Speaker 1: Oh hi, So twenty twenty five me here, and last
Speaker 1: night was our first ever live in person show. It
Speaker 1: was at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, and it was so fun.
Speaker 1: I got to see so many of you in person.
Speaker 1: We talked about tree Sap, we talked about Funeral Bells.
Speaker 1: I don't know we're ever going to release that one.
Speaker 1: It was just sort of a fun experiment and I
Speaker 1: think I'll go on the road more in the future.
Speaker 1: But this is an encore episode just because it's been
Speaker 1: kind of a heavy week and I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a couple of days off. Okay, enjoy this one. I
Speaker 1: love it. Oh hey, it's your forgotten half can of lacroix.
Speaker 1: That's just cold, just fizzy enough to keep drinking it
Speaker 1: and not throw it away. Ali Ward back with a
Speaker 1: very very weird, odd episode of Ologies. If this is
Speaker 1: not your first Ologies rodeo, you know that each episode
Speaker 1: I usually talk to one ologist, but for some reason,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man Bison just threw us for a
Speaker 1: very rare loop. So this episode is kind of more
Speaker 1: like a buffalo party. And thank you to patrons of
Speaker 1: the show who support us. Anyone in Ologies Merch Fromologiesmerch
Speaker 1: dot com we have smologies. They're shorter kid friendly episodes,
Speaker 1: so they're available now and their own feed. Thank you
Speaker 1: to everyone who leaves reviews. I read them all. This
Speaker 1: is twenty twenty five me thanking MRM Kennedy for the
Speaker 1: review that said going through the worst breakup my poor
Speaker 1: meat robot has ever been bopped through. Thank you for
Speaker 1: this treasure trove of tiny joys and distractions, MRM Kennedy.
Speaker 1: My heart wishes your heart the best, maybe a good rebound. Okay. Bisonology,
Speaker 1: So bison. It's Baltic or Slavic origin. It comes from
Speaker 1: the word wessund, which means the stinking animal because of
Speaker 1: its musk while rudding, and the word bison is distantly
Speaker 1: related to the word weasel, which is also stinky. So
Speaker 1: weasel and bison. One is hulking billueing steam into the
Speaker 1: cold air, and the other is a sock with a
Speaker 1: face etymology. Okay, so you're going to hear from Ken Cannon,
Speaker 1: who is a New Jersey born and now Utah based
Speaker 1: research professor of anthropology at Utah State University who studies
Speaker 1: ancient bison and gives talks like rolling Thunder ten thousand
Speaker 1: years of bison in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, and he
Speaker 1: has short cropped hair, rosy cheeks, and as salt and
Speaker 1: pepper goateee. He looks like he could have been a
Speaker 1: rugby player and another life. So that's Ken. And he
Speaker 1: brought along Utah State University ecologist Dan McNulty, who spent
Speaker 1: years in Yellowstone studying animal behavior, and he has sandy
Speaker 1: blonde hair. He's a little more wiry than Ken, and
Speaker 1: I cannot explain why, but Dan looks like a Ken,
Speaker 1: and Ken looks like a Dan, and that screwed me
Speaker 1: up editing this entire episode. But yes, Dan studies the
Speaker 1: more modern era of bison. Lyla Evans is my beloved
Speaker 1: cousin in law, and she served in the Montana House
Speaker 1: of Representatives and I always just picture her in a
Speaker 1: business blazer, even though she's probably more likely like bundled
Speaker 1: than fleece because it's Montana. And her longtime husband is
Speaker 1: my cousin, boyd Evans, who's tall and gangly and wrangler jeans.
Speaker 1: He has a handlebar mustache and a rain stained cowboy
Speaker 1: hat and a great laugh. So I told you this
Speaker 1: is a weird and wonderful episode, And a break from
Speaker 1: the usual format. So hop on, hang tight and learn
Speaker 1: how big a bison is, what their fur feels like,
Speaker 1: how many there used to be, how many there are now,
Speaker 1: how do they do a head count, and what that
Speaker 1: lumpy humpus for, what a bison's favorite treat is, and
Speaker 1: what noises they make, and the difference between raising cows
Speaker 1: and bison, and how their very existence and survival has
Speaker 1: been politicized and continues to be. And also maybe the
Speaker 1: worst sentence in the English language as we talk to
Speaker 1: academics and hands on ranchers, all four of whom, in
Speaker 1: their own way are professional bisonologists. Okay, let's get right
Speaker 1: into it. So the first person I had approached was
Speaker 1: the one I interviewed.
Speaker 2: Doctor Ken Canon.
Speaker 1: And you're a bisonologist.
Speaker 2: Uh, that's part of my jobs.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is this news to you that you're a bisonologist.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is very much.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: I heard that term before.
Speaker 1: Would you ever use that term like in a cocktail party, like, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm a bus knows.
Speaker 2: I think so?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: Well you're welcome, yeah, thank you, And so how long
Speaker 1: have you been studying bison?
Speaker 2: Well, I first got interested in a bison when I
Speaker 2: started working for National Park Service in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: when I was just a little kid.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: I got interested in it because we were working at
Speaker 2: Grant Teeton National Park and there was an archaeological site
Speaker 2: there that referred to itself as a as a bison
Speaker 2: kill site, a bison jump site. It was interpreted a
Speaker 2: numerous different ways, and at the time, there weren't that
Speaker 2: many bison in Granteeton National Park PS.
Speaker 1: Grand Teton is in Wyoming, And if you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: in New Zealand, I have no idea where your parks are.
Speaker 1: Isn't Yellowstone in Wyoming? The answer is yes, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: So both are gorgeous, mountainous, grassy places in Wyoming. They're
Speaker 1: just a few miles away from each other, but they
Speaker 1: have separate entrance fees unless you get like one big
Speaker 1: pass that covers both. So essentially Yellowstone is Disneyland and
Speaker 1: Grand Teton is California Adventure. Okay. Anyway, in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties when Ken started, there were not many bison there.
Speaker 2: And the previous archaeologists that work there always minimize the
Speaker 2: presence of bison in there, and so I just started
Speaker 2: looking at the literature, and the more I looked at
Speaker 2: the literature, every time there were fallen remains bones preserved
Speaker 2: at archaeological sites, nine out of ten times there were
Speaker 2: bison bones. And it's like, well, how can you minimize
Speaker 2: bison and the archaeological record when all the bones that
Speaker 2: you're finding are bison bones. So that just got me
Speaker 2: going and moved up and started working in Yellowstone National
Speaker 2: Park and got more interesting in bison and you know,
Speaker 2: this wonderful mammal that's that was an incredible part of
Speaker 2: our ecosystem, shaped a large part of North American ecosystem,
Speaker 2: and why we don't know a lot about it. Most
Speaker 2: of what we know about it is from small herds,
Speaker 2: anecdotal historical records. So I really wanted to try and
Speaker 2: understand at least the Yellowstone bison a little bit more detail.
Speaker 1: So how old were those kill sites and what exactly
Speaker 1: is it kil site?
Speaker 2: So kill site it can vary in a lot of
Speaker 2: different ways. The traditional ones that we always think of
Speaker 2: for great planes are running bison over a cliff, oh
Speaker 2: hundreds of bison over a cliff and then dispatching them
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the cliff.
Speaker 1: This is a kind of a stupid question. But when
Speaker 1: you say at kill site, like let's say they were
Speaker 1: over a cliff, is that for to then use that
Speaker 1: meat and fur? Or was that like a hunting technique?
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a hunting technique.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that was the best easy, I guess, and most
Speaker 2: economically efficient way of getting a lot of bison to
Speaker 2: get you into the winter. So typically they're they're in
Speaker 2: the fall at these these events happen, bi center are
Speaker 2: coming into the to the fall in the winter, so
Speaker 2: they're really fat, and fat's good. Not like today, but
Speaker 2: fat was good back then. Everybody, all hunter gathers. Everybody
Speaker 2: wanted fat. So you hunted bison in the fall, they're
Speaker 2: at their prime nutritionally, they're their fur is at prime.
Speaker 2: So you get some really nice skins for making clothing
Speaker 2: and and tps and all kinds of stuff. So so yeah,
Speaker 2: so that was an efficient way of doing it.
Speaker 1: Going back into some history, much much more recent, tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about how you started to love
Speaker 1: bison er. Now you mentioned you mentioned that you have
Speaker 1: a New Jersey accent. Yeah, okay, so now you grew
Speaker 1: up in New Jersey, But what brought you out to
Speaker 1: Yellowstone and Natural Park Service at P At what point
Speaker 1: did you want to start working in nature.
Speaker 2: Well, I've always wanted to work in nature. I grew
Speaker 2: up on the Jersey Shore and I actually started out
Speaker 2: as wanting to be a marine biologist. So my undergraduate
Speaker 2: work was as a biologist like Jack Rousteau. And and
Speaker 2: because I used to scuba dive and hang out on
Speaker 2: the beach and I and I swear when I was seventeen,
Speaker 2: I would never live more than half a mile from
Speaker 2: the ocean. So here we are, yes, and here we
Speaker 2: are in so so be careful about those things that
Speaker 2: you say put out there in nature to the gods.
Speaker 1: Okay, no, you're not losing your mind. Last week's guest,
Speaker 1: future ologist Rose Evlyth, also wanted to follow in the
Speaker 1: flipper steps of Jacques Cousteau before finding her own path.
Speaker 2: Weird cute, right and anyway, So I went there and
Speaker 2: I got a little bit frustrated with with the biology
Speaker 2: program there was. It was largely geared towards pre med students.
Speaker 2: But then I started taken anthropology courses. It was a
Speaker 2: small program, really good professors treated you like a human
Speaker 2: being and not just a number. And I learned that
Speaker 2: I could I could do biology within as an archaeologist.
Speaker 1: Oh so Ken graduated from the University of Florida and
Speaker 1: did grad school in Tennessee, and then got his PhD
Speaker 1: from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, studying the biogeography of
Speaker 1: prehistoric bison isotopes. So how did this Jersey dude wind
Speaker 1: up so far from the sea?
Speaker 2: I wanted to get out of town, essentially and see
Speaker 2: something different, and as a fluke, I just applied for
Speaker 2: a job with the National Park Service and got hired
Speaker 2: by the Midwest Archaeological Center and the first job was
Speaker 2: to go and work in Granteeta National Park. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's just those weird things that happen in life, and
Speaker 2: you just got to kind of go, okay, let's go,
Speaker 2: let's go. So yeah, it's just it wasn't a plan.
