What Animals Were Found During The Lewis And Clark Expedition

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark are known as trailblazing explorers of the American West, non pioneering scientists. But during their viii,000-mile journey from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back betwixt 1804-1806, Lewis and Clark discovered 122 animate being species, including iconic American animals similar the grizzly bear, coyote, prairie dog and bighorn sheep.

When President Thomas Jefferson first charged his banana Lewis with the mission of finding a passable river route to the Pacific, he included an assignment to "[observe] the animals of the land mostly, & particularly those not known in the U.South. the remains and accounts of whatever which may [be] deemed rare or extinct."

Jefferson was especially enticed past fossils recovered of mastodons and a type of giant state sloth he dubbed the megalonyx ("big hook"). Unsure of what species the men would encounter in the wilds beyond Missouri, Lewis took crash courses in botany, zoology and specimen collection and preservation from the best scientific minds in Philadelphia.

Clark Describes a 'Village of Modest Animals'

Lewis and Clark came upon prairie dogs in 1804 and described them as "little animals" that "make a whistling noise." — Lewis and Clark came upon prairie dogs in 1804 and described them as "niggling animals" that "brand a whistling noise."

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1 of the nigh remarkable periods of the expedition (zoologically speaking) occurred between September four and September 24, 1804 during a 263-mile trek from the Niobrara River in Nebraska to the Teton River in modernistic-day Pierre, Due south Dakota. In a bridge of just over two weeks, Lewis and Clark encountered four archetype Western animals for the first time: the prairie dog, pronghorn, coyote and the jack rabbit.

READ MORE: 10 Little-Known Facts About the Lewis and Clark Expedition

In his September vii, 1804 periodical entry, Clark describes a "Hamlet of Pocket-sized animals" discovered in Boyd County, Nebraska. The men constitute a sloping hillside containing "great numbers of holes on height of which these lilliputian animals Set cock make a Whistling noise and whin alarmed Footstep into their hole."

Anxious to capture a alive specimen, the men tried digging downwards into the burrows, simply after reaching a depth of six feet, they switched tactics and attempted to flush the critters out.

"They spent an entire day hauling buckets of h2o up from the Missouri River and dumping them downward the holes," says Jay Buckley, a history professor at Brigham Young University and author of several books on Lewis and Clark, and Western exploration. "Eventually they flushed one out, put it in a cage and sent it to Jefferson. Incredibly, it fabricated the trip alive.

There was some disagreement over what to name the curious creatures. Lewis called them "barking squirrels" while Clark referred to them as "basis rats" or "burrowing squirrels." It was Sergeant John Ordway, an Ground forces volunteer, who first chosen them prairie dogs.

Lewis Marvels at a 'Jackass Rabbit'

A Blacktail jackrabbit. Lewis noted the rabbit with remarkable ears could leap 18 to 20 feet in a single bound. — A Blacktail jackrabbit. Lewis noted the rabbit with remarkable ears could bound eighteen to 20 feet in a unmarried jump.

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On September 14, 1804, almost Chamberlain, South Dakota, one of the men killed a big white hare whose long, donkey-like ears inspired the name "jackass rabbit," later on shortened to jack rabbit. In his periodical, Lewis marveled at the jack rabbit'south flexible ears, which the animal could "amplify and throw… forwards, or contract and fold... back at pleasance." He observed the jack rabbit could leap 18 to 20 feet in a single bound.

On the very aforementioned twenty-four hour period near the oral cavity of Ball Creek in S Dakota, Clark shot a "Cadet Caprine animal" of an intriguing species of deer. In his journal, Lewis described the striking animal equally having forked horns or "prongs" and its "brains of the dorsum of his head." Consulting his eight-book A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, published in 1764 by W. Owen, Lewis concluded that "he is more similar the Antilope or Gazelle of Africa than any other Species of Goat."

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In fact, the pronghorn is neither goat, antelope or deer, and belongs to its own family unit, Antilocapridae. The pronghorn is also the fastest four-legged species in N America, reaching top sprinting speeds of 60 mph. Lewis and Clark stuffed two pronghorn, one male and i female, and shipped them back East to Jefferson.

The mournful wails and yelps of coyotes followed Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and dorsum, but the squad shot and identified the first of this new species on September xviii, 1804 near Chamberlain, Due south Dakota, and Clark called it a "Prairie Wolff."

"I killed a Prairie Wolff, nigh the size of a gray fox, bushy tail head and ears like a Wolf, Some fur burrows in the ground and barks like a Small Canis familiaris," wrote Clark.

Grizzlies, Rattlesnakes, Bison Nearly Killed the Explorers

An illustration from Lewis and Clark's journal of the Corps of Discovery, 'American having struck a Bear but not killed him escapes into a tree.' — An illustration from Lewis and Clark's periodical of the Corps of Discovery, 'American having struck a Acquit but not killed him escapes into a tree.'

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Not all of Lewis and Clark'south fauna encounters were so at-home and nerveless.

"One of my favorite moments is when Lewis is all lonely at the Great Falls in Montana," says Buckley. "In a 24-hour period, he's nearly bitten by a rattlesnake, attacked by a wolverine, charged by a bison and eaten by a grizzly bear. That dark, in his journal he says, 'The entire animate being kingdom has conspired against me!'"

Every bit for grizzlies, Lewis and Clark were skeptical at first of the native Mandan and Hidatsa's accounts of "white bears" weighing over 1,000 pounds, and the explorers scoffed at the state of war paint and other "supersticious rights" the Indians performed earlier setting out to hunt the mythical beasts.

But subsequently, while traversing Montana, Lewis and Clark became believers. In his trademark artistic spelling, Lewis described "a most tremendious looking anamal, and extreemly difficult to kill notwithstanding he had five assurance through his lungs and v others in various parts… and made the almost tremendous roaring from the moment he was shot."

When Lewis had his close phone call with a grizzly in Great Falls, he described a massive bear chasing him "open mouthed and total speed" into the river. With nowhere to run, Lewis spun around to face the grizzly armed only with his spear-headed "espontoon." To his great relief, the animal retreated.

"So it was, and I feelt myself non a little gratifyed that he had declined the combat," wrote Lewis.

Despite the great care taken past Lewis and Clark to collect specimens and include detailed descriptions and measurements of plants and animals in their journals, the men never achieved scientific fame in their lifetimes. After their triumphant return in 1806, Lewis planned to write a three-volume account of their expedition with an unabridged volume dedicated "exclusively to scientific research, and principally to the natural history of those hitherto unknown regions."

Merely Lewis, overburdened in his new post as governor of Louisiana, died suddenly in 1809, and when the expedition journals were finally published in 1814, the editors left out almost all of the zoological and scientific reports. Information technology wasn't until 1893 that a new edition of the journals was published by naturalist Elliott Coues, who correctly credited Lewis and Clark as scientific trailblazers as well as daring American explorers.