Animal of the week!
Hey all and welcome again to Cherry's 13th edition of
"Animal of the week". Here again are a few breif facts on this week's
animal.
This week's animal...The Bison
from Compton's Concise Encyclopedia
Copyright (c) 1995 Compton's NewMedia, Inc.
The American bison is more commonly called buffalo in the United States.
It is the largest North American land mammal. Originally great herds
ranged from Mexico to the region of the Great Slave Lake in Canada and
from Pennsylvania and the Carolinas to west of the Rockies.
At the time America was discovered by Europeans, it was estimated
that 30 to 60 million bison ranged this area. In 1870 this number had
been reduced to 5.5 million. The westward-moving pioneers and railroad
workers wantonly killed the huge animals by the thousands for food.
By the 1880s fewer than a thousand were left on the
continent, two thirds of them in Canada. By the 1990s there were about
120,000 bison left, kept mostly on privately owned ranches and on
government preserves.
It has a powerful neck and shoulder muscles which grows a
great shaggy coat of curly brown fur, and over the head, like an
immense hood, grows a shock of black hair. Its forequarters are higher
and much heavier than its haunches. A mature bull stands about 6 1/2
feet (2 meters) at the shoulder and weighs more than 2,000 pounds
(900 kilograms).
The bison's horns are short and black. In the male they are thick
at the base and taper abruptly to sharp points as they curve outward
and upward; the female's horns are more slender. The hoofs are black.
For the Plains Indians the bison was the most important game animal.
Its hide furnished material for tepees and robes; its meat was eaten
fresh or preserved as pemmican by drying and pounding.
When threatened, the herd bunched, and the bulls faced outward toward the
danger. While the young are protected inside the circle safe from predators.
Almost all the American bison alive today are the Plains bison.
Another variety, larger and darker in color, survived in northern
Canada until recently. They now are nearly extinct through
interbreeding with the Plains bison. A hybrid called beefalo has been
produced by breeding the male bison with a domestic cow.
The European bison (Bos taurus), the wisent, is also sometimes
called aurochs. They flourished in Europe centuries ago. Until World
War I, 1,500 head were kept in preserves in the Caucasus and in
Lithuania by the Russian czar. They are now almost extinct. A few
remain in the wilds of Poland and the Caucasus and in European zoos.
They should not be confused with the extinct giant ox (Bos primigenius)
, or urus, of Europe, which were also known as aurochs. The European
bison are a little larger than the American bison. They once ranged in
small herds.
The true buffalo (genera Syncerus and Bubalus) are native to Asia
and Africa. The true buffalo has neither the bison's pronounced hump
on its shoulders nor the bison's long hair on the forepart of its body.