Speaker 1: But it seems like it served you well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm very glad that it all happened. I
Speaker 2: remember when I got hired and drove out I had this,
Speaker 2: of course, I had a nice little VW bug that
Speaker 2: I drove all the way out to grant teet from Tennessee,
Speaker 2: And when I got there, my boss told me it's
Speaker 2: like you were the last person we picked.
Speaker 1: Ouch.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, well, and mostly because I didn't have
Speaker 2: any experience out there, and I but it was it
Speaker 2: was a slam and I was like, okay, take that
Speaker 2: as a challenge, right, you know, do you live up
Speaker 2: to it?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm still trying. It's an ongoing process.
Speaker 1: Is there something about Bison themselves that that intrigued you?
Speaker 1: I feel like as an American, I think that there's
Speaker 1: so much lore and history and and maybe even a
Speaker 1: dark history to them as well. Is that something that
Speaker 1: kind of grabbed you as an archaeologist.
Speaker 2: It grabbed me as an archaeologist because in the Mountains
Speaker 2: they were never seen as being an import and part
Speaker 2: of the subsistence economy of Native American groups, and that
Speaker 2: was intriguing to me. But also I think you're right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's there's an iconic history to bison. It's a
Speaker 2: it is a deep, dark history, but it's also a
Speaker 2: very exciting positive history because we brought them back from
Speaker 2: from extinction and and it was and it was you know,
Speaker 2: it was it was the efforts by a small group
Speaker 2: of people that said this is crazy. We go from
Speaker 2: thirty million to down to nineteen or one hundred or
Speaker 2: whatever the number was, and at the turn of the
Speaker 2: last century. I think that's a big part of it,
Speaker 2: is that just that's you know, that story, that resurrection
Speaker 2: story is there too. But they're they're cool animals. I mean,
Speaker 2: you just go out and they're just they're just cool
Speaker 2: to sit watch.
Speaker 1: And they're majestic.
Speaker 2: They are majestic.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, Ken's colleague, doctor Dan McNulty, no relation to squid
Speaker 1: expert Sarah McNulty, got his bachelor's in environmental studies at
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado and got a master's in wildlife
Speaker 1: conservation and a PhD in ecology, evolution and behavior from
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota. So how did he get lured
Speaker 1: into the bison life? And now are you from Utah?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: I born in Illinois. I grew up in California, went
Speaker 3: to school in Colorado.
Speaker 1: So one might say you've been roaming around as well.
Speaker 3: I have been a bit nomadic, right, although not lately.
Speaker 1: And so you are a bisonologist. You study bison as
Speaker 1: part of your job. Whether you would call yourself that
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 3: I would say that bisonology is part of my program yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, yep, And so how long have you been into
Speaker 1: science and field work and animals. What was it that
Speaker 1: drew you to this?
Speaker 3: Well, I lived in Hong Kong for three years when
Speaker 3: I was in junior high and so that was obviously
Speaker 3: very urban environment. And when I got back to California,
Speaker 3: I was like in the eight or seventh grade, and
Speaker 3: we lived on the edge of big open space, lots
Speaker 3: of live oaks and hills, and it kind of just
Speaker 3: sucked me in, suck me right in soon after we
Speaker 3: got back, and I've been kind of at it since then.
Speaker 3: And actually even before that, I grew up, you know,
Speaker 3: riding horses with my dad in that country, and just
Speaker 3: got really into it once I got back from that
Speaker 3: little stay in Hong Kong and just a lot of
Speaker 3: time spent camping, hiking.
Speaker 1: Dan said, growing up he always loved animals and being
Speaker 1: out in nature observing them.
Speaker 3: But I never really thought i'd actually make a career
Speaker 3: of it. I was an undergraduate at Boulder, Colorado, and
Speaker 3: then went up to Yellowstone and actually it was that
Speaker 3: was kind of when I was sort of the aha
Speaker 3: moment that, yeah, you know, I think I can make
Speaker 3: science into a career. Was when I arrived in Yellowstone.
Speaker 3: This was ninety five, and I just got to see
Speaker 3: while life biologists in action. You know, the folks that
Speaker 3: I worked up up there had made it their career,
Speaker 3: had met other people that had been at it for
Speaker 3: a very long time, and it sort of dawned on
Speaker 3: me that, well, you know, if you work hard and focus,
Speaker 3: you know, it's possible to make this a career. So
Speaker 3: that's kind of where I really sort of got started.
Speaker 1: And now, how did you end up in the bison arena?
Speaker 3: Sort of following wolves? Okay, yeah, the wolves brought me
Speaker 3: to the bison, so the.
Speaker 1: Wolves brought him to the buffalo. But you know, before
Speaker 1: we go much further, let's clear this up. Buffalo or bison.
Speaker 1: So buffalo etymologically comes from the word for an African
Speaker 1: antelope and then expanded to mean a wild European ox
Speaker 1: and then French fur trappers saw bison and called them
Speaker 1: both meaning oxen or beefs, so they were like bolo.
Speaker 1: But currently is there a difference when referring to the
Speaker 1: wool hookhorned beautiful beasts of the North American Plains. I
Speaker 1: called my cousin Boyd and his longtime love and wife
Speaker 1: Lila up in Browning, Montana, which is a small town
Speaker 1: of just a few thousand people and with the Blackfeet Reservation,
Speaker 1: over ninety percent of the town are Indigenous folks. Lyla
Speaker 1: is a member of the Blackfeet tribe, and I've been
Speaker 1: lucky to learn about her heritage and their family's tribal
Speaker 1: involvement over the years. And about buffalo bison. You don't
Speaker 1: mind if I have buffalo questions?
Speaker 6: No, we absolutely do not.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to talk to you about this because
Speaker 1: it's like, I know people who actually get to see
Speaker 1: buffalo and bison every day. This is so exciting. Okay,
Speaker 1: my first question is the difference between a buffalo and
Speaker 1: a bison? Stupid question. There is none, no such thing
Speaker 1: as the difference.
Speaker 4: No difference, Yeah, I mean just whatever.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it's either or yeah, yeahotato potato, tomato, tomato.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's kind of what it is.
Speaker 1: And then how long have you had buffalo?
Speaker 4: Twenty years?
Speaker 1: Twenty years? Yeah, Boyd and Lila started with just six
Speaker 1: a few decades ago. What made you go get the buffalo?
Speaker 6: Just start we try that, just give it a shot. Yeah,
Speaker 6: do you know you have to take those chances.
Speaker 1: Once again, the life lesson is get a buffalo or
Speaker 1: six cut bangs, text your crush because we're all gonna die.
Speaker 1: So they took a chance. They now have fifty two bison. Also,
Speaker 1: I felt very stupid because I've read and heard both
Speaker 1: Blackfeet or Blackfoot, and the name comes from the dark
Speaker 1: souls of these bison hunters moccasins, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to say it wrong. So I asked a very smart
Speaker 1: person a stupid question and it correct me. Is it Blackfoot,
Speaker 1: Indian Blackfoot, canac Blackfeet Nation? I want to make sure
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 6: Okay, all right, there is a Blackfoot confederacy, which is
Speaker 6: our black Feet tribe, the Blood tribe in Canada, and
Speaker 6: the Blackfoot tribe in Canada, and the Sarci tribe and
Speaker 6: one other tribe, but I don't remember what it is.
Speaker 6: They're all connected. That's the Blackfoot Confederacy, okay, But we
Speaker 6: are actually the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, and we're the
Speaker 6: only ones on this side of the line.
Speaker 1: And traditionally and historically, what has the Blackfeet relation to
Speaker 1: bison and buffalo been like?
Speaker 6: Historically that's what they lived on. They followed the buffalo,
Speaker 6: and then when and then when they became big things
Speaker 6: back east, like when their hides became really valuable back
Speaker 6: east for hats and overseas, then everybody went to killing buffalo.
Speaker 6: And that's basically how the buffalo a most died completely out.
Speaker 1: And it should also be noted that the mass slaughter
Speaker 1: of bison has been cited as part of the genocide
Speaker 1: of Indigenous people in North America, because killing off a
Speaker 1: major food source and a foundation to their way of
Speaker 1: life had irreparable and intentional impacts on not just the bison, obviously,
Speaker 1: but the people who have depended on them. And we
Speaker 1: talk more about that genocide in the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: Genocideology episode with doctor Dirk Moses. But before we talk
Speaker 1: about the brutal decline, the lumbering comeback, and their hopeful future,
Speaker 1: let's get some history down with archaeologist Ken and going
Speaker 1: backwards a little bit. What is a buffalo? What is
Speaker 1: a bison? What is the difference? What is this animal?
Speaker 1: What is a bison?
Speaker 2: I think the bison and buffalo, they're interchangeable terms. Okay,
Speaker 2: I think I'm I'm sure some taxonomous. I'll write you
Speaker 2: an email and say, yeah, I don't know what he's
Speaker 2: talking about, but but I refer to him as bison. Okay,
Speaker 2: so North American bison. The species is bison, bison?
Speaker 1: I read that, isn't it bison?
Speaker 2: It can be by yes, And the taxonomy of bison
Speaker 2: is still being debated.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, what are they thinking the bison derived from?
Speaker 1: Where are they what taxonomy is being debated, and where
Speaker 1: do they think these this species came from?
Speaker 2: Well, I think what's being debated is the the Holocene
Speaker 2: or the you know, the last ten twelve thousand years
Speaker 2: of bison history. After the so during the place of scene,
Speaker 2: we had a species of bison called Bison antiquis. Some
Speaker 2: people might say by some bison antiquus, but that was
Speaker 2: probably about a third larger than the modern bison are.
Speaker 2: The herd sizes probably weren't as big they're, their behavior
Speaker 2: might have been somewhat different than bison are today. But
Speaker 2: over probably once a glaciers retreated between about ten and
Speaker 2: seven eight nine or seven to five six thousand years ago,
Speaker 2: they went through this diminution, so they became smaller in
Speaker 2: size and became what we know is the modern bison bison,
Speaker 2: And we think a lot of that might have to
Speaker 2: do with just changes in the environment. The climate was
Speaker 2: drying out somewhat, the vegetation was changing, so it wasn't
Speaker 2: quite as nutritious. It's just there's a lot of theories
Speaker 2: that are being pushed around out there.
Speaker 1: So bison, bison, bison, plains of Buffalo. But there's another
Speaker 1: subspecies of North American bison, and it's bison bison a
Speaker 1: thabis guy I think, which were nearly extinct in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds until this small group of about two
Speaker 1: hundred were discovered in this remote reach of Alberta, Canada.
