American Bison
From Freepedia
| American Bison Conservation status: Lower risk | ||||||||||||||||
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| Bison bison Linnaeus, 1758 |
The American Bison (Bison bison), also called Buffalo, is a bovine mammal that is the largest terrestrial mammal in North America. The bison inhabited Great Plains of the United States and Canada in massive herds, ranging from the Great Slave Lake in Canada's far north to Mexico in the south, and from eastern Oregon almost to the Atlantic Ocean. Its two subspecies are the Plains Bison (Bison bison bison), distingushed by its flat back, and the Wood Bison (Bison bison athabascae), distingushed by its large humped back.
Bison have a shaggy, dark brown winter coat, and a lighter brown (and lighter weight) summer coat. Bison can reach over 2 m (6 feet) tall, 3 m (10 ft) long and weigh over 1,360 kg (3,000 pounds). The heads and forequarters are massive, and both sexes have short, curved horns, which they use in fighting for status within the herd and defense. Bison mate in August and September; a single reddish-brown calf is born the following spring, and nurses for a year. Bison are mature at three years of age, and have a life expectancy of 18–22 years, or 35 to 40 years in captivity.
In rare circumstances, bison may turn white.
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Reproductive habits
Their mating habits are polygynous: Dominant bulls maintain a small harem of females for mating. Individual bulls "tend" females until allowed to mate, following them around and chasing away rival males.
Homosexual behavior— including courtship and mounting between bulls—is common among bison. The Mandan nation Okipa festival concludes with a ceremonial enactment of this behavior, to "ensure the return of the buffalo in the coming season." (Bruce Bagemihl, Whole Earth, 2000) See Homosexuality in animals.
Calves are born with a light brown to red fur coat which darkens as the animal matures. One very rare condition results in the white buffalo, where the calf turns entirely white. It is not to be confused with albino, since pigment still exists in the skin, hair, and eyes. White buffalo are considered sacred by many Native Americans.
Hunting and near-extinction
The American Bison is a relative newcomer to North America, having originated in Eurasia. About 10,000 years ago it replaced the Long Horned Bison (Bison Priscus) which was much larger in size. It is thought that the Long Horned Bison may have gone extinct due to hunting pressure from recent human immigrants into North America who brought with them the Clovis point and improved hunting skills.
During this same period, other Megafauna vanished, to be replaced to some degree by immigrant Eurasian animals that were better adapted to predatory humans. The American Bison, technically a dwarf form, was one of these animals. Another was the Brown Bear, which replaced the Short Faced Bear.
Bison were central to the lifestyle of Native Americans of the Great Plains. But there is now some controversy over their interaction. "Hernando De Soto's expedition staggered through the Southeast for four years in the early sixteenth century and saw hordes of people but apparently didn't see a single bison," Charles C. Mann writes in to 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Mann discusses the evidence that North American Indians not only created (by selective use of fire) the large grasslands that provided the bison's ideal habitat, but also kept the bison population regulated. In this theory, it was only when the Indian population was decimated by wave after wave of epidemic (from diseases of Europeans) that the bison herds propagated wildly.
What is not disputed is that before the introduction of horses, buffalo were herded into large chutes made of rocks and willow branches and then stampeded over cliffs. These buffalo jumps are found in several places in the US and Canada.
In order to get any use out of the Bison, the Paleo-Indians had a specific method of butchery, first identified at the Olsen-Chubbock archeological site in Colorado. The method involves skinning down the back in order to get at the tender meat just beneath the surface, the area known as the "hatched area." After the removal of the hatched area, the front legs are cut off as well as the shoulder blades. Doing so exposes the hump meat (in the Wood Bison), as well as the meat of the ribs and the Bison's inner organs. After everything was exposed, the spine was then severed and the pelvis and hind legs removed. Finally, the neck and head were removed as one. This allowed for the tough meat to be dried and made into pemmican.
When the later Plains Indians got horses, it was found that a good horseman could easily lance or shoot enough Bison to keep his tribe and family fed, as long as a herd was nearby. The Bison provided meat, leather, sinew for bows, grease, dried dung for fires, and even the hooves could be boiled for glue. The Plains horse Indians were sometimes wasteful, taking mainly the tongue and hump meat, but their pressure on the herds was easily sustainable. When times were bad, Bison were consumed down to the last bit of marrow.
Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century. One major cause was that hunters were paid by large railroad concerns to destroy entire herds, for several reasons:
-- The herds formed the basis of the economies of local Plains tribes of Native Americans; without Bison, the tribes would leave.
-- Herds of these large animals on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time.
-- Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding though hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. This could hold up a train for days.
