48 Fun Facts About Bison

Which US president helped found the American Bison Society in 1905 to save the species from extinction?

Theodore Roosevelt. He first went west in 1883 to shoot a bison, then turned conservationist and co-founded the society that sent captive-bred animals back to the Plains by rail.

Which president signed the law making the bison the US national mammal?

Barack Obama. The 2016 National Bison Legacy Act put an animal the country had once hunted to near extinction beside the bald eagle as an official national symbol.

Despite the nickname 'American buffalo', true buffalo are native only to which two continents?

Africa and Asia. The Cape buffalo and the water buffalo are only distant relatives of the American animal, whose 'buffalo' label dates from early European explorers and has stuck ever since.

Which Asian animal, also called the Indian bison, is the largest of all wild cattle?

Gaur. A big bull stands six feet at the shoulder and is so powerful that, apart from humans, tigers are about the only predator to tackle an adult.

A bison's massive shoulder hump is mostly muscle that powers which winter habit?

Sweeping snow aside with its head. The hump's muscles hang from long spines on the backbone, so a bison swings its head like a snowplow where elk and deer must paw with their feet.

Plains peoples pounded dried bison meat with melted fat, and sometimes berries, to make which long-lasting food?

Pemmican. Sewn into bison-hide bags, it fed the canoe crews of the fur trade, and an 1814 ban on taking it out of the Red River colony set the colony against the Métis.

Buffalo Bill Cody earned his nickname shooting bison to feed crews building what?

A railroad. Hired to keep the track gangs in meat, Cody is said to have killed more than 4,000 bison in about a year and a half, then turned that fame into his Wild West show.

Nuclear DNA suggests that which animals are the closest living relatives of bison?

Yaks. Tradition gives bison a genus of their own, but the DNA places them inside Bos, the genus of domestic cattle, with the shaggy Himalayan ox as their nearest kin.

Bison's ancestors first reached North America by crossing what?

The Bering land bridge. Once across, bison spread over the continent and quickly evolved new forms, among them a long-horned giant bigger than any bison alive today.

At an Alberta World Heritage site, how did Plains hunters kill bison for nearly 6,000 years?

Drove them over a cliff. At Head-Smashed-In, runners using decoy tricks steered herds between lines of stone cairns to the edge, and the butchered bones at its foot lie more than ten metres deep.

What is a cross between American bison and domestic cattle called?

Beefalo. Ranchers who saved the last herds in the 1880s tried the cross in hope of a hardier animal, found no hybrid vigor and gave up; the National Bison Association now bars its members from crossbreeding.

The Sioux regard the birth of a calf of which color as a sacred event?

White. Such a calf is seen as a sign of White Buffalo Calf Woman, the holy figure who brought the people their sacred pipe and seven rites and promised to return in that form.

Which university's football team is led onto the field by Ralphie, a live bison?

Colorado. Every Ralphie has been a female, chosen because cows are smaller and calmer than bulls, and it still takes five student handlers on ropes to steer her round the field.

Live bison kept on the National Mall in the 1880s helped lead to the founding of which Washington institution?

The National Zoo. Smithsonian taxidermist William Hornaday went west in 1886 to collect bison for display, was shocked at how few survived, and came home to show living ones and campaign for a zoo.

In 2017 Parks Canada returned bison to which Rocky Mountain park, more than a century after they vanished there?

Banff. A small herd brought from Elk Island spent its first year and a half in a fenced backcountry pasture before being turned loose to roam the park.

When a bison raises its tail straight up, what may the animal be about to do?

Charge at a threat. A tail that hangs and swishes usually means a calm bison; a raised one, like pawing the ground or bobbing the head, is a warning to back away at once.

Which media mogul built the world's largest private bison herd and co-founded a restaurant chain to sell the meat?

Ted Turner. His ranches came to hold tens of thousands of bison, and the grill chain he launched in 2002 was meant to help the species by giving ranchers a market for its meat.

What is the shallow depression a bison rolls in called?

A wallow. Bulls also roll in them during the rut to leave their scent and show off their strength, and the bare hollows hold rainwater on the flat prairie.

Bison often rub their horns and bodies against trees, a behavior thought to be linked to what?

Repelling insects. Bison also scrub against rocks to shake off biting pests, and cowbirds once trailed the great herds to snap up the bugs they stirred.

What color is a newborn bison calf?

Reddish-brown. The colour earns calves the nickname 'red dogs'; after two or three months the coat darkens and the hump and horns begin to grow.

In which months do bison mate?

August and September, though the rut can start in July. A dominant bull 'tends' a cow, shadowing her for days and bellowing back at any rival until she is ready to mate.

Apart from grizzly bears, which is the only large predator that kills adult bison?

Wolves. A herd defends itself by facing its attackers as a group, so packs pick out calves and weakened animals, and a chased calf may bolt to the nearest bull or into a river.

Which state's official song, 'Home on the Range', longs for a land of roaming buffalo?

Kansas. A homesteading doctor, Brewster Higley, wrote the words there in the early 1870s, and they were traced back to him only after a 1934 lawsuit over who owned the hit song.

Which zoo bred bison and sent 15 of them west by rail in 1907 to restock the Oklahoma plains?

Bronx Zoo. The fifteen animals it shipped founded the Wichita Mountains herd, which still roams the Oklahoma refuge more than a century later.

Around 1900, who guarded America's last wild bison herd from poachers?

