What kind of animal is that?

Skagway Discount Tours-Part 2

You’re on a Skagway discount tour to the Yukon that you purchased at M&M Tours and you see something emerging from the woods. What is it? Is it a wolf? Is it a bear? Is it a Bigfoot? Hard to say without actually seeing it. But that’s why this popular blog series exists – to help you identify common Skagway animals.

“What the heck is that otter-looking thing over there?”

If you were near the ocean, this question makes sense because river otters like to hang out around the Skagway harbor. But if you’re on a Skagway discount tour to the Yukon, it’s probably something else. Otters do hang out in some of the lakes and rivers in the Yukon, but they tend to stay out of sight. Let’s take a hard look at the various animals you may have seen so that we can figure it out.

An otter is a Mustelidae, so let’s start there. What the heck is a Mustelidae? It’s basically the weasel family of animals. If you have some crazy friend with a ferret, then you already know what Mustelidae are. However, there are no ferrets in Alaska and the Yukon, but there are 8 other species of animals that qualify for this distinction.

We can rule out one of them right away. The sea otter spends its entire life in the ocean, so you wouldn’t see one in the Yukon. We are also going to rule out a river otter otherwise this blog will be way too short.

“So, what are the other Mustili… Mustiline… otter looking things?!”

Good question. One of them is called a wolverine, but they are extremely rare and seldom spotted. The fisher is another rarely spotted weasel, so it probably wasn’t that either. There are three really small weasels in the Yukon. They are the short-tailed weasel, least weasel, and the mink. They are all cute little buggers and they are sometimes spotted, but if you thought you saw an otter, this doesn’t make a lot of sense.

There is one other member of the weasel family that’s just a little smaller than an otter and it’s called a marten. Marten are abundant, commonly spotted in the woods, and like to hang around Tim Horton’s. They primarily eat voles, which is a little varmint that looks like a small mouse but that’s something we should discuss in another blog.

As you can see, it’s highly likely that what you saw was a marten!

“Could it have been a beaver?”

Probably not. Beavers don’t really look a lot like otters and they aren’t really spotted very often on our Skagway discount tours. Sometimes you see them when you go on a canoe or fishing trip, but that’s not something featured on any of the tours.

“I’m pretty sure it was a beaver!”

I don’t think you’re listening. You obviously have beaver on the brain. What you saw was likely a marten, which looks nothing like a beaver. If you took a picture of it, we could ascertain what exactly you saw, so that there’s no disputing your wildlife discovery.

“Here, I have this picture.”

Holy moly, that’s no marten… That’s a Bigfoot! Amazing! We only get a handful of Bigfoot photos every year!

Be sure to check out the next blog in the series where we try to figure out, “What kind of animal is that?”