Speaker 1: And Boyd and Led told me that they're even bigger,
Speaker 1: I think twenty eight hundred pounds as opposed to the
Speaker 1: smaller two thousand pounds planes bison. So these wood bison
Speaker 1: are kind of like our Canadian neighbors. They're beautifully husky,
Speaker 1: and if you act like a hosier and get too close,
Speaker 1: the woodspison might gooria, but they'll probably say sorry.
Speaker 2: And then there was also some argument that the woods
Speaker 2: bison extended down and was present in the rocky mountains,
Speaker 2: and that was different than the plane spicon. Some people
Speaker 2: think have argued that they looked a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: Their skull structure was a little bit different. They tended
Speaker 2: to maybe have longer legs, lower humps, and that was
Speaker 2: an adaptation to deeper snows trying to forage in the
Speaker 2: winter time.
Speaker 1: Going back to bison history, where did they evolve from?
Speaker 1: What species do they evolve from? When did they get
Speaker 1: to North America? And how many were there? Give me
Speaker 1: a brief, give me a brief.
Speaker 2: Brief line, a brief, brief timeline. So bison originated in Eurasia,
Speaker 2: migrated to North America during periods of interglacial They've been
Speaker 2: here in North America probably summer twenty million years ago,
Speaker 2: in different.
Speaker 1: Forms twenty million years, twenty million years, and in a
Speaker 1: period of twenty to thirty years they were nearly extinguished
Speaker 1: from the continent and rendered extinct.
Speaker 2: One of the coolest bison species that was around is
Speaker 2: called Bison latifrons, and I was here during the Plesis scene,
Speaker 2: probably died out twelve fifteen thousand years ago, but had huge, huge,
Speaker 2: huge horns like ten feet long. Oh my gosh, greta horns. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just a monster.
Speaker 3: She's a bise mate.
Speaker 2: And then that became a stink and then we had
Speaker 2: you know, bison antiquis, which was probably a contemporary of latifrons,
Speaker 2: and then you know, and then monern bison. So that's
Speaker 2: a really dirty history. But yeah, bison latifrons are really
Speaker 2: cool too.
Speaker 1: So I just looked up bison ladder fronds and boy,
Speaker 1: how did be Jesus these horns? Oh god, they look
Speaker 1: like if a buffalo made a Melissafant Halloween costume out
Speaker 1: of like half a hula hoop. Oh my god, these
Speaker 1: a gore jess get it. Megafauna became extinct between twenty
Speaker 1: and thirty thousand years ago. But there, Luke ooh, And
Speaker 1: how far back does your research go when it comes
Speaker 1: to the history of bison in say, North America?
Speaker 2: Well, the history of bison in my research is kind
Speaker 2: of kind of dependent on preservation. We've worked on older
Speaker 2: sites up to ten thousand year old sites, but I
Speaker 2: haven't been lucky enough to find bison that old and
Speaker 2: the archaeological record. And a big part of that, I
Speaker 2: think is is this preservation issues. Yellowstone and the mountains
Speaker 2: in general are just not a great place or preservation.
Speaker 2: There's lots of soils tend to be acidic, they get
Speaker 2: turned over a lot. Here's a good term bioturbation, biolturbation,
Speaker 2: So it's trees that are turning up the soils, animals
Speaker 2: that live and burrow in the ground, or turning up
Speaker 2: the soils. So you have both chemical and mechanical breaking
Speaker 2: down of these of these bones. So we just they
Speaker 2: just don't preserve very well.
Speaker 1: Let's say that we're looking at a bison. Can you
Speaker 1: explain to me any of the pieces parts of the bison?
Speaker 1: I know that there are horns, there is a hump
Speaker 1: of some sort. How big is a bison? If I say,
Speaker 1: just beamed down to Earth from an outer planet. I'm
Speaker 1: a Martian and I'm like, what is this big free creature?
Speaker 2: So I'm about five to six on a good day,
Speaker 2: I think a good bull we would be looking at
Speaker 2: each other straight straight on. I mean I be looking
Speaker 2: at his forehead. Okay, so pretty good size to twelve
Speaker 2: hundred pounds a good sized male.
Speaker 1: What about females?
Speaker 2: Smaller females a little bit smaller Okay, yeah, probably eights.
Speaker 2: The hump is so they have these really big spinal
Speaker 2: processes that come off of the thoracic vertebrae and the
Speaker 2: hump is the the fat and the skin that goes
Speaker 2: over that. It stores a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: it's fat and energy in that in that hump. That's
Speaker 2: the part that hunter gatherers really like because that's where
Speaker 2: all your nutrition comes from. What's pretty cool they've got
Speaker 2: they've got beards.
Speaker 1: I have noticed that. Is that a thing or that?
Speaker 2: I don't know. They've been They've been hipsters for a
Speaker 2: long long time time.
Speaker 3: They're not hipsters.
Speaker 1: Side note, bison beard's kind of like a scarf on
Speaker 1: an airplane. Serve to insulate these critters in the snow.
Speaker 1: And get this, I just found out that their hair
Speaker 1: shoulder region it's a cape. So more evidence that these
Speaker 1: creatures are not only strong and powerful, but also just
Speaker 1: quietly flamboyant. So let's get back to Dan who describes
Speaker 1: a situation similar to the wood bison discovery in Canada.
Speaker 1: So in the late eighteen hundreds in Yellowstones Pelican Valley,
Speaker 1: something cool happened.
Speaker 3: Pelican Valley historically significant in the story of bison generally
Speaker 3: in the United States because it was there that the
Speaker 3: last while bison survived. Back in the very early twentieth century,
Speaker 3: in like nineteen oh six, nineteen twelve, they're only like
Speaker 3: a couple dozen bison left. Those are the last while bison,
Speaker 3: and they were hiding out in Pelican Valley. And the
Speaker 3: reason why they were hiding out back there is well,
Speaker 3: there weren't people, but also because it was geothermally active.
Speaker 3: We all know about the geysers and Old Faithful and
Speaker 3: all that. Well, there's a lot of other warm ground
Speaker 3: that melts the snow off in the winter time, and
Speaker 3: so these little pockets of warm ground that the bison
Speaker 3: we're using as refuge in the wintertime.
Speaker 1: For more on the super volcano that is Yellowstone Park,
Speaker 1: please see episode one all Chinology with just Phoenix. But yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: most of today's American bison are descended from those Pelican
Speaker 1: Valley survivors. Tell me a little bit about the bison
Speaker 1: population and where it has been in the last say,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years. What's happened to the bison population.
Speaker 3: Well, it's like the sea, it's just sort of receded
Speaker 3: and got really small. The tide went out with bison,
Speaker 3: and they, like I said earlier, they found refuge in
Speaker 3: places like Pelican Valley in the interior of Yellowstone. One
Speaker 3: of the most remote areas in the lower forty eight
Speaker 3: United States, especially back then in the early part of
Speaker 3: the twentieth century, and remarkably since then, we have more
Speaker 3: bison now in Yellowstone National Part than at any time
Speaker 3: since Europeans showed up. Granted it's not thirty million, but
Speaker 3: it is five thousand or so is about where we're
Speaker 3: at now. That's a massive turnaround, that's a massive cultural
Speaker 3: shift because you have to understand that, you know, bison
Speaker 3: were weaponized in a lot of ways that you know,
Speaker 3: they were being eliminated to basically, you know, drive Indians
Speaker 3: onto reservations. It was part of you know, the sort
Speaker 3: of colonization of the Western hemisphere unit you know, Western
Speaker 3: North America was taking out the bison. And so to
Speaker 3: bring those bison back is to sort of challenge some
Speaker 3: of those ideas, those sort of colonial attitudes. That also
Speaker 3: holds with the wolf as well. And so, yeah, these
Speaker 3: numbers aren't huge, but they're significant nonetheless, and I think
Speaker 3: that that's an important sort of cultural process as well
Speaker 3: as it is a process of sort of conservation on
Speaker 3: a biological process.
Speaker 1: Ken the geobiologist archaeologist. If bison are on the move,
Speaker 1: a lot like equally enigmatic hardcore Dave Matthews fans. And
Speaker 1: now what is there? What's their yearly life cycle?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Did they tend to migrate in certain times of the year.
Speaker 1: Do they go from the north to the south? Do
Speaker 1: they look for where are they moving around?
Speaker 2: I think well, the males they migrate around a lot,
Speaker 2: and they seem to have a pretty big range. And
Speaker 2: the females that they tend to stay in calcaf groups
Speaker 2: for most of the year, and a lot of the
Speaker 2: younger males probably stay stay with the herds those calcaf
Speaker 2: groups for a couple of years. And the fall is
Speaker 2: when you have the rut because I'm rot so they
Speaker 2: all all the males come back from the high country
Speaker 2: and you know, beat on each other for selection of females.
Speaker 2: The rut is pretty pretty exciting to watch. They're pushing
Speaker 2: around each other and snorting and trying to see who's
Speaker 2: going to be the biggest, baddest one out there that
Speaker 2: gets all the all the cows.
Speaker 1: Is that how that works? Is there is there an
Speaker 1: alpha bison.
Speaker 2: There's usually several alpha bison that yeah, that have access
Speaker 2: to the females the cows.
Speaker 1: Is that common in an ungulate group.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, I think so elk are pretty interesting. They
Speaker 2: gather up what's known as a harem. So ten twelve
Speaker 2: cows get elk cows get wow, get one guy wow.
Speaker 1: So it's like sister wives a little. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess we are in Utah. You know, a quick aside
Speaker 1: before you tell me that I'm making generalizations, I'm just
Speaker 1: honestly sharing data. I looked it up and there are
Speaker 1: an estimated thirty thousand folks in polygamous marriages in Utah,
Speaker 1: which is six times the popular of wild bison in America.
Speaker 1: Now ps, I don't know or really care how they
Speaker 1: counted the polygamous people. It's not in my business. But
Speaker 1: what about the bison? I asked Dan? If they have
Speaker 1: microchips in them? Or is there like a census taker
Speaker 1: for Buffalo, someone with snowshoes and a clipboard just knock knock,
Speaker 1: knocking on bison's doors. Is there an exact number? Is
Speaker 1: there a spreadsheet that has them all kind of cataloged?
Speaker 1: Are they tagged?
Speaker 3: How do you keep track counting with aircraft?
Speaker 1: Really? How does that work?
Speaker 3: They just get into a small day. Being park service
Speaker 3: biologist will get into a small fixing aircraft, a supercub.
Speaker 3: They will fly certain routes through the park where bison
Speaker 3: are known to range, and they just count them up,
Speaker 3: so it's a total count, it's a census. And they
Speaker 3: do that at least once a year. Sometimes they do
Speaker 3: it multiple times.
