I had no idea that moose were so big

A week or so ago, several of my students were late to a class because there was a moose on the commuter train tracks and they couldn’t move it because it was so big and there was not enough room between the track and the fence for the moose to get out of the way.

Turns out they are huge! A large male is over 2 metres tall at the shoulder. An Alaskan Yukon moose can weigh almost 2000lbs/over 900kg.

There is sometimes confusion about the difference between a moose and an elk. What Americans call a moose is called an elk in the rest of the world. Americans call it a moose because they have a deer called an elk.

The iconic, majestic forest dweller Alces alces is known as a moose in North America (actually the sub-species Alces alces americana) and an elk in Europe. The word elk, like the Swedish word älg (pronounced /elj/), is taken from the Latin alces. To make matters even more confusing, elk in North America is used for an entirely different animal – a kind of deer (source)