In the center of Asia, the Dukha People of northern Mongolia coexist with their totem animal and their culture's central connecting aspect: the northern reindeer (sp. Rangifer tarandus). In an interdependent cultural and ecological habitat, reindeer illustrate the full range of Dukha experience: cows provide milk important to the Dukha's health, while the bulls make for excellent transportation in the boreal taiga forests. Meat and hides are used, preferably sparingly, for the Dukha are in fact hunter-gathering pastoralists. When a deer is culled, no part, save the bile, is wasted.