Speaker 1: And do they just film it and then later look
Speaker 1: at the footage.
Speaker 3: No, they'll count them as they go.
Speaker 1: Theyeah, that seems so easy to lose track, But they're
Speaker 1: so big they're actually easy to count.
Speaker 3: I think you kind to say, like elk really well, yeah,
Speaker 3: bison are darker elk or lighter, Okay, And in the
Speaker 3: bison tend to be more out in the open. Some
Speaker 3: of the elk will be in the trees.
Speaker 1: So counting sheep is out. Counting bison's where it's at,
Speaker 1: I guess I think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I had to choose, I would count bison.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think that bison biologists dream of bison? Do
Speaker 1: you dream of bison sometimes? What kind of bison dreams
Speaker 1: do you have?
Speaker 3: I can't remember if any off the top of my head,
Speaker 3: but I have definitely have had dreams, especially when I'm
Speaker 3: in the field.
Speaker 1: Real quick, what does it mean if you dream of
Speaker 1: buffalo well, according to sleep culture dot com, which likely
Speaker 1: employees kind hearted interns to make up omens for like
Speaker 1: every noun in the dictionary, seeing a buffalo in a
Speaker 1: dream is a symbol of survival and abundance. It means
Speaker 1: that you should pay attention to the path you're following
Speaker 1: in your life. Sure also family side notes. So Boyd
Speaker 1: and Lila and my cousins Crystal and James and Jamie
Speaker 1: bring a huge traditional tepee to our reunions. And the
Speaker 1: first year I ever got to sleep in it, they
Speaker 1: told me to pay attention to my dreams because in
Speaker 1: a tepee they could have certain significance. And in the
Speaker 1: morning I recalled I had a dream about seeing Don
Speaker 1: Johnson from Miami Vice at Costco. It was such a bummer.
Speaker 1: So maybe it just doesn't work on silly white ladies.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Being in Yellowstone and seeing how tourists think that they
Speaker 2: are like cows and can go up to them and
Speaker 2: take their picture, and I think that's a that's a
Speaker 2: big myth, is that somehow Yellowstone is this is this
Speaker 2: petting zoo out there, and and you know, these are
Speaker 2: big wild animals and they are fairly tolerant. I think
Speaker 2: of people are a lot more tolerant than I would
Speaker 2: be if I was them and somebody who was coming
Speaker 2: up and snapping pictures. So I think I think that's
Speaker 2: that's kind of an interesting misconception about wild wild animals,
Speaker 2: and especially wild animals and Yellowstone. The miss about bison,
Speaker 2: I think I think maybe a big thing for people
Speaker 2: to understand is how pervasive they were on the landscape
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years ago, especially on the Great Planes.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, if you living in California or
Speaker 2: New York, you probably didn't see a lot of bison,
Speaker 2: but out on the Great Planes, they're they're amazingly prevalent
Speaker 2: part of the ecosystem. And to have them disappear in
Speaker 2: such a short period of time, I think that's really
Speaker 2: hard for people to understand. It's hard for me to
Speaker 2: understand how you can go from thirty million bison, if
Speaker 2: you know, if you want to use that number people,
Speaker 2: there's lots of different estimates on how many bison we're
Speaker 2: out on the Great Planes and then within twenty thirty
Speaker 2: year peer they're gone, right, you know, And how we
Speaker 2: can we can do that and the technology at that
Speaker 2: time It wasn't like we're out there the spraying them
Speaker 2: with guns, gunships. These people with single shot rifles going
Speaker 2: out and they and they they completely caused a collapse
Speaker 2: of amazing population animals.
Speaker 1: How did that happen over twenty or thirty years.
Speaker 2: Well, that's I think that's hard to understand, but I
Speaker 2: think a big part of it was just the trade
Speaker 2: and bison robes, and there was this great demand in
Speaker 2: the eighteen sixties and seventies for bison rose, and you know,
Speaker 2: people were going out there, they were they were killing them,
Speaker 2: and I think they were they were disrupting herds. They
Speaker 2: were just taking the hides. They weren't wasn't like they
Speaker 2: were using them for food or anything. And and I
Speaker 2: think that had a great disruption of the breeding process,
Speaker 2: and the populations just just crashed. I think that's a
Speaker 2: pretty indisputable thesis about about how it all happened. It
Speaker 2: was and it's I think it's difficult to imagine. But
Speaker 2: I think once you start disrupting those herds, because they
Speaker 2: were easy to kill and people hunters got pretty close
Speaker 2: to them and could shoot them, and the bison didn't
Speaker 2: necessarily scatter very quickly, and then once you start disrupting
Speaker 2: those those herd structures and scattering bulls and cows, I
Speaker 2: think it's I think it's easy for the system to crash.
Speaker 2: They weren't a big animal to flee. I mean, they
Speaker 2: really didn't have any predators. Humans are probably bison's biggest predators,
Speaker 2: and I think that's they you know, they humans were
Speaker 2: the only predator there and they so they they were
Speaker 2: the biggest thing out there. They didn't need to fear anything.
Speaker 2: And they are big enough herds that they could they
Speaker 2: could fend off wolves, their other biggest predator. They didn't
Speaker 2: need to flee. They're not like antelope. Antelope, you know,
Speaker 2: as soon as they see something you can't get within
Speaker 2: one hundred yards of an antelope and it's gone. Yeah, bison,
Speaker 2: they were the biggest things out there, so they didn't
Speaker 2: have I have to flee.
Speaker 1: And now how do you do you work also with
Speaker 1: indigenous groups and anthropologists and other archaeologists to learn more
Speaker 1: about the relation between hunter gatherers in what's now in
Speaker 1: North America and in a prominent food source, which is bison.
Speaker 1: Does that figure in a lot to your work?
Speaker 2: And yeah, most most of the work that we do
Speaker 2: is either on public lands or funded by by public dollars,
Speaker 2: and we do consult with tribes in Yellowstone. Typically we
Speaker 2: consult with the Shoshoni Bannock on the Fort Hall Reservation
Speaker 2: and also the Eastern Shoshone that are over on the
Speaker 2: Wind River Reservation, and they're kept a prize of our
Speaker 2: work and are certainly able to come and visit and
Speaker 2: comment on it, and we try and do more and
Speaker 2: more of that that consultation process. When I was working
Speaker 2: up in Yellowstone, I worked a lot with an elder
Speaker 2: known who since passed away, him and wise, and he
Speaker 2: gave us a lot of information about about the Shoshone
Speaker 2: and their life ways, and so that was a pretty
Speaker 2: interesting and a nice relationship.
Speaker 1: Ken told me that he's been helping out using his
Speaker 1: archaeological techniques to understand the events and the landscape of
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixty three Bear River massacre that killed possibly
Speaker 1: hundreds of members of the Shoshone tribe in a place
Speaker 1: that's now South Idaho, near a town called Preston, And
Speaker 1: there's a small memorial there now, but the tribe is
Speaker 1: trying to raise funds for an interpretive center to memorialize
Speaker 1: what had happened on that site. Does that ever get
Speaker 1: emotional for you?
Speaker 2: Working with it at the Bear River Massacre site is
Speaker 2: incredibly emotional, just because it was a horrible event and
Speaker 2: no way, shape or form could ever be justified. And
Speaker 2: seeing people that are too generations removed from the survivors
Speaker 2: of that and them telling their story, Yeah, it's hard
Speaker 2: not to be emotional if yeah, you wouldn't be a
Speaker 2: human if you're not. So yeah, that does get to
Speaker 2: be pretty emotional. My wife Molly and I also worked
Speaker 2: on the Sand Creek Massacre site, and we're sitting with
Speaker 2: a lot of descendants of the Sand Creek Massacre and
Speaker 2: talking with them and seeing how close that is to
Speaker 2: them still, I mean, you know, they get very emotional
Speaker 2: and it's you know, it's not my.
Speaker 1: History, and how do indigenous communities keep that history alive?
Speaker 1: The Inner Tribal Buffalo Council ITBC is this collection of
Speaker 1: sixty nine tribes from nineteen different states, and they work
Speaker 1: on programs to return buffalo to tribal lands, but hyper
Speaker 1: locally in their own community. Boyd and Lilah themselves donated
Speaker 1: one of their own prized buffalo. I know that in
Speaker 1: term of giving back to the community. Like you guys
Speaker 1: donated a buffalo a year or so ago to one
Speaker 1: of the Browning schools to kind of learn how the
Speaker 1: buffalo is used in traditional food and other things. What
Speaker 1: was that? Like? What prompted that?
Speaker 5: Oh, it was the Indian studies class the high school.
Speaker 7: They wanted to get a hands on experience and show
Speaker 7: everybody what how they originally butchered buffalo, what all parts took.
Speaker 1: Also, you may be too embarrassed to ask is it
Speaker 1: Indian or Native American? And there are several opinions on
Speaker 1: words like Indian versus Indigenous, versus Native versus First Nations,
Speaker 1: and different people have different preferences depending on the era
Speaker 1: and the region. This deserves its own whole episode and
Speaker 1: that is in the works. So if you are Native,
Speaker 1: thank you for any emotional labor that you have spent
Speaker 1: educating others. And I highly recommend podcasts like all my
Speaker 1: relationship is so good and following indigenous folks from all
Speaker 1: over the world on social media. We all have so
Speaker 1: much listening and so much learning to do. And that's okay.
Speaker 1: Learning is exciting. Now back to Dan, I asked about
Speaker 1: the heritage of the bison and the introduced cattle. What's
Speaker 1: happening there? What is a wild bison versus what is
Speaker 1: a bison that has now domesticated bovine DNA? And do
Speaker 1: people care? What where are we at with that?
Speaker 3: I was at a meeting in Bozeman, Montana a few
Speaker 3: years ago. National Academy of Sciences was doing a review
Speaker 3: on brucellosis and they had the chair of the Inner
Speaker 3: Tribal Bison Cooperative give a talk, and one of the
Speaker 3: things he said that struck me was that, you know,
Speaker 3: from his point of view, it doesn't really make much
Speaker 3: of a difference if this bison has got you know,
Speaker 3: if it's eighty percent bison and twenty percent you know
Speaker 3: hereford or five percent, you know, like it's a bison.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, from his point of view, this
Speaker 3: is a bison. And I think he was speaking too,
Speaker 3: from sort of a cultural point of view, because there's
Speaker 3: a lot of you know, mixing among human populations, and
Speaker 3: you know, Native Americans have to deal with this in
Speaker 3: terms of blood quantum to prove, you know, that they
Speaker 3: belong to a certain tribe and a certain reservation and
Speaker 3: so forth, and there's a lot of controversy around that
Speaker 3: and he was sort of referring to that in the
Speaker 3: context of what percent of bison do you need in
Speaker 3: order to be a bison? And I think he was saying,
Speaker 3: you know what, that's kind of nonsense, right, It's all
Speaker 3: a bunch of hogwash. What is a bison is in
Speaker 3: some ways in the eye of the beholder, I think,
Speaker 3: and I think that's how I'd answer that question.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what about raising bison. I've looked it up,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that bison babies are cute to
Speaker 1: the point that it is enraging. They are like shaggy muppets.
