2.6 million years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch, the saber tooth and woolly mammoth roamed

across the North Pole, and so did another prehistoric creature.

It was this colossal, horned, barrel-shaped, shaggy-haired animal weighing up to a thousand

pounds.

But unlike the saber tooth and the woolly mammoth, this handsome beast is still very much alive.

I'm Dylan Therese, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places.

Today, we're taking you to the musk ox farm in Palmer, Alaska.

It's where a huge group of musk oxes now live pretty comfortably.

In exchange for their room and board, they offer up some of the finest wool in the world.

So to start, we should set the record straight.

The name musk ox is really misleading.

So musk oxen, total misnomer, have no musk, are not ox.

That's Mark Austin.

He's the executive director of the musk ox farm.

It's the non-profit that these musk oxes live at, and it's one of the few places in the

world attempting to raise domesticated musk ox.

And the animals got their name because they do look a bit like oxen.

But in reality, they're not related to oxen at all.

They're closer to sort of gigantic mountain goats or enormous sheep.

The farm currently has a herd of about 80 musk ox, which they raise for their fancy wool,

called Kiviot.

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