# Bison, buffalo, wisent

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bison-buffalo-wisent/434893>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 25, 2008, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bison-buffalo-wisent/434893 "2008-01-25T00:26:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bison-buffalo-wisent/434893/21 "2008-01-26T19:49:55Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Ronald C. Semone]  
Maybe I’m being dense, but I still don’t get it. If I went to the wilds of Alaska and captured a caribou and put it in my backyard next to a reindeer I had bought from a herd being commercially raised, could you tell the difference?  
[/QUOTE]

You might not be able to, but a mammalogist, or a reindeer herder, probably could. There are a number of subspecies of reindeer/caribou, though I am not sure how distinct they are (and I had not been aware of the possible interbreeding between domestic reindeer and Alaskan caribou that **yabob** mentions). At any rate, I would expect that someone knowledgeable most likely could tell them apart.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2008, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bison-buffalo-wisent/434893/22 "2008-01-27T12:26:43Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Colibri]  
The early colonists were not naturalists. They very frequently made such mistakes. Many of them may not have been familiar with the European counterparts.

[/QUOTE]

Come to think of it, were common names even common at that time? I can well believe that e.g. a blue tit or a red-tailed kite would have different names in different parts of England at the time.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2008, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bison-buffalo-wisent/434893/23 "2008-01-27T18:17:39Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=slaphead]  
Come to think of it, were common names even common at that time? I can well believe that e.g. a blue tit or a red-tailed kite would have different names in different parts of England at the time.  
[/QUOTE]

They certainly weren’t standardized, or “official.” Even today there are no official global standards for common names.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bison-buffalo-wisent/434893.md?page=1)