Speaker 1: It's infuriating. My heart hurts. I want to hug them.
Speaker 1: Any idea where we're at in terms of bison as
Speaker 1: a livestock commodity, Like, where is that industry going to
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 4: Ted?
Speaker 3: That's what he does. Yeah, go to you can go
Speaker 3: to Ted's grill and order yourself up a bison steak.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's he's and this is this is not
Speaker 3: a secret. That's part of what he's been doing for
Speaker 3: a number of years. He's been growing bison on a
Speaker 3: number of his properties and using that bison and selling
Speaker 3: it in his restaurants. Ted's grill, I think is what
Speaker 3: it's called.
Speaker 1: Do you eat bison?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not like, oh sorry, no.
Speaker 3: No, bison are super tasty, Oh bison?
Speaker 1: But are raising them better for the planet than cows?
Speaker 1: Some ecologists argue yes, because their poops and their hoofs
Speaker 1: have evolved along with the planes, and unlike namby Pamba cows,
Speaker 1: bison typically don't need winter shelter, which saves on energy costs,
Speaker 1: and bison meat also tends to be leaner meat. Boyd
Speaker 1: and Lila supply a few local restaurants and sell steak
Speaker 1: to private buyers, but said not all Bisenbergers are created equal,
Speaker 1: and some commercial ones you might find in chain restaurants
Speaker 1: might be made from older animals and might be higher.
Speaker 1: In fact, I asked how they were in general to
Speaker 1: raise though, how is it different from raising cows.
Speaker 6: They're a lot smarter really?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're independent their wildlife.
Speaker 1: Do they kind of communicate with each other more than
Speaker 1: cows do? Are they more social or less social?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: Are they equal?
Speaker 4: Way? More social?
Speaker 7: Yeah, they run around, They run around in one little pack.
Speaker 1: What kind of noises do buffalo make?
Speaker 6: Grunts?
Speaker 1: The grunt?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they kind of like shit. Kind of like pigs.
Speaker 6: Real, yeah, kind of like pigs. That's kind of what
Speaker 6: they sound like.
Speaker 1: Ps. Thank you YouTuber Jim Dass who posted this nine
Speaker 1: second video of a male by and sticking his tongue
Speaker 1: out like it was a fraternity burping contest and just
Speaker 1: letting the grunts rip. When when do they have occasion
Speaker 1: to grunt? Do they do when they're happy or when
Speaker 1: they're pissed off or what?
Speaker 7: When they're communicating with each other and mostly when they're
Speaker 7: in a little bunch there. Yeah, they talked to each
Speaker 7: other that way.
Speaker 1: Do they have any favorite treats? Are they like, yes,
Speaker 1: it's apple season? Or is it just like they eat grass?
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 6: They love crab, It's absolutely love.
Speaker 1: Do they grunt each other? Like, yo, come and get
Speaker 1: these man?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Buffalo going batshit on crab apples is such a joy
Speaker 1: to imagine. I would like to be their friends. And
Speaker 1: I asked Dan if bison are social, mostly because I
Speaker 1: would like to know if it will be my friends.
Speaker 3: So they're extremely social bison are they?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 3: They they aggregate together and they'll help each other. They're
Speaker 3: not like elk, which sort of flee in every direction.
Speaker 3: It's sort of every man for himself. Generally, bison are
Speaker 3: very cooperative in how they defend themselves, but when there's
Speaker 3: deep snow, that defense breaks down and it becomes every
Speaker 3: man for himself.
Speaker 1: We're a woman side note, of course, or non binary bison.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're out there. I was recently reading American
Speaker 1: Indian Thought, which is an Anne Waters anthology of Native writers,
Speaker 1: and I came across this passage by Alice Kehoe, which
Speaker 1: happens to relate to the Blackfoot Confederacy. Alice writes, what
Speaker 1: really matters to a Blackfoot is autonomy. If a person
Speaker 1: competently engages in work or behavior ordinarily the domain of
Speaker 1: people of the other sex or another species, onlookers assume
Speaker 1: the person has been blessed. Anyway, back to bison, we
Speaker 1: need more, I think right, let's ask an expert, and
Speaker 1: where are we going in the future in terms of
Speaker 1: bison conservation and growing the numbers? What do you say
Speaker 1: you kind of coming up around the bend.
Speaker 3: Well, in my experience in the Greater Yellowstone, I would
Speaker 3: say we're running up against limits just in the you know,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five years that I've been working up There
Speaker 3: areas that used to be range land have houses on
Speaker 3: them now, So it isn't just an issue of livestock
Speaker 3: grazing on the borders of the park. You know, it's pavement,
Speaker 3: it's houses, it's fences, it's people, swing sets, that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. It's encroaching, and there doesn't really seem to
Speaker 3: be any end of that. And so bison and I
Speaker 3: think wildlife in particular, are increasingly hemmed in in the
Speaker 3: Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. On the other hand, you've got initiatives
Speaker 3: like out in eastern Montana with the American Prairie Foundation,
Speaker 3: where there cobbling together private lands, you know, buying up
Speaker 3: lands from willing sellers. These lands are adjacent to public lands,
Speaker 3: and they're trying to recreate the kind of short grass
Speaker 3: prairie that we had at the time of you know,
Speaker 3: European conquests basically out there, so taking cornfields and alfalfa
Speaker 3: fields and converting those back into prairie, which is not
Speaker 3: an easy thing to do. By the way, I also
Speaker 3: think a big part of the future of bison is
Speaker 3: on Native American reservations, So increasingly you see tribes building
Speaker 3: up their herds on their lands under their management, and
Speaker 3: I think that's a big part of the bison story
Speaker 3: going forward as well.
Speaker 1: Morden Lila echoed, Ada, is there anything like population wise
Speaker 1: of the plains Buffalo that y'all would like to see
Speaker 1: happen as people who have land and have livestock? Would
Speaker 1: you like to see the population right again? Too closer
Speaker 1: to what it used to be?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: How do you guys feel about like how many buffalo
Speaker 1: should there be on the planes?
Speaker 4: Not one hundred million? Yeah, they would overrun.
Speaker 7: They would overrun in Nebraska and Kansas, Missouri, and there
Speaker 7: wouldn't be any cornfields.
Speaker 4: There wouldn't be any wheat fields.
Speaker 5: You know, there's they have a place, but it's proportionately Okay.
Speaker 1: I know futurology was last week, but I asked Dan
Speaker 1: about what might be in store for our buffalo friends.
Speaker 1: What is the aim? What's the goal in terms of
Speaker 1: numbers of bison? What can the continent support given what
Speaker 1: we've maybe done to the land in terms of agriculture, and.
Speaker 3: And well, it's completely in our hands. Were our hands
Speaker 3: being sort of you know American society. If we want
Speaker 3: more bison, we can have more bison. There are ways
Speaker 3: of doing that. Likewise with other wildlife, the question is
Speaker 3: whether or not we're willing to make the choices in
Speaker 3: the trade offs in order to do that. So, for example,
Speaker 3: in Northern Yellowstone, very few bison are permitted outside the
Speaker 3: park because they interfere with agriculture. Not only just conflicts
Speaker 3: in terms of you know, raiding hayfields and busting down fences,
Speaker 3: but you know they also carry diseases, both elk and
Speaker 3: bisay and carry brucellosis.
Speaker 1: Okay, side note. Brucellosis is caused by bacteria, and in humans,
Speaker 1: it's most commonly picked up by eating unpasteurized milk or
Speaker 1: soft squishy cheeses like a goat cheese. But who is
Speaker 1: Bruce and why did someone name a disease after him? Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out it's named after David Bruce, an Australian
Speaker 1: born microbiologist who worked on investigating the disease right around
Speaker 1: the time I guess folks were running around North America
Speaker 1: killing all the bison. Also, David Bruce did not have brucellosis,
Speaker 1: but he did perish and fall from life's supple grasp
Speaker 1: just four days after his wife at her memorial service.
Speaker 1: He died at her memorial service, which is either really
Speaker 1: sweet or incredibly obnoxious. But I hope to Heaven that
Speaker 1: the funeral director just gave that poor family an impromptu
Speaker 1: Bogo buy one, get one discount. Okay, Back to brucellosis.
Speaker 3: And if a domestic cow contracts this disease, they're at
Speaker 3: risk of a spontaneous abortion. There's a massive economic cost
Speaker 3: to having livestock infected with bison because it means that
Speaker 3: you can't move your livestock out of state, meaning that
Speaker 3: you can't sell them across the state lines because other
Speaker 3: states don't want to get infected with brucellosis. And so
Speaker 3: it's a major economic issue having these species that carry
Speaker 3: that disease to range far and wide. And so you know,
Speaker 3: all you know, all these decisions about life management, these
Speaker 3: are all social decisions. You know, these aren't necessarily biological
Speaker 3: processes exclusively. They're very much social and cultural processes. And
Speaker 3: and you know, a lot a lot of these decisions
Speaker 3: get made in you know, public meetings in various different
Speaker 3: situations with different agencies, state, local, federal. And so when
Speaker 3: you say, well, how many bison could we have, well,
Speaker 3: it really sort of depends on sort of the social
Speaker 3: economic you know, caring capacity, you know, how much are
Speaker 3: people willing to tolerate? We get a bison in Cash Valley,
Speaker 3: if you know, all the farmers that are graising cows
Speaker 3: or growing corn decided they wanted to raise bison. I
Speaker 3: mean that's possible. You have private landowners in the Plane
Speaker 3: States elsewhere in the Rockies that are that are doing
Speaker 3: just that. They are raising bison for profit. They're trying
Speaker 3: to make money off of it, you know. So so
Speaker 3: there is a model for doing that. But are those
Speaker 3: you know, those livestock or they wild bison, and those
Speaker 3: are social decisions, and so that those need to be
Speaker 3: Those are the kinds of conversations we need to have,
Speaker 3: knowing that upfront that these are sort of you know,
Speaker 3: cultural discussions that we're having social economic discussions and not
Speaker 3: so much biology. Right, So what we really need to
Speaker 3: be talking to you is a sociologists and economists and psychologists.
