The author makes this observation just after mentioning a herd sighted near the shore of Franklin Bay. A virtually identical posture in the Norway Reindeer has been sketched by Seton (1929, +3+: 112, pl. 18), who labels it "surprize." An analogy to the posture of the Caribou might be found in a hand thrust out, with fingers spread, by a military scout as a signal of warning or caution to his fellow scouts. A sprawling leg is perhaps the nearest approximation to the human signal that a Caribou can attain.
As noted in the section on _Gaits_, an alarmed Caribou may set off by taking an initial leap into the air. According to Dugmore, such an act on the part of the Newfoundland Caribou plays an important role in its system of communications, not by means of sight or sound, but through the olfactory sense. He observes (1913: 89-90):
"For hours afterwards _every_ Caribou, on arriving at the place where the frightened ones had jumped, has started violently, and has on nearly every occasion turned and run in a manner that showed every indication of fear, even though my presence was entirely unknown to them. My idea is that when the animal is suddenly frightened it expels a certain fluid from the glands in the foot, and that this fluid is a signal of alarm, a silent and invisible warning, but none the less so positive that none dare ignore it."
As for the foot click--a presumptive means of communication (_cf._ Seton, 1929, +3+: 69; Jacobi, 1931: 212-216)--I must confess that I was always so engrossed with photography whenever the Caribou were close at hand (up to within a dozen feet) that I had no thought of this phenomenon and did not detect it.
_References._--Richardson, 1829: 242; A. J. Stone, 1900: 53; Preble, 1902: 42; Seton, 1929, +3+: 105; Murie, 1939: 245; Harper, 1949: 230; Banfield, 1951a: 19, 27.
The ground lichens (including the various species of _Cladonia_) in the Windy River area in 1947 did not seem, for the most part, to have a height of more than 2 or 3 inches. The average length of several local specimens of _Cladonia_ is approximately 51 mm. This condition was in considerable contrast to the great spongy masses I had noted in the Tazin River basin, between Athabaska and Great Slave lakes, in 1914. I have no means of knowing whether the condition in Keewatin represented severe cropping by Caribou in past years and subsequent slow recovery, or whether it is a normal condition. According to Charles Schweder, the growth depends upon rain, and so varies from year to year. During the warmer months, from June to September, the local Caribou seemed to me to be feeding very largely on the higher vegetation, such as willow, dwarf birch, alder, and sedges. I had no definite evidence of their consuming lichens during that period. By early October the species of _Cladonia_ seemed to have attained a somewhat fuller growth than they had exhibited several months previously. Perez-Llano discusses (1944: 29-30) the utilization by Reindeer of various lichens. Dix has reported (1951) on a collection of lichens from the Windy River area.