Unidan, AKA Ben Eisenkop, is an ecosystem ecologist who first rose to fame (infamy?) on Reddit by popping up in posts across the site, answering any queries and concepts pertaining to biology and ecology. Eisenkop will be a columnist for Upvoted, where he’ll be spotlighting a new creature every week.

Today’s bizarre beast comes to us from the Eurasian steppe, an area that runs from Moldavia to Siberia. Steppes are large grassland areas that typically have very few trees, but have enough precipitation to be too wet to be considered a desert. They are often vast regions with nearly endless vegetation. For those who may not make it outside much, you can imagine the Dothraki Sea in Game of Thrones. That’s a steppe.

Who lives there? Well, the Saiga antelope, of course! The Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) stands a little under three feet tall at the shoulder and weighs around 100 lbs and while it is called an antelope, its evolutionary history actually places it as sort of an intermediary species between antelopes and sheep.

While everything else seems pretty normal, what puts these guys in the “bizarre” category is pretty obvious: the hooves. Just kidding—it’s the nose. Obviously. It’s obviously the nose. It’s the nose, guys. Well, now that we’ve addressed the elephant (-like proboscis) in the room, let’s talk about what it’s for!

The Saiga antelope’s nose is actually flexible, meaning it can be moved around voluntarily by the animal. Saiga antelopes can actually inflate their noses, giving it a lot more internal room. Why? Well, the steppe might be close to a desert, but, like many deserts, it can get cold. For example, many Saiga antelope live in Kazahkstan, where winter temperatures might hover around -25 °C (-13 °F), and in other areas in the steppe, could drop as low as -50 °C (-58 °F). To get around temperatures that are lower than the average household freezer, Saiga antelopes will pre-warm their area in their large proboscis before breathing it in.

Conversely, when temperatures are very hot, the nose acts as a filter to block out kicked up dust particles and as an area of large surface area to allow cooling of their bodies through typical breathing much greater than those without the enlarged appendage.

On a sadder note, Saiga antelope make it in the “bizarre” category for something that is not entirely their fault. In recent years, more than half of all Saiga antelope suddenly and mysteriously died from a bacterial infection that seemingly came out of the blue. With more than 120,000 Saiga antelope falling dead from the disease, scientists came together to try to find the cause. Only this past November was a consensus built at a scientific conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where it was claimed that a combination of particularly stormy weather and ongoing climate change was able to turn a typically commensal (i.e. present, but harmless) bacteria on the Saiga, Pasteurella multocida, into the deadly infection referred to as Pasteurellosis, causing the antelope to drop dead within days.

Since Saiga antelope are critically endangered, scientists are attempting to conserve them as best they can. If you’re interested in helping out the effort, please take a minute to visit the Saiga Conservation Alliance and even consider a donation!