Speaker 1: You probably sociologists. I have not done an episode on
Speaker 1: you yet, but I will. Any economists. I am so sorry,
Speaker 1: but you are not econologists. Hey, all those in favor
Speaker 1: of some spin off shows maybe anologies network you can
Speaker 1: tweet at me. Okay, But first let's bust some more myths.
Speaker 1: What about any myths or any flim flam that you
Speaker 1: would debunk that you see people having a there's so
Speaker 1: much flin flam, I know, debunk it. You got the
Speaker 1: stage here.
Speaker 3: About bison specifically, Well, yeah, that I would just sort
Speaker 3: of echo Ken's point that they're not farm animals. And
Speaker 3: so if you're going to Yellowstone in the summer to
Speaker 3: see bison, don't underestimate how quick they can be to
Speaker 3: you know, kick you, pounce on you, stomp on you,
Speaker 3: and hurt you. I will cut you, keep your distance.
Speaker 3: Other myths about bison. Here's a big myth, and that
Speaker 3: is that they are a major source of brucellosis. That's
Speaker 3: a massive myth that needs to be debunked. That is
Speaker 3: has direct bearing on their conservation outlook and how people
Speaker 3: help people perceive them, how the livestock industry perceives them.
Speaker 3: To the best of my knowledge, there has not been
Speaker 3: any instance of bison infecting livestock cows outside of Yellowstone,
Speaker 3: and that all those transmissions have involved elk that have
Speaker 3: been infected with brucellosis. So bison can get a bad wrap.
Speaker 3: So there's still a lot of kaya would say sort
Speaker 3: of bias culturally against bison in the livestock community there
Speaker 3: Neil Bisoner looked at as competitors and threats.
Speaker 1: Boyd and Lila echoed that, and they said that it's
Speaker 1: a big limiting factor in growing bison numbers via ranching.
Speaker 4: They're they're never going to populate like beef because there's
Speaker 4: too many myths out there.
Speaker 7: For one thing is brucellosis is a big scare and
Speaker 7: it has nothing to do with to me, but like
Speaker 7: even people here on this reservation don't eat buffalo because
Speaker 7: they're afraid of this brucellosis stuff.
Speaker 1: Really really, so that's a big that's some flim flam
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really is. In our our food program has
Speaker 4: buffalo meat.
Speaker 7: They have buffalo meat that they ration out, but they
Speaker 7: have they have trouble getting people to take it.
Speaker 1: Really, that's kind of that's surprising given that buffalo is
Speaker 1: such a part of Blackfeet history. Is it ever weird
Speaker 1: to you that it's difficult to get over the myths?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Yea, it is. I mean because they've.
Speaker 7: Spread these rumors, I don't you know, I don't know
Speaker 7: for how many one hundred years or whatever.
Speaker 5: You know, and so it's it's, uh, it's kind of
Speaker 5: frustrating that jeez.
Speaker 6: Maybies won't even really try try it.
Speaker 1: And is there is there anything any kind of causes
Speaker 1: or any charities that are helping bison or helping people
Speaker 1: maybe relate to bison or helping like boyd, how you
Speaker 1: guys donated a buffalo to a school anything like that
Speaker 1: that is doing good stuff that you guys would want
Speaker 1: to shout out or have like a donation go to
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: The they do have several buffalo coalitions.
Speaker 7: One in North Dakota and one in South Dakota and
Speaker 7: then one several Indian tribes are all in foot buffalo
Speaker 7: in different places. When if somebody in New Mexico want buffalo,
Speaker 7: they can get buffalo from the tribal coalition.
Speaker 4: So, I mean there's lots of opportunities in buffalo.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, I found one in this week's The
Speaker 1: nation goes to the Intertribal Buffalo Council, whose mission is
Speaker 1: to restore bison on tribal lands for cultural and spiritual
Speaker 1: enhancement and preservation. So the ITBC coordinates education and training
Speaker 1: programs and the transfer of surplus buffalo from national parks
Speaker 1: to tribal lands and works with their partners including National
Speaker 1: Bison Association, the National Park Service, the US Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and more. So you
Speaker 1: can find out more about them at ITBC Buffalo Nation
Speaker 1: dot org. And that donation was made possible by sponsors
Speaker 1: of the show, so you may hear about them now. Okay, So, Ken,
Speaker 1: if you'll remember, gave us the history of bison, and
Speaker 1: we haven't heard from him in a bit, so let's
Speaker 1: ask him stuff. Can I ask you some questions from listeners?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, they might be they might be stupid you
Speaker 1: okay with that? Yep, we may have gone over a
Speaker 1: little bit of this too. But John Worcester wants to
Speaker 1: know how many bison were around during their peak population period?
Speaker 1: Do you think thirty million?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think yeah. I think thirty million is a good number.
Speaker 1: And how long ago was that?
Speaker 2: Eighteen sixties? They are probably at their peak eighteen fifties,
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties, thirty.
Speaker 1: Million me and Dingman says, for a very long time,
Speaker 1: I thought the American bison was extinct, that the good
Speaker 1: old boys back in the railroad days had hunted them
Speaker 1: to extinction. Fast forward to me being today years old,
Speaker 1: and I still don't know what the story is. So
Speaker 1: they are not extinct. This is the same species from
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. It's not a hybrid species or a
Speaker 1: let's see a bunch of people. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: their names as fast as I can. Ana Thompson, Alison Turry,
Speaker 1: Lacy j Shure, Sydney Brown, Kelly Brockington, Jessica Bailey, ashra
Speaker 1: Olhaktar all kind of want to know. And Sebastian ostra Brink,
Speaker 1: I want to know how related are American bison and
Speaker 1: European bison?
Speaker 3: Like what is there?
Speaker 1: Essentially their their closest. I know, you're like, where are
Speaker 1: they in terms of the musk ow ox and water buffalo.
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't realize it was a European bison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah bison. Let's play some bonassas. Is the
Speaker 2: European bison a little bit smaller? Mostly it seems like
Speaker 2: it was adapted to woodlands. Okay, probably not nearly as prevalent,
Speaker 2: but probably just as good to eat. They show up
Speaker 2: in the archaeological record, so they're all there. They're all
Speaker 2: bow vines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, okay. So side note, an ungulate is an
Speaker 1: animal that has hooves, and a bovine is a type
Speaker 1: of ungulate that includes cattle and African buffalo and yax
Speaker 1: and water buffalo and bison, and the bison, like cows,
Speaker 1: are also ruminants, which means it chews its food and
Speaker 1: then kind of gags it back in its mouth and
Speaker 1: enjoys an encore meal of it. And I dare you
Speaker 1: to try that during the salad course at your next
Speaker 1: business dinner. Just do it so gross, soballer. A bunch
Speaker 1: of people had questions about their fur. Stephanie Rowerties, Bonnie Fairbanks,
Speaker 1: jen Athanos. They want to know, oh, collect airs. They
Speaker 1: want to know why do they have so much hair
Speaker 1: and fur? And what makes the hair so good at
Speaker 1: insulating them? And was that was that helpful during colder periods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have really thick, dense fur that they that
Speaker 2: they grow throughout the years. They're fat, Yeah, it's they're
Speaker 2: they're they're well adapted to cold temperatures that you know,
Speaker 2: it gets twenty thirty below in Yellowstone and up into
Speaker 2: Canada and these animals are out there and it's and
Speaker 2: what really I think is is really amazing to see
Speaker 2: is in the middle of the winter, they have snow
Speaker 2: on their backs, and the snow is not melting because
Speaker 2: of the insulation, so they're not losing a lot of
Speaker 2: heat that way. So they're well insulated and well adapted
Speaker 2: to that really extreme environments. And they you know, they
Speaker 2: live in in environments that go from minus thirty to
Speaker 2: over one hundred degrees, So they're credibly well adapted to
Speaker 2: North American.
Speaker 1: Extremes and they can handle one hundred degree weather because
Speaker 1: again the insulation, I.
Speaker 2: Think they well, they they lose a lot of their fur.
Speaker 2: And look at the difference between a bison in the
Speaker 2: winter and a pison the summer. There they don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of for a left on them in the summertime.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it just sheds off. And yeah, just by by,
Speaker 1: I wonder there's any application for that. Just go around
Speaker 1: collecting bison firm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go up there and look for it.
Speaker 1: So while that fur protects them from the elements. And
Speaker 1: I asked Boyd and Lila about it, having seen it
Speaker 1: firsthand half the year where it can get to negative
Speaker 1: fifty degrees fahrenheit. Also just super syde note just this
Speaker 1: past week, my dad, which is your granddad, just told
Speaker 1: us a story about growing up in Montana walking to
Speaker 1: school a mile and a half each way in snowy
Speaker 1: negative seventy degree weather, and pop, I am so sorry.
Speaker 1: I live in LA and I use a space heater
Speaker 1: when it dips below seventy. I just do not possess
Speaker 1: the Montana vigor of the bison. How do they do
Speaker 1: in the snow?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How cold does it get up in Brownie?
Speaker 6: Snow doesn't bother them at all?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, cold, cold doesn't bother me.
Speaker 5: There's the kind of the opposite of cows.
Speaker 7: Buffalo looks into the wind, into the storm and the
Speaker 7: counters are back.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 5: They really do?
Speaker 4: I mean they're totally different than the stores.
Speaker 1: And then what does their fur feel like? Because I've
Speaker 1: gotten a chance to sleep, and obviously like fuel your
Speaker 1: buffalo hide because we have one, But how would you
Speaker 1: describe their their hide and their.
Speaker 4: Fur kind of wooly?
Speaker 7: They have a nice fur, but they're more wooly than
Speaker 7: it's not just hair, it's.
Speaker 4: More of a cross between hair and wold.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that story when we were up at
Speaker 1: the homestead and you guys had the tepee up and
Speaker 1: it was me and my parents sleeping in it. So
Speaker 1: we're sleeping in the teepee and the planes winds are flapping,
Speaker 1: the smoke flaps and you can see the stars, you know,
Speaker 1: through the top of the teepee, and my parents are
Speaker 1: sleeping and they're, you know, to keep warm, They're sleeping
Speaker 1: on one of your buffalo hides. And then we go
Speaker 1: to sleep in. About five minutes later, I just hear
Speaker 1: my dad say to my mom, oh, I thought I
Speaker 1: was betting your hair, but he was a buffalo. Because
Speaker 1: my mom and I have such curly hair, my dad
Speaker 1: mis took the buffalo hide for my mom's curly hair.
