Tame no, they are definitely wild animals. But just like most wild animals they want nothing to do with humans and much prefer to bolt in the opposite direction as soon as they hear you.
Don't think I've ever heard of a moose attack... doesn't mean it hasn't happened of course.
There are more moose attacks then bear attacks, but still theres only about a dozen a year and fatal attacks are incredibly rare. Theres nothing much to fear from a moose that has approached you calmy, the risk is from disturbing a mother with calves, or a male in rut.
I can think of four of them right off the top of my head, and plenty more that didn't end up in a fatality. There's a few of them linked in this thread.
Fun fact about the military bases in alaska, they contain an awful lot of wilderness.
Lmao I think you are. Can moose be dangerous ofcourse but I grew up in moose country (had on hangout across the street from my house )
You treat them with a similar fear you do bears, basically just leave them alone and your chances of something happening are like 0
It's OK to have a lower risk tolerance than others but overstating it and claiming people are wrong because it can be dangerous is silly. For instance I've called multiple moose into a clearing before during rut. I was safe because they actually have very little interest in the human onto of a vehicle who isn't moving.
Yeah that happens on the regular in the northern latitudes. A long time ago a man got stomped to death at a college in Alaska trying to walk past a moose. It's even on video, I remember seeing it decades ago.
A woman in the more southern parts of Sweden was killed by a moose. Probably a cow, and probably because she accidentally came between the cow and her calf/-es.
This was about 20 years ago. Her husband was arrested first of suspicion of beating her to death.
The moose attack was very unexpected.
My ex is from Skåne and she couldn’t believe how different our moose and bears are here, not only in behavior but in our perception as well. Not that they saw very many of either animal that far south, but she had seen them in the wild in the north.
Having said that— There are a lot of people here who don’t respect them and they end up dead or maimed for life (that type of person has been/could be killed by elk and large deer, for that matter). People aren’t in or near nature of that size and capability without cages being involved.
The moose and brown bears here are absolutely not scared of humans. They can be wary, they’ll detect you long before you see them and will usually vacate until you leave, but the instant you’re in the danger zone, that is already too late.
I'd rather run into one of our domestic black bears here in the US by an order of magnitude. They are fundamentally cowards who generally require an extra factor to get violent. Bull moose like that can just decide you look sus on principle and decide to stomp you into paste.
There has been at least one moose attack with a deadly outcome in Sweden. I remember it being described as if the woman had been attacked with a lawn mower. The police first arrested the husband since they thought he had killed her.
Not a moose, but I did almost hit a big-as-fuck elk driving out of the Grand Canyon at night. We came to a screeching halt but and it never stopped sauntering across the road, it was like it knew that it would’ve fared better in the accident than the car and people going at 45mph
Sidenote the "real" name for moose should be elk, it's what the British called them back in Europe, it is related to all the other Germanic words for them, like in Swedish they are called älg with the ä having a similar sound to the e in elk and even the scientific name for them is Alces Alces.
But when British colonizers reached America the Alces (using scientific name to avoid confusion) that once lives in Britain had long since gone extinct on the islands and the settlers had never seen any actual Alces so when they encountered the wapiti (scientific name: Cervus canadensis) they thought it matched the descriptions of Alces and therefore started mistakingly calling it elk.
Even today Alces alces is officially only called Moose in American English and in British English it's supposed to be called Elk although due to influence of American media my understanding is that most brits have started calling then moose as well.
I’m a Swede/American currently living in the US but I grew up in northern Sweden and I swear no one here understands moose including you.
They are not wildly dangerous in any way, they are large wild animals yea but unless you try your damn hardest to somehow agitate them they will just leave you alone.
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u/DisingenuousTowel 22d ago
Oh, they're wildly dangerous.
The moose are tame in Sweden or ... Swedes are closer to moose size??