he said.

The whales mainly eat Chinook salmon, whose numbers have plummeted due to overfishing, climate change, habitat destruction and other forms of human interference.

The orcas and salmon are not alone -- undersea kelp forests have also been devastated as ocean temperatures rise.

Unless something changes, the outlook for southern resident killer whales is "very bleak," Weiss warned.