Speaker 6: Well, if he ever gets lonesome, now you know what,
Speaker 6: I'm giving a piece of buffalo.
Speaker 1: But every time I have to go flat iron my hair,
Speaker 1: I always think it's a lot like a buffalo.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 1: If I want a haircut, though, I can't roll around
Speaker 1: like a bison until it just falls off. It's pretty
Speaker 1: damaged actually, so I probably couldn't.
Speaker 2: So they roll around and yeah.
Speaker 1: And naturally full off is just wallowing. Yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: sense because someone asked why they wallow, and I thought
Speaker 1: they just meant, like in disposition that they were kind
Speaker 1: of emo. So I thought they just seemed like an
Speaker 1: eore and I was like, that's rude. But okay, so
Speaker 1: wallowing is an actual verb, but it relates to behavior.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Some people asked Melissa Houston and Mike
Speaker 1: Melschuer asked about the roaming and why they roam. Also,
Speaker 1: Mike Melsheer wanted to know how do buffalo manage their
Speaker 1: cell phone bills with all the roaming charges. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a serious question, but yeah, why why did
Speaker 1: they roam? Why were they on the move so much?
Speaker 1: And did the planes make that easy because it wasn't mountainous.
Speaker 2: Well, they're they're moving to find food, so they're they're
Speaker 2: constantly looking for good nutritious grasses to you, So that's
Speaker 2: why they're constantly on the move.
Speaker 6: Shopping.
Speaker 1: So they've already eaten that patch and now they're just
Speaker 1: keep going yep.
Speaker 6: Oh god.
Speaker 1: It kind of like really big furry locusts.
Speaker 3: But you, yeah, that makes sense. Very big locus, huge locus.
Speaker 3: Let's see, more cuddly than locus.
Speaker 1: So I think I think they're more cutly. I think
Speaker 1: they would probably pick to differ. They're like no 'or not,
Speaker 1: don't touch me? Okay, So side note. The excellent science
Speaker 1: writer and Young published a piece in the Atlantic a
Speaker 1: few months back titled What America Lost When it Lost
Speaker 1: the Bison, and it was about bisons surfing a green
Speaker 1: wave of new shoots and grasses to eat, and researchers
Speaker 1: recently discovered that the bison's grazing changes the landscape and
Speaker 1: young rites. In areas where bison grays, plants contain fifty
Speaker 1: to ninety percent more nutrients by the end of the summer.
Speaker 1: This not only provides extra nourishment for other grazers, but
Speaker 1: prolongs the growing season of the plants themselves. Yong continues,
Speaker 1: when we lose animals, we also lose everything those animals do.
Speaker 1: When bison are exterminated, springtime changes in ways we still
Speaker 1: don't fully understand at y'all so good, okay, other things
Speaker 1: you don't understand. But as always, Mackenzie Miller wants to
Speaker 1: know why, oh why are their rears so small? It
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense visually, Please rescue me, evolutionary logic.
Speaker 1: Why do they have such small butts?
Speaker 2: That's a good question, all right, I guess it's all
Speaker 2: in the hump, I guess, and that's where their power
Speaker 2: comes from.
Speaker 1: He explains that by having a big chest upfront, the
Speaker 1: bison is able to act like a wedge through the snow,
Speaker 1: pushing aside these frozen drifts so that they can forage
Speaker 1: at these grasses below the snow. And they invested all
Speaker 1: of their muscular material toward their head and their shoulder muscles.
Speaker 1: So business in the front. They're like, why are you
Speaker 1: even bothering with my butt? Look at my hump. This
Speaker 1: is where I get my stuff done. Okay, so that
Speaker 1: makes some sense. Azrael King wants to know how did
Speaker 1: buffalo become a term for so many things like our buffalo?
Speaker 3: Mean?
Speaker 1: What's their temperament?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Do they have friends? This is a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sorry, they.
Speaker 2: Say, I don't know. They're certainly prevalent in our lexicon,
Speaker 2: and I think maybe that goes back to their just
Speaker 2: because they're such an iconic species.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have this question. Ramon, Jay Deutsche,
Speaker 1: Laura Kunitz, and Heather Dunsmore all wanted to know are
Speaker 1: bison related to wooly mammoths? Not in the least really,
Speaker 1: other than their mammals. The bison, by the way, as
Speaker 1: of twenty sixteen, is the official mammal of the United States,
Speaker 1: so their hair has nothing nothing to do with it, No, okay.
Speaker 1: Laura Merriman wants to know. In Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Speaker 1: Bathrooms source assign this as bison can weigh up to
Speaker 1: two thousand pounds and run up to thirty miles per hour,
Speaker 1: which is three times faster than you.
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 1: And what do you do if you upset a danger cow?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, hide behind a rock.
Speaker 2: The bessing is not together?
Speaker 7: Mad?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Mad.
Speaker 1: Charlotte Grazerowitz wants to know. I heard somewhere that bison
Speaker 1: can jump six feet in the airs. Is true?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. We did see a bison were
Speaker 2: when we were working up along Yellowstone Lake, and this
Speaker 2: I think a test to the quality of their eyesight.
Speaker 2: As we had an excavation unit opened up and we
Speaker 2: were eating lunch and a little bit removed from probably
Speaker 2: about twenty yards away from our excavation unit, and this
Speaker 2: loan bowl came came walking up and got right to
Speaker 2: the edge of our hole and saw it, and he
Speaker 2: kind of wheeled up like whoa.
Speaker 3: Was?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: That was pretty freaking hole.
Speaker 1: Like, can you imagine if a bowl tumbled into your hole?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I didn't. Yeah, that's all we could think. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: who's going to get that one out? Oh no?
Speaker 1: But have you ever had a scary encounter with the bison?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Again, working along Yellowstone Lake with geologist Ken Pierce
Speaker 2: because we were trying to understand how the archaeological record
Speaker 2: is related to lake level changes. So we're walking along
Speaker 2: the cutbank and collecting samples and Ken doing his thing
Speaker 2: of describing soils and everything, and we came up around
Speaker 2: this little wash that we were able to climb up,
Speaker 2: and there was a bison sitting right there and he's
Speaker 2: like and then we jump back down and he went
Speaker 2: on his merry way. And but that was that was
Speaker 2: kind of freaky.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that they startle. I mean, I guess they're
Speaker 1: probably not Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think a lot. Yeah, I think their their eyesight is
Speaker 2: not great. And you know, you all suddenly say this
Speaker 2: funny white guy with a hat on, and it's like,
Speaker 2: what would you do combing up out of the GORYA.
Speaker 3: That's just me.
Speaker 1: Evan Jude wants to know how similar are bison to
Speaker 1: domesticated bovine. Can a bison produce offspring with a cow
Speaker 1: the way a horse can with a donkey.
Speaker 2: That was a big thing that was going on in
Speaker 2: the in the nineteenth century, the late eighteen nineties and
Speaker 2: into the teens. They were they were trying to breed
Speaker 2: cows and bison. I don't think they were. I think
Speaker 2: the biggest problem was is they were using mail or
Speaker 2: bull bison and and cow cattle, and a lot of
Speaker 2: times the babies, the fetuses, we're too big and we're
Speaker 2: killing the cow. You know there's bufalos out there, so yeah,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't breath like a Yorky mom with a great
Speaker 2: Dane dad.
Speaker 1: Also, I feel you should know that some cattle bison
Speaker 1: hybrids are called bifalo or cattle low, and I think
Speaker 1: personally ancient cattleo sounds like a really good TV spy name. PS.
Speaker 1: Neither one of them have a favorite Buffalo movie. I tried.
Speaker 2: I asked, I have a buffalo joke, though, I'll hear it.
Speaker 2: Hey did what does the mom of Buffalo say to
Speaker 2: their kids as they go off to school? By son?
Speaker 3: That's great?
Speaker 1: How did I not see that? How did I not
Speaker 1: see that coming. I'm like a bison, have very poor
Speaker 1: eyesight when it comes to wonderful jokes. I have finally
Speaker 1: been outdated. And also that's a great note to leave on.
Speaker 1: So now let's get to the questions that you asked
Speaker 1: wildlife collogists Dan, who I always want to call Ken,
Speaker 1: but Ken is the archaeologist. This is Dan. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: talk to wildlife ecologists. Dan, can I ask you some
Speaker 1: Patreon questions, some listener questions? Okay? Victoria Demerist, Kathleen Fast,
Speaker 1: I've read that, or want to know what's up with
Speaker 1: birds and bison? And also why are they just hanging
Speaker 1: out just kicking it, sitting on their humps and picking
Speaker 1: at their wounds.
Speaker 4: It's going on with the birds?
Speaker 3: Oh, they're eating parasites Okay, yeah, ticks, flies, things like that.
Speaker 3: You see this with magpies. We'll sort of perch on
Speaker 3: a bison and you know, do a little foraging.
Speaker 1: Okay, they're bros though they're friends.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's not very convincing. However, if the bison is
Speaker 3: sick and if it does have a wound, it can
Speaker 3: attract a lot of scavengers and it turns into sort
Speaker 3: more of a harassment type of an issue. Yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 3: but generally speaking, you know, it's it's not a big
Speaker 3: deal for bison to have a magpie on him.
Speaker 1: Kristin Smith wants to know do bison really only have
Speaker 1: one lung or was that just a myth made up
Speaker 1: by white people who couldn't fathom how Native Americans were
Speaker 1: able to kill an animal so big without a gun.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a really interesting question. I did not know
Speaker 3: of that myth, and so I really can't comment on,
Speaker 3: you know, whether it was a good one or a
Speaker 3: bad one, other than obviously it's not true. They do
Speaker 3: have two lungs.
Speaker 1: Okay, ps, This myth started because while bison have two lungs,
Speaker 1: they share one lung cavity with no division between the lungs.
Speaker 1: So now you know that little trivia nugget, and all
Speaker 1: you will talk about will be buffalo. This is a
Speaker 1: question I got from two pastologists. Jennifer Boose, an areologist.
Speaker 1: She's a Mars expert, also Julie Lesnik, who studies eating
Speaker 1: bugs sustainable protein. They both asked, can you please dissect
Speaker 1: the sentence buffalo buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo,
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea what they're talking about?
Speaker 3: No, I'm afraid not.
