Jason Walters, age 10, of Tacoma, Wash., for his question:

HOW MUCH CAN A CARIBOU WEIGH?

A caribou is the French Canadian name for the wild reindeer of North America. A male caribou, called a bull, weighs from 250 to 700 pounds and stands from four to five feet tall. He measures six to eight feet in length.

A female caribou, or cow, is smaller than a bull.

Caribous have broad hoofs to support them in deep snow and spongy

tundra. They have broad antlers, with the male's growing much larger than the female's. The female caribou is the only American female deer that has antlers.

The caribou can be found from western Alaska to western Greenland. In the western part of their range, they live in large herd. They do not overgraze their range because they keep moving from place to place

1; winter they live mostly on lichens. In summer they eat grass and leaves of willow, dwarf birch and other shrubs.

The number of caribou has declined from more than 2 million in the early 1900s to about 1 million today.