ViralHogOkay, so he’s not really stuck in traffic – do people in Alaska ever get stuck in traffic?
I can’t imagine they do. Instead, they get stuck because two massive wild animals are literally going head to head right there on the road, and you definitely wouldn’t want to intervene.
The two musk oxen were filmed battling it out on the Dalton highway, just north of the Brooks mountain range in the Gates of the Arctic National Park.
The driver, sensibly, pulled over to let them do their thing. Having one of these head butt your car could do some serious damage to your vehicle.
Check it out:
As you can see in the video, musk oxen are well adapted to the cold weather in northern Alaska.
Today, the wild animals are protected against hunters by legislation in Alaska, Norway and Siberia, where they live in national parks and areas of preservation.
Musk oxen fight like this during the mating, or ‘rutting’, season every summer. During this time, the dominant bulls will fight others out of the herds, establishing their own harem of six or seven females and their offspring.
The fighting bulls bellow loudly and display their horns. As the video shows, they usually back up about 20 metres, lower their heads and charge into each other. They keep doing this until one gives up.
Alaska is well known for having more than its fair share of huge, prehistoric-looking animals.
A few miles south of where the ox were fighting, other drivers were treated to the rare sight of a massive moose strolling along the road in the middle of the night.
Robert Farris caught the animal on camera. At over two metres tall, it’s quite the sight to see it casually wandering down the middle of the road.
The excited driver turned onto the highway, camera at the ready, and said, ‘Look at this big fella here… wow look at him, he’s huge!’
Check it out:
Robert captured the huge animal walking along the grass divide between the two sides of the road, and tried to get its attention by calling out ‘Hey there bud!’
Unsurprisingly, the moose had better things to do than respond, and just carried on with his late night stroll.
After Robert had his fill of moose-spotting, he headed off, seemingly attempting one last time to get some sort of reaction by calling out ‘Later dude!’
Robert later explained:
I was picking up my daughter when we came across the moose wandering in the street, so I decided to pull up next to the big fella and let the world bask in his awe.
The moose was a popular sight for the surrounding cars, with one on the other side of the highway actually reversing all the way back and probably risking an accident in order to get a good look at the large-antlered animal.
Hopefully the moose got where he was going safely, and no one suffered any reckless reversing or filming-while-driving related injuries.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.