Bison | Size, Population, Diet, & Facts

bison, (genus Bison), also called buffalo or wisent, either of two species of oxlike grazing mammals that constitute the genus Bison of the family Bovidae. The American bison (B. bison), commonly known as the buffalo or the plains buffalo, is native to North America, and the European bison (B. bonasus), or wisent, is native to Europe. Both species were drastically reduced in numbers by hunting and now occupy small protected areas that are tiny fractions of their former ranges.

The American bison differs from domestic cattle or oxen in several respects. It is larger and has a broad heavy head that is carried low and cannot be raised to shoulder level. The bison also has a pronounced hump at the shoulders, heavy forequarters, and 14 ribs instead of the 13 found in cattle. The coarse shaggy fur is dark brown in colour. It grows especially long on the head, neck, and shoulders and usually forms a beard on the chin. On rare occasions a white bison is born; these unusual specimens were especially honoured by Native Americans. Both bison sexes bear short upcurved horns, those of the cow being smaller. Bison are powerful large animals. A mature bull stands about 2 metres (6.5 feet) at the shoulder and weighs more than 900 kg (1,980 pounds). The female is about 1.5 metres (5 feet) tall and weighs about 320 kg (700 pounds).

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Bison live in small groups, or bands, whose basic unit is one or more females and several generations of their offspring. Adult males live on the band’s periphery or form their own small groups. Large temporary herds of bison may arise from the congregation of dozens or even hundreds of individual bands. During the mating season, which reaches its height in August, bulls engage in head-butting contests to determine their social dominance. The cow usually gives birth to a single calf in May after about nine months’ gestation. All members of the band protect the young. Bison prefer grass and herbs, but they will also eat twigs and leaves. Bison herds undertake short seasonal migrations, moving a few hundred kilometres southward in winter and then moving back north when warmer weather returns. Their usual gait is a plodding walk, but they also trot, canter in a stiff-legged manner, or run with a rolling motion. In spite of their bulk, they are agile and fast, having been clocked at speeds of 65 km (40 miles) per hour. Bison are unpredictable animals. Sometimes they can be approached closely without evincing alarm, but at other times they stampede at the least provocation.

An examination of the mitochondrial DNA of a 120,000-year-old fossil long-horned bison (B. latifons) from Colorado and a 130,000-year-old fossil of what was likely a steppe bison (Bison priscus) from Yukon suggested that the first bison in North America migrated from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge sometime between 95,000 and 135,000 years ago before spreading rapidly throughout the continent. (Both the long-horned bison and the steppe bison are extinct.) Some authorities distinguish two subspecies of American bison, the plains bison (B. bison bison) and the wood bison (B. bison athabascae), though the differences between them are minor. The plains bison formerly inhabited most of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains provinces of Canada. It greatly outnumbered the wood bison, which lived in northwestern Canada and Alaska. An estimated 50 million plains bison, probably the largest aggregation of large animals known to recorded history, roamed over North America when Europeans arrived. The bison formed the mainstay of the economy of the Plains Indians, providing them with meat for food, hides and fur for clothing and shelter, and sinew and horn for tools, yet their hunting activities had little impact on the bison population.

With the westward movement of white civilization in the 18th and 19th centuries, the bison were wantonly slaughtered in ever-growing numbers: they were hunted for subsistence, for the commercial sale of their meat and hides, or simply for sport. By the early 19th century the bison had been exterminated east of the Mississippi River. The extension of railroads across the Great Plains in the 1860s led to the decimation of the immense herds that foraged on the vast grasslands there. One hunter alone, William F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”), killed 4,280 animals in 1867–68 while supplying buffalo meat for railroad construction crews. The white man’s slaughter of the bison also had a conscious political objective—to deprive Native Americans of their means of subsistence, thereby making it easier to drive them onto reservations or make them adopt settled agricultural pursuits. Much of the hostility between Native Americans and the whites was caused by the whites’ unremitting destruction of the bison herds. By 1870 the bison population on the Great Plains had been divided into two parts, lying north and south, respectively, of the Union Pacific railway line. The southern herd was completely destroyed by 1875 and the northern one by 1885. By 1889 there were fewer than 1,000 bison left alive in all of North America.

About 1900, as the bison neared extinction, concerted action by American and Canadian cattlemen and conservationists resulted in the protection of the remaining animals in government preserves, zoos, and ranches on both sides of the border. The present commercial herds now total as many as 400,000 individuals. Some 31,000 bison are part of conservation herds made up of 20,000 plains bison and 11,000 wood bison residing in preserves in the United States and Canada. This number is sufficient to ensure the survival of the species, though a major concern of conservationists is the maintenance of genetic diversity among protected bison herds. The wood bison is considered to be a threatened subspecies in Canada and the U.S. state of Alaska.

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The European bison, or wisent, differs from the American bison in several respects. It lives in woodlands and is slightly larger and longer-legged than the American bison but is less heavily built. The European bison’s range originally extended eastward across Europe to the Volga River and the Caucasus Mountains. It became extinct in the wild after World War I, but herds built from zoo-bred animals were subsequently reestablished, most notably in the Białowieża, or Byelavyezhskaya, Forest in Poland and Belarus. Other countries that are home to the European bison include Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources noted that the European bison population had increased by more than 10 percent annually between 2015 and 2019, and surveys placed the number of mature animals at 2,500 by 2020.