Moose or Caribou? Manhattanites Busted For Animal Ignorance After Lower East Side Lawsuit

January 7, 2010 7:50am20commentsprint

By Suzanne Ma

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MIDTOWN — Enraged taxidermists and out-of-town hunters continue to lash out at New Yorkers who can't tell the difference between a caribou and a moose.

When a large animal bust reportedly fell off the wall of a Lower East Side restaurant and struck a woman on the head, many press reports mistakenly identified it as that of a moose because, well, it had antlers. It was, in fact, a caribou.

DNAinfo confirmed that most Manhattanites couldn't tell the difference between the animals (watch the video), and that sent the taxidermy world into fits of rage, which they've been expressing on DNAinfo's comment section.

(DNAinfo/Suzanne Ma)

"Ignorance is no excuse in law but seems ok in NY City," wrote one irate commenter, who identified him/herself as DS.

"You would think that you would at least think it was a raindeer. [sic] I guess in NY they had you belive [sic] Santa has a bunch of moose delivering gifts to all the children on Christmas.

"I feel sorry for the people who when they think of the wilderness and it's animals they think of the circus and central park. Most unfortunate."

New Yorkers are also fighting back.

"I'm sure it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the difference, but just like you don't need to be genius to figure out how to navigate Manhattan streets (it's a grid, by the way), but people still get lost every day on the streets because they're not familiar with it," wrote Ana.

John Youngaitis, a 56-year-old taxidermist in Brooklyn, said he knew straight away that the bust was a caribou head.

"I said, 'these people don't know what they're talking about,'" he told DNAinfo. "It's obviously a caribou, not a moose. If you look at the two next to each other, there's no mistaking."

Others who DNAinfo interviewed on Manhattan's streets had a harder time.

Both Dwight Crooms and Eric Scarabaggio, working in Midtown, were shown a picture of the bust and couldn't get it right.

When Scarabaggio learned he misidentified the head, he went on the defense.

"Unless you sit there and watch National Geographic all day, if you ain't got a job and have to work and everything, then you would have known the difference," he said. "What matters is that this thing fell on the lady's head."

Nana Greller of Midtown got it wrong, too.

"We need to have more shows on caribou, have them parade through the street perhaps," she told DNAinfo. "We aren't exposed to this. Not many of us are in Alaska that often."

On Park Avenue, near the edge of Central Park, one man also believed that the bust looked like a moose head.

"How many do you see in Central Park?" asked the man, who did not give his name. "Unfortunately, we don't go hunting them in New York City."

Join the conversation at DNAinfo's comment section.

Comments 20comments

Haute Man, you continue in the same vein of rationalizations. Don't any people who live in New York City ever travel outside its confines? Somehow, I fail to grasp your reference to the "untrained eye" and the animals looking similar. Have you ever visited the Museum of Natural History and seen how gigantic a moose is when compared to a caribou? But aside from that, let me get to a question you really need to ask yourself: since this is going to a jury trial which could possibly set precedence, wouldn't you think that identifying the common animal differences would be of the utmost importance to the legal system. I'd bet the restaurant's legal team hasn't dismissed any of our comments here. Would you like to make a small wager - say perhaps the difference in the price of a moose hunt versus a caribou hunt?
George | January 9, 2010

Okay, for the record I’ll be polite and spell Ms. Ma’s name correctly, but asking for respect from the “Taxidermy Industry” is an earned decree and we are artists not reporters. As an industry artist I have a responsibility to display works as they are depicted in nature. As a reporter you have a responsibility to report factual information, not regurgitate illusory information which now has by far less credibility than another whimpering attempt by PeTA organizers to replace our true heritage, coming from the like-minds that we humans evolved from pre-historic fish, ha (don’t wind me up). Does an excellent reporter spend any investigative time before spewing out babble? Oh well, I suppose people are paying for babble these days as the same with mounted caribou and moose, to each their own. I’m fascinated by the comments of the hedge fund guru whom claims their education is nothing short of phenomenal and need not worry about the species differentiation, yet the spelling is atrocious much to the equivalent of those 5th grade students. I suppose that makes even greater cause to fuel my passion in educating the masses of our true heritage through my art. My next caribou mount will come with an affixed nametag stating, “I’m a wild caribou, sometimes referred to as reindeer (note spelling), but reindeer is mainly used if I am of domestic descend, that which I am not. Do not hang me on a wall in which you plan to string party balloons or streamers to my antlers. That would not be respectful; so should you disrespect me, expect a reciprocal exchange. Should you ever get an opportunity to cover me in the media, do so in the mind that I was loved for my beauty and creation and “mounted” for others to enjoy the same. To reach excellence…understand and educate, if I wasn’t then why would you say I am, in the paper, the news…everyday I am. I don’t know it’s just the way I am?
8mile | January 9, 2010

