How Musk Ox Make It Through Arctic Nights and Never-Ending Days

 Most organisms follow circadian clock cycles, which are 24 hour internal clocks to help organisms know when to do necessary things for survival.  An example would be knowing when to search for food during the day because you wouldn't want to search when there will be little to no food.  It is very different for the musk oxen because they live in the Arctic.  Scientists studied how different the circadian clocks would be for those organisms living in the Arctic because of the Arctic's long night winter and endless day summers.  The scientists conducted this study by using GPS collars to track 19 musk oxen for 3 years to look for patterns in behavior.  The scientists didn't find strong circadian rhythms because it seemed that the oxen would repeat foraging bouts lasting less than 12 hours.  These rhythms were different from the summer to the winter, since most would have little to no pattern in the summer due to eating at random times.  The study showed that the rhythms are hourly rather than daily.  The scientists are still studying the musk oxen to see if the lack of patterns in the summer are healthier for reproduction.

It's definitely interesting how the musk oxen have a different schedule than most other organisms based on where they live.  We all have to adapt to our changing environments in order to have a healthy lifestyle.  When it's cold during the winter, as humans we have longer nights when we sleep, while animals, like the musk oxen, have their less than 12 hour schedule.  In the summer when it's hot we have a longer day and still sleep at night, but the oxen don't even have a specific schedule.  Even with daylight savings, we either push our schedule back an hour or ahead an hour, which causes us to have to adjust.  Same thing when we change time zones, we have to adjust to the new time.  These musk oxen during the winter have a shorter schedule than us, and in the summer, they don't have a schedule, they just know they have to eat and sleep at some point.  Even though this might seem odd to us, it's normal to them and they could be doing it for heath reasons.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/science/musk-ox-circadian-rhythm.html