What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison?
[Australian accent]Yew cahn’t wash yer fice in a buffalo![/Aa]
I’m pretty sure most people know a “walking teddy bear” AKA “bear” can kill them.
Back in 2014 someone I work with attended a meeting in Jackson Hole WY and the registered participants received this greeting e-mail shortly before the date:
So remember, you may touch the fish. Good to know. The bison/American buffalo OTOH are cranky and stupid but will still let you get close enough to then stomp you. And he should know.
The matter-of-fact statement about how “one [bear] ate a researcher” still makes this the best official business e-mail I saw that year.
I don’t know about that… I remember a trip through Yellowstone where traffic was stopped because a mama bear and her cub were up in the road ahead. And people were getting out of their cars with their kids in tow to go walk up and snap a picture. People are idiots.
You know whenever I see a bison standing on it’s own out in the cold I just can’t help but want to take it home and warm it up in my living room.
Nature is co cruel.
btw…not a city folk.
Our culture has created an image of bears as fuzzy, cuddly, friendly, benign forest critters, which is why I love this Simpsons opening.
If you are from the city, a milk cow can be quite intimidating.
Just enough evidence that film producers have tapped into people’s fear of nature. Heck, my domesticated cats aren’t crazy about “outside.” They are happy enough to look at it through a window, but the idea of going out the door into it terrifies one of them, and the other will go out only with me.
You would be shocked at the number of people who will approach even a full grown bear and try to lure it with food, much less cubs. It is a testament to how generally non-aggressive the black bear (Ursus americanus) is that so few people are killed, and even those who are injured usually just receive mild defense wounds (with the caveat that even a defensive wound from a bear can knock someone unconscious or leave deep cuts into flesh).
The people who think that bison are just big wooly cows a) don’t understand that they are, in fact, wild pack animals that are evolved to attack anything they perceive as a threat, b) can’t comprehend that bison are about eight to ten times the mass of a typical full grown human being, and capable of knocking someone down without even meaning to, and c) apparently have no appreciation for the fact that even domestic cows can be quite dangerous when spooked or protective as evidenced by the severity of injuries from cattle attacks.
If you don’t know anything about wild animals and have never been around domestic livestock or any animals larger than a housepet, you should start with the assumption that anything can kill you if it doesn’t like your hairstyle, and go from there.
Stranger
BTW, even domestic animals such as dogs and cats can be dangerous under the wrong circumstances. If people were more careful, there would be fewer bites.
Nicely done.
This is probably the researcher talked about
If you’ve grown up around cattle your whole life…a cow can still be quite intimidating!
A friend of mine drove with me to Thermopolis, Wyoming – which is a lovely town, with a magnificent set of hot springs terraces, and they also have a really spiffing western history museum. I wanna go back…
So there we were, parked in the little lot on the hilltop overlooking the town, right nearby a small grazing herd of bison. My friend walks off a way, then comes back, and says, ominously, “Guess what isn’t between us and those bison?”
No fence. We skedaddled!
Not the ones I’ve eaten. Seemed rather greasy. Nowhere near as flavorful as prime aged beef.
But, arguably, not grouchy enough.
There are lots of human-bison encounters in a park like Yellowstone, and in most of them the bison are unaggressive, typically taking little notice of the humans. The vast majority of park visitors have heard that bison can be big trouble, but experience only rarely bears this out.
The bisons’ mostly mild behavior undermines the warning. If they were more consistently threatening, people would be much less likely to do the foolish things that provoke trouble.
Can’t say as I have ever had the urge to parallel park a bison. Way too kinky for me, but hay, them rural Canadians are a lot more open minded.
I don’t, I call them Buffalo. I say that having taken plenty of Biology and the rest of it, “Bison” just sounds affected and fucks up nickels and “Home On the Range.”
I think you got a bad batch. Bison may not be as flavorful, but tends to be much less fatty. I don’t think it tastes greasy at all.
My favorite bison memory is seeing a small herd up in the Black Hills in early summer, peacefully grazing.
Further off at higher elevation were a couple of coyotes, skulking around the perimeter, waiting for an opportunity to detach and dine on one of the spring calves.
Ignorant city folk are probably not a prime enemy of bison. Think predators, and ranchers upset about rangeland competition and :dubious: brucellosis threats.
One fine bright morning in the Badlands, I woke and looked out of my tent to find myself in the company of several bison, including one about twenty feet away. I don’t think I had ever realized just how uncomfortably short a distance twenty feet is.
I shot one in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas, I’ll never know.