Having spent the last 45 minutes laughing like a lunatic at this comment thread, what I fail to understand from the animal extremists is why not knowing the difference between a moose and a caribou makes the residents of Manhattan "ignorant" victims of alleged "progressive education systems" who need to “read a book.” As many previous commentators have pointed out, Manhattan residents enjoy access to a plethora of historical, educational and cultural experiences, more so than that of anywhere else in the world. That being said, it seems asinine to fill a comment forum with hateful language because many of these people do not know the difference between two animals which, honestly, look very similar to the untrained eye. For people who do not hunt, do not have an interest in taxidermy, do not encounter these animals regularly (can you imagine a caribou strolling down 5th Avenue?) and certainly do not reside in the Museum of Natural History, it is not so ridiculous that we be unfamiliar with this detail. Instead, we “fill our heads” with the latest literary, scientific, artistic, financial and political developments that affect not only the entire world, but your lives, as well. Meanwhile, we work to maintain and further one of the most important (if not the most important – please remember 9/11, which was more than an excuse to invade other countries, but, in fact, the most devastating modern economic trigger which has affected millions of jobs and families in this country) economic centers in the world. In other words, our interests simply lie elsewhere. Just as you may not appreciate Fashion Week or why we flock to book signings in shoes with red soles and art gallery openings with Blackberries at the ready, we don’t appreciate understanding the difference between a caribou and a moose. And that is okay. That difference in knowledge sets is what makes our diverse country so wonderful – together, our differing sets of knowledge compliment each other, making this the greatest country in the world. And for the record, please spell Ms. Ma’s name correctly if you are going to lambast her. She is an excellent reporter and deserves your respect.
HauteMan | January 8, 2010

Why would anyone need a knowledge of firearms in a thriving city such as NYC? Does that make sence to anyone? Seriously, I'm not posing this as a theoretical question. I'm really looking for an answer here. And congrats on knowing the difference at 4 years old between a moose and a caribou. I'm guessing a Jewish, Muslin, Islamic, or any non Christian person would be paying attention to the wildlife used in a Santa display. If they wanted to be acurate, why not use a raindeer? And my lack of knowledge when it pertains to animated fauna in no way means my education has been anything less than phenominal. Unfortunately I have much more to say, but as my job requires me to be able to tell the difference between a Global Macro and Risk Arbitrage hedge fund, I'm sure you can imagine how swamped I am.
teamcaribou | January 8, 2010

What exactly is wrong with a little due diligence by a reporter to "get the story correct"? Yeah, NYCers aren't the brightest bunch, busy earning a living and all to pay the high taxes, and don;t get me started about their lack of knowledge as it regards firearms. Heck most don;t even know that many of their neighbors own one. As for me, I knew the difference between a moose and a caribou at 4 years old when caribou were actually used as a Santa prop, and Mickey Mouse had a run in with a Moose in a cartoon Disney made. So, if someone from NYC doesn't know the difference, then I blame it on the progressive public education system which has dumbed most of them down, and their own lack of desire to educate themselves. I live in western NY, and have for most of my life. We hunt deer, and squirrels. My brother used to be a taxidermist. My head mounts for deer usually weigh under 25 pounds, so it is unlikely that this one weighs 150. I know someone who actually went to northern Ontario (that's a province in Canada for you NYC folk), and shot a caribou. The mount is a bit larger, but he said the caribou body is not much larger than that of a deer, similar to the notion I got when seeing them as a child, and at a game farm outside Pocono Mts., PA run by a guy who actually traveled "Alone Across the Top of the World." Yeah, read a book ya schmucks. Oh, the guys name...David Irwin. The writer was Jack O'Brien. Most deer go under 150 pounds. The majority well under 125. So how would a mounted animal weigh more, most of them being mounted on a polystyrene form. The heaviest part of my mounts are the oak backboards, or in large antlered animals, like caribou, and moose, probably the antlers. I did thoroughly enjoy the chuckle the original article gave me, though.
2BRKNot2 | January 8, 2010