The US Army. Its cavalry ran the park where the herd sheltered long before there were park rangers, and in 1902 it brought in 21 ranch-raised bison in case the wild ones died out.

Which US national park has had bison continuously since prehistoric times?

Yellowstone. Hunters emptied the rest of the country, but a few dozen wild bison held on in its remote valleys, and thousands of their descendants roam the park today.

The bison herd that cattleman Charles Goodnight saved from the hide hunters is now the official herd of which state?

Texas. His wife, Mary Ann, urged him to rescue some of the animals as the slaughter reached the Panhandle, and their descendants now roam Caprock Canyons State Park.

Custer State Park, known for its fall bison roundup, lies in which state's Black Hills?

South Dakota. Each September riders drive the herd into corrals to be tested, branded and sorted, and surplus animals are sold so the range can support the rest.

Antelope Island, home to one of America's oldest public bison herds, lies in which lake?

Great Salt Lake. The first bison were shipped out by boat in 1893, when the species was nearly gone, and riders still round up their descendants each fall to keep the herd within what the island can feed.

Elk Island National Park, whose bison have restocked herds across North America, lies just east of which Canadian city?

Edmonton. Because its fenced herds are free of the cattle diseases carried by many wild bison, the park has supplied animals to reintroductions for decades.

The bison is the official animal of which Canadian province and appears on its flag?

Manitoba. The bison on the provincial shield, which sits on the flag, recalls the herds that once roamed there and the First Nations who drew their food and clothing from them.

A bison's head sits at the centre of the official badge of which organisation?

Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Mounties took up the emblem in the 1870s; why was never settled, but it is believed to have begun as the bull's head on their commissioner's Scottish clan crest.

Which president's nickel replaced the buffalo nickel in 1938?

Thomas Jefferson. The bison design was hard to strike and its date wore off in pockets, so the Mint held a contest for a new nickel as soon as the 25 years required by law were up.

Which state flies a flag with a bison on it and has named the animal its official state mammal?

Wyoming. The bison on its flag carries the state seal on its ribs, standing for the ranchers' custom of branding livestock, and the animal became the state mammal in 1985.

Who were the 'Buffalo Soldiers', a nickname reportedly given by the tribes they fought on the frontier after the Civil War?

African American regiments. Stories differ on why, some citing their dark curly hair, like a buffalo's coat, and others their fierce fighting; the men took it as praise, and the 10th Cavalry put a buffalo on its crest.

In 1907 Canada bought the largest bison herd left on the continent from a rancher in which US state?

Montana. Michel Pablo offered his herd to Washington first and was turned down, so Ottawa bought it, and it took several years of roundups to get the animals north.

Tatanka, a word for the bison bull, comes from the language of which Plains people?

The Lakota. The word opens the Lakota name of Sitting Bull, Tatanka Iyotake, which his father passed on to him after he rode out at 14 and struck a Crow warrior in his first raid.

What makes up the bulk of a bison's diet?

Grasses and sedges. Bison don't just follow fresh spring growth: by cropping the same patches again and again they keep the plants short, tender and nutritious for weeks longer.

Which California island has had a bison herd since animals arrived for a 1920s film shoot?

Santa Catalina Island. By the usual account the animals were simply left behind when a silent Western wrapped, and their descendants became an island mascot, painted on buildings and perched on weather vanes.

Bison were reintroduced in 2009 to the Janos reserve in which Mexican state on the New Mexico border?

Chihuahua. The founders came from Wind Cave National Park, and a separate wild herd has wandered back and forth across the US border since at least the 1920s.

Since 2006, wood bison have been established in Yakutia, a region of which country?

Russia. The animals were sent from Canada to stand in for the extinct steppe bison that once grazed Siberia, part of an effort to rebuild something like its Ice Age wildlife.

The last wild lowland European bison were shot soon after World War I in which forest?

Białowieża Forest. Only 54 animals were left, all in zoos; from 1929 a few were brought back to breed, and hundreds of their descendants now roam the forest wild.

The European bison is a national animal of Poland and which other country?

Belarus. Between them the two neighbours hold a large share of the world's European bison, and the zubr, as Belarusians call it, stands on the arms of the country's Brest region.

What does the 'Buffalo Commons' proposal call for?

Turning dry farmland into bison range. Two academics, Frank and Deborah Popper, floated it in 1987, arguing the Dust Bowl and decades of emptying towns showed farming there could not last; it drew intense criticism.

Canada's Wood Buffalo National Park, created to protect bison, also holds the nesting ground of the last natural flock of which bird?

Whooping crane. The one natural flock was down to fewer than two dozen birds in 1941; it still nests only in and around the park, and has since grown to several hundred.

Which famous mountain pass followed an old bison trail before pioneers took it west?

Cumberland Gap. Bison wore the first path through this notch in the Appalachians, and Native hunters, long hunters and some 300,000 settlers bound for Kentucky and beyond followed it.

Which group grazes bison on its own prairie preserves in Oklahoma and Indiana?

The Nature Conservancy. It uses the animals as land managers: by grazing down the dominant plants they make room for wildflowers and the birds and pollinators that depend on them.

The European bison is also known by which name, from the same old Germanic root as the word 'bison'?

Wisent. Latin borrowed the Germanic word as 'bison'; English let its own form, 'wesend', die out around 1400, then took 'bison' back from French two centuries later.