Besides this, Bison skins were valuable for industrial machine belts, clothing such as robes, and rugs. There was a huge export trade to Europe of Bison hides. Old West Bison hunting was very often a big commercial enterprise, involving organized teams of one or two professional hunters, backed by a team of skinners, gun cleaners, cartridge reloaders, cooks, wranglers, blacksmiths, security guards, teamsters, and large numbers of horse and wagons. Men were even employed to recover and re-cast lead bullets taken from the carcasses. Many of these professional hunters such as Buffalo Bill Cody killed over a hundred animals at a single stand and many thousands in their career. One professional hunter killed over 20,000 by his own count. A good hide could bring $3.00 in Dodge City, and a very good one (the heavy winter coat) $50.00 in an era when a laborer would be lucky to make a dollar a day.
For a decade from 1873 on there were several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, such commercial hunting outfits harvesting bison at any one time, vastly exceeding the take by American Indians or indivdual meat hunters. It was said that the Big .50s were fired so much that buffalo hunters needed at least two rifles to let the barrels cool off, and they were sometimes quenched in the winter snow.
As the great herds began to wane, proposals to protect the Bison came up. Buffalo Bill Cody among others, spoke in favor of protecting the Bison as he saw that the pressure on the species was too great. But these were discouraged, as it was recognized that the Plains Indians, often at war with the United States, depended on Bison for their way of life. General Phillip Sheridan spoke to the Texas Legislature against a proposal to outlaw commercial Bison hunting for that reason, and President Grant also "pocket vetoed" a similar Federal bill to protect the dwindling Bison herds. By 1884 the American Bison was close to extinction.
The destruction of the Bison was resisted by many of the Plains Indians, but not with success. The Indians did not participate in commercial hunting of the Bison.
As few as 750 bison existed in 1890. The Bronx Zoo maintained a remnant herd, some of which was transported in the early 20th century to Yellowstone National Park to bolster its faltering indigenous herd (which poaching had reduced to a few dozen animals), joining with transplants from other wildlife preserves. Some of these came from Charles Goodnight's ranch in the Texas Panhandle. A variety of privately-owned herds have also been established, starting from this population.
The current American Bison population has been growing rapidly and is estimated at 350,000, but this includes animals that carry cattle genes. In actuality there are only approximately 5,000 to 15,000 purebred bison in the world.
Bison hunting today
Small-scale hunting is allowed currently in some areas. In Montana, cattle ranchers are concerned about the spread of brucellosis to their cattle from infected bison that are wandering outside of the boundaries of Yellowstone Park. In 2005, a limited public bison hunt with 50 licenses was established, suspended, and re-established by the state.
Bison today
Image:Bison.jpg There is now a proposal known as Buffalo Commons to restore large parts of the drier portion of the Great Plains to native prairie grazed by bison. Proponents argue that current agricultural use of the shortgrass prairie is not sustainable, as indicated by periodic disasters such as the Dust Bowl and continuing significant population loss over the last 60 years.
Bison are now raised for meat and hides. Over 250,000 of the 350,000 remaining bison are being raised for human consumption. Bison meat is lower in fat and cholesterol than beef which has led to the development of beefalo, a fertile cross-breed of bison and domestic cattle.
Recent genetic studies of privately-owned herds of bison show that many of them include animals with genes from domestic cattle; there are as few as 5,000 to 15,000 pure bison in the world. The numbers are uncertain because the tests so far used mitochondrial DNA analysis, and thus would miss cattle genes inherited in the male line; most of the hybrids look exactly like purebred bison.
The American Bison was depicted on the reverse side of the U.S. "buffalo nickel" from 1913 to 1938. In 2005 the United States Mint coined a nickel with a new depiction of the bison as part of its "Westward Journey" series.
The bison is a symbol of Manitoba, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the University of Colorado, Marshall University, the Independence Party of Minnesota, and North Dakota State University. It is also commonly used as a symbol of the City of Buffalo, New York although the city was not named for the animal.
Custer State Park in South Dakota is home to 1500 bison, one of the largest publicly-held herds in the world.
Dangers
Bison are among the most dangerous animals encountered by visitors to the various National Parks - visitors will realize that a bear is not an animal to be trifled with, but will closely approach bison in the belief that bison are not dangerous, and thus run the risk of being trampled and gored. Visitors should treat bison as they would treat any other life-threatening wild animal.. Although they may seem slow and lethargic, bison can run at speeds of 45 mph and can turn very quickly. Bison also have the unique ability to jump straight up.
Native American Names for Bison
Though commonly called Buffalo today, North American Amerindian peoples were the first to name the bison. They included:
- Tatanka -- Lakota
External links
- BisonCentral.com--The Web site of the National Bison Association
- Buffalo Field Campaign
- Canadian Bison
- Yellowstone visitor's information about the dangers of wild animals, including bison
- Videos of animal attacks, including bison incidents