We all know you NYC people are more concerned with what top name clothing you can place on your bodies than whether or not this is a caribou or a moose. My concern is the physical damage this poor woman must have been subjected to after being hit by such a heavy object. 150 lbs? Really? I would like to see those lawyers put that mount on a scale and tell us what it actually weighs. It seems that fact might be much more relevant in this case than what kind of animal it is. And that poor woman. No one even mentioned what actually happened to her. I bet she has some good doctors and attoprneys that can fabricate something for her win. The members of the Taxidermy.net website weren't OUTRAGED as you state,but it did explain why NY voted for Obama in the last presidential election. And Suzanne Mo...you concreted those opinions of many of the conservatives on that site with this article and that recent news clip. If nothing else maybe more "New Yorkers" will decide to take their children the the American Museum of Natural History (True grit gave you all directions) so they can see these things for themselves. The people of NYC seem to be the first to jump on the bandwagon when animal rights issues are on the table...now we know your actions are all emotionally driven and none of it fact. In fact, we now know you don't care about facts.
upstater | January 8, 2010

There's no need for a class warfare discussion here. To the rest of the world New Yorkers seem to think they're exempt from anything they decide that doesn't apply. This is a classic case where a reporter, by her own admission lack knowledge of a subject she's reporting on has tried to turn it all around. If any of you care, here the REST of the story. She was sent a letter from the premier taxidermy publication in the world, BREAKTHROUGH, editor advising her that she'd made a mistake in identifying the animal mount. Instead of taking that information gracefully, the reporter got ignorant and informed the editor that "no one else" had validated her claim that the animal was in fact a caribou and not a moose. Even for you New Yorkers, I'm sure that would cause you to get right indignant. Here was a case a reporter could have been supplied with a wealth of information shooting holes all through what seems to be a frivolous lawsuit that was possibly staged in retaliation for business. There's no way a caribou mount weighs much more than 40 pounds, there's now way it just "fell" off the wall, and most of all, it's not a "moose". Now I see the lame excuses that being a New Yorker is a reason for ignorance about the simplest things in life (this actually isn't rocket science nor is it "flying an airplane". You have one of the finest zoos in the nation and some of the most heralded museums in the world. To try and parlay the ignorance of a person paid to report factual information with the excuse of knowing a "pintail from a mallard" is just as silly as saying you couldn't tell a poodle from a German shepherd. Contrary to what the implications of in this issue being brought to the "comments" section, taxidermists are a microcosm of humanity. Like reporters, we have those who are slackers, but we also have some of the most brilliant minds around. Trying to compartmentalize all of us into some convenient cubbyhole won't work. The talent we bring to the public allows for a learning experience without "opinion" or "comment" and is obviously and desperately needed in the public school system when a person trying to educate someone is targeted like this reporter has tried to do.
George | January 8, 2010

Ignorance is ignorance no matter where you live. Living in NYC does not make you "more important" any more than living in the country turns you into Daniel Boone. New Yorkers who cant identify between a moose and a Caribou must have missed out on their wonderful American Museum of Natural History right across the street from Central Park. Teddy Roosevelt was a taxidermist and his Sagamore Hill home is just a short drive from the city. Carl Akeley, The father of modern taxidermy worked out of the AMNH. Not long ago NYC was the most prominant place for the taxidermy industry to develop. Aside from the silly squabble over animal identification the REAL story shoul involve why the restaurants competitor was the one bumped on the noggin. Convenient for her if her lawsuit causes her competitor to fold. THAT is the kind of horse sense City dwellers are missing!
True grits | January 8, 2010

This article was obviously in response from the overwhelming reaction that the simple mistake of confusing a caribou for a moose arose. If you read carefully, the article says that a lot of out-of-town experts bashed NYers for not knowing the difference and I believe that in true reporter fashion, Suzanne went out to find out if that was true and also in turn, educate her readers on what she had learned - the differences between moose and caribou. As a New Yorker, I certainly don't feel offended or mocked by this article, because I honestly don't know the difference between the two, but now I do. And yes - in many ways it is sad that we don't know much about the wilderness because we're stuck in the concrete jungle which is why articles like these are more important because they serve to teach us something. And I'm sure it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the difference, but just like you don't need to be genius to figure out how to navigate Manhattan streets (it's a grid, by the way), but people still get lost every day on the streets because they're not familiar with it. On the same note - circuses, Central Park, aquariums and zoos serve the purpose of educating us city folk about animals so we're not stuck with the perception that wildlife includes only rats and pigeons (because we also have Canadian geese, red-tailed hawks, Atlantic horseshoe crabs and lots of other animals that live in the city). This was a teachable moment and I'm glad Suzanne took that opportunity - so if ever a day I should run into a large animal with antlers, I'd be able to tell if it was a moose, caribou or reindeer. Wait... Suzanne didn't cover that animal. Hey! Could I request an article on that? (just kidding)
Ana | January 8, 2010

It does not take a rocket scientist to know the difference in a moose and a caribou. Nor does it take a smart person to understand Newtons laws. But from the idiots of NYC I see they dont understand that Cell phones, Laptop computers, NIKE shows and such are products of CAPITALISUM. hell you city people don't even understand that let alone which animals have hit you on the head. Country Boy
Country boy | January 7, 2010

Ok, the article was not to explain the accident of the woman, but it sure does appear to be an article on the stupidy of the people in NYC. I do not expect everyin in the world to know the diffrence between a moose and a caribou, or between a whitetail deer and a fallow deer, or a mallard duck and a pintail duck. Living in NYC, you dont need or want to know these things. BUT, why in the world would you want to publish an article showing this? It is like mocking these people in their face, shameful way to say "hey, look how dumb these people are". I dont know how to fly a plane. Big deal. But I sure as heck wouldnt walk around the turmac of an airpot telling everyone "...Duh... I cant fly a plane,... duh...."
CalTaxidermist | January 7, 2010

BTW, yes its a shame that she pulled that down on herself...but in the good ol' sue happy USA its no surprise!
TedB | January 7, 2010

The taxidermists did NOT fail to realize this, we realize it very well. The point we were trying to make to you is perhaps get the "facts" about what she was hit by straight. You say you have to go by what the court documents say, well that is fine, the least you can do is do the research about what it really is and let the public know that you've done your due diligence and it is the court documents that are misleading! It's called research, I'm sure you all know how to use google, I'm a taxidermist and even I know how, LMAO
TedB | January 7, 2010

I was asked to come and discuse my veiws on this story with people who do not think as I do and thought it would be a chance to do that. Now I see that it is condesending comments that are here for me to see.I'm disapointed to say the least, but I suppose I shouldn't expect more from NYC.I will play along however. Ignorance is no excuse in law but seems ok in NY City. You would think that you would at least think it was a raindeer. I guess in NY they had you belive Santa has a bunch of moose delivering gifts to all the children on Christmas. I feel sorry for the people who when they think of the wilderness and it's animals they think of the circus and central park. Most unfortunate. Mrs. Ma was proved to have made a mistake, was told about it but instead of correcting it in good taste has now posted this artical to make herself feel better about herself. wrong is wrong no matter how you slice it.
DS | January 7, 2010

@CalTaxidermist Our previous stories have focused on exactly that: a woman who was hit in the head by an animal bust and she is now suing the restaurant. It was, in fact, the taxidermists who failed to realize this. They wrote in, raging about the differences between caribou and moose. This is our response.
| January 7, 2010

Goodnes sakes, people! I bet you city dwellers wouldnt mistake the reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh for a moose.... and a caribou looks more like a reindeer than a moose. And you ALL have seen hundreds of pictures of reindeer! This article has two whole sentences about the poor woman who got hit by this gamehead mount, and the rest of the entire story is about city people who cant tell the diffrence between a caribou and a moose. Is the media that bored that they need to "spice" up a sad, but simple report of a woman who got hurt with an issue that makes taxidermists look bad and city dwellers look like idiots?
CalTaxidermist | January 7, 2010

Hello Figgy, this story isn't about the woman who got hit by the "moose". Read up, its about the ineptitude of the media. Its about all you people like Mr.Scarabaggio who never leave the confines of the concrete jungle and trust in the media and believe every word you read or hear! It doesn't take someone who watched national geographic every day to tell the difference between these two animals. The problem is all you "cidiots" (yes I made that word up so don't bother looking in any dictionary for it) eat up everything you're told to, the good little drones that you are! You can keep your high crime rates, nightly muggings and murders! I'll keep my forest and hunting heritage, at least i know which end of the horse is its ass, and I see it when I look at some of you!
TedB | January 7, 2010

This is a great story! Fabulous video? Is anyone going to interview that woman who was the victim? How did this whole taxidermy in NYC start anyway?
Figgy Pudding | January 7, 2010

Hilarious! Awesome reporting. I do agree that we should have caribou parades through 5th Avenue from now on! They can join the Elephant walk when Barnum and Bailey are in town.
Ana | January 7, 2010

I love this story. Great job.
camop | January 7, 2010

View all comments

See next article

iPHONE

RSS

GET LOCAL NEWS FIRST

Download the free DNAinfo.com application, and get the latest local news in the palm of your hand. DOWNLOAD

INSTANT GRATIFICATION

Do you need to know the minute a story breaks? Subscribe to RSS feeds for instant gratification.SUBSCRIBE