Speaker 1: This was also asked by Graham Tattersall. In your experience,
Speaker 1: do buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo buffalo and I
Speaker 1: have no idea what they're talking about, but I have
Speaker 1: a feeling that there's something, some kind of grammatical loophole
Speaker 1: where that is a sentence.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm sort of queasy just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna. I'll unpack it.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I know. I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: is this are how are two ologists both on the
Speaker 1: same hallucinogen submitting questions? Of course I look this up
Speaker 1: and in this case, it's indeed a grammatically correct English
Speaker 1: language sentence, with buffalo meaning of Buffalo, New York, another
Speaker 1: buffalo meaning bison, and another buffalo meaning the verb to
Speaker 1: buffalo or to bully. So, according to my friend Workerpedia,
Speaker 1: buffalo buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo buffalo is translated
Speaker 1: to mean the buffalo from Buffalo, who are buffaloed by
Speaker 1: buffalo from Buffalo, buffalo, other buffalo from Buffalo.
Speaker 4: God, I need no.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people asked this question, and I
Speaker 1: will put them all on the side possibly hungry patrons
Speaker 1: Teresa Dizazzo and Layol Staffkova, plus a bounty of first
Speaker 1: time question askers Britney Kay, Milo Questa, Hollybood, Daniello Buchanan,
Speaker 1: Michelle Grundin, and Samantha Kenny specifically all asked why do
Speaker 1: we eat bison burgers? Are there enough bison for that?
Speaker 1: And if they're threatened to low numbers, how can they
Speaker 1: be used as a food product.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, they're commercial herds, okay. Yeah, they live on
Speaker 3: big ranches out in places like South Dakota elsewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so these are not what I would call conservation herds
Speaker 3: like Yellowstone or wind Cave or the Henry Mountains or
Speaker 3: National Bison Range. Those wild conservation herds are not you know,
Speaker 3: they're not turned into burgers at restaurants. Now. They're hunted,
Speaker 3: you know, right, So Yellowstone bison are hunted by there's
Speaker 3: a tribal hunt every fall that occurs on the northern
Speaker 3: end of the park, and then the Henry Mountains herd
Speaker 3: is hunted. The Utah Division Wildlife oversees that hunt. But
Speaker 3: these aren't animals that are you know, being shipped to
Speaker 3: processing plants. These are that's more like a regulated hunt.
Speaker 2: Yes, is even though they were down to a couple
Speaker 2: dozen at the turn of the last century, they have
Speaker 2: never been on the endangered species list.
Speaker 1: Why is that?
Speaker 3: It's a good question.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but they have never been nominated as
Speaker 2: an endangered species even today, no one has taken that task.
Speaker 1: On That seems is that a political choice? It couldn't
Speaker 1: be that big an oversight. I'll look into that.
Speaker 3: There's probably some interesting history there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's bananas. I'll look into that. That's nuts. So
Speaker 1: from what I can gather, the population was so regally
Speaker 1: boned by European settlers that bison were just considered ecologically extinct.
Speaker 1: And while there may only be a few thousand in
Speaker 1: wild herds, ranching has now grown bison's numbers to several
Speaker 1: hundred thousand in the US, So they're considered near threatened,
Speaker 1: which is the lowest level of concern. It offers pretty
Speaker 1: much a you'll be fine, kiddo level of protection. Bridget Fitzgerald,
Speaker 1: Queen Bee Ceramics, and Carla Hickenlooper said Queen b Ceramics asked,
Speaker 1: I just found out that Yellowstone bison population is managed
Speaker 1: by calling the bison herd every winter. Reading about this
Speaker 1: makes my heart hurt, as I didn't realize that bison
Speaker 1: were not a protected species. So what's your take on
Speaker 1: the interagency Bison management plan? What are they doing right?
Speaker 1: What are they what's going on with that?
Speaker 3: Well, they're dealing with the difficult problem in terms of
Speaker 3: increasing numbers of bison and not necessarily increasing amounts of
Speaker 3: area in which to have bison, and so they're forced
Speaker 3: to come up with a plan to keep numbers at
Speaker 3: a level that, you know, in which they have enough
Speaker 3: habitat for him, because if bison aren't allowed to roam
Speaker 3: unhindered outside the park, then you're gonna need fewer bison.
Speaker 3: But I think what listeners also have to be really
Speaker 3: clear about is that wildlife being called in Yellowstone is
Speaker 3: not a new phenomena new thing, and of course bison
Speaker 3: now aren't being called inside the park. There's a sort
Speaker 3: of broader misconception that wildlife and Yellowstone are free from
Speaker 3: human interference and that is not the case. You're moving
Speaker 3: across the park boundary and you're dealing with human beings,
Speaker 3: and that often means having to dodge a bullet, and
Speaker 3: that's been a part of life as a large mammal,
Speaker 3: large non human mammal in Yellowstone, you know, really since
Speaker 3: Europeans arrived.
Speaker 1: Which of course is shitty. Now, what is shitty about
Speaker 1: Archaeologist Ken's job. What's the hardest thing about your job
Speaker 1: or what is something that you dislike about your job?
Speaker 1: Something about your job that sucks that you're like, I
Speaker 1: wish this didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Lack of funding, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the biggest thing. Grants, trying to find funds, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and spending an inordinate amount of time begging for money
Speaker 2: to do research.
Speaker 1: Do you have to present a case why this is
Speaker 1: important to ecology? Why this is? What is is your
Speaker 1: angle more ecological or anthropological?
Speaker 2: It's both. It depends on what we're looking for my
Speaker 2: dissertation research and continue research on his bison ecology. So
Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's understanding the ecology of bison. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's tough. We don't need a lot of money.
Speaker 2: We work really cheaply and get a lot out of
Speaker 2: the money we do get.
Speaker 1: How much does a field season cost? I asked this
Speaker 1: of a Dinosa, of a paleontologist. He could fund a
Speaker 1: field season for less than a used toyota.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah what Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, you could have the cheapest wedding, or
Speaker 1: you could find a dinosaur.
Speaker 3: Yep, so are we?
Speaker 1: So you have to petition and petition petition for funding
Speaker 1: that other people might spend on, like a rafting trip. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: a very nice bicycle or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very nice bicycle. I get a lot of samples
Speaker 2: right analyzed. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 2: And what's equally annoying is that it takes as much
Speaker 2: time to write a grant for fifteen hundred dollars as
Speaker 2: it does for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of time you could be spending looking
Speaker 1: at things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, politicians complain about they're always having to raise money
Speaker 2: get reelected. Well so do we. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 2: we do a better job with the money that we get.
Speaker 1: Bison for president. And let's talk crap with Yellowstone down
Speaker 1: And what's the shittiest thing about your job?
Speaker 4: What sucks?
Speaker 1: Does it get cold? Do you get snow in your pants?
Speaker 1: Something must suck.
Speaker 3: I think that and I think this is not an
Speaker 3: uncommon complaint. I think a lot of people have this
Speaker 3: problem with their jobs. Is just the volume of work
Speaker 3: that we're all expected to do in a very short
Speaker 3: period of time and trying to do it all as
Speaker 3: well as you want to do it. That's tough. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: What's the best thing about bison? The best thing about
Speaker 1: your job?
Speaker 3: The best thing about my job is that, for the
Speaker 3: most part, I get to set my own agenda in
Speaker 3: terms of the questions that I ask the people that
Speaker 3: I seek out as collaborators. Is there are all decisions
Speaker 3: that I get to make. And what was the other
Speaker 3: part of your question?
Speaker 1: Just what you like about your job or about bison?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 3: About bison. I like bison because they're so tough. Byson
Speaker 3: are really interesting because you know, you'll see them out
Speaker 3: in the landscape and they'll sort of lull you into
Speaker 3: this sort of false sense of knowing what they're all about, because, oh,
Speaker 3: there they are. There's a herd of bison, and that's
Speaker 3: the same hurd of bison that was there last year
Speaker 3: and the year before that year before. Then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the following year, they're gone. You don't know
Speaker 3: why they're gone. Where did they go? Why did they leave,
Speaker 3: and so I think bison are They can be surprising
Speaker 3: in a very unpredictable way, right, I mean a lot
Speaker 3: that seems kind of silly to say, but they can
Speaker 3: catch you off guard, and so that's what makes an
Speaker 3: interesting subjects of study, I suppose.
Speaker 1: And a last question I always ask is what do
Speaker 1: you love most about your job? What do you love
Speaker 1: about bison?
Speaker 2: What I love about my job. I think what's great
Speaker 2: about archaeology is how we get to do a lot
Speaker 2: of things. I mean, we get to be in the
Speaker 2: field to get to click data, we get to get dirty,
Speaker 2: we get to get rained on, and then we get
Speaker 2: to come back and sit in front of computers and
Speaker 2: try and make sense of all that stuff. So it
Speaker 2: uses a lot of different parts of your brain and
Speaker 2: your body. And some of the best people my best
Speaker 2: friends I've met doing this work. My wife I met
Speaker 2: doing this work.
Speaker 1: Is she a bisonologist.
Speaker 2: She's not a bisonologist, but she's an archaeologist and we
Speaker 2: do a lot of work together there.
Speaker 3: How'd you guys meet she was working with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you guys work alongside each other for a
Speaker 1: while before you're like, oh no, there's a smoldering attraction happening.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we have to. It's a different time period.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's actually her boss.
Speaker 1: But it seemed like it worked out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes she has. You have to file any suits
Speaker 2: against me.
Speaker 1: How long have you been married?
Speaker 2: Oh god, what do we know? Seventeen years?
Speaker 1: Seventeen years. So it's working out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got four kids.
Speaker 1: Oh you don't wear a ring though I broke. Oh no,
Speaker 1: how did it break?
Speaker 2: I think just cut that.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, well that's one way to do it. You're
Speaker 1: just storn up for the winter. Yes, you're just.
Speaker 2: Storn up for the doing that for way too long.
Speaker 1: So great people.
Speaker 3: Wonderful people, Yes, wonderful people.
Speaker 1: It never gets old.
Speaker 2: It never gets old.
Speaker 3: No, no, it never does.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for talking to me about bison.
Speaker 2: Sure, bison, And thanks to your listeners, sir, great questions.
Speaker 1: They care about bison.
Speaker 7: They do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nice to hear.
Speaker 1: Everyone loves a bison, everyone including my cousin Boyd and Lila.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite thing about a buffalo? Is there
Speaker 1: anything that's just like charmed its way into your heart?
Speaker 4: Oh they're really playful. Oh yeah, yeah, like uh you.
Speaker 7: Can watch them and chase each other around over there
Speaker 7: and run and jump and play.
Speaker 6: And then if a car stops to watch them, they
Speaker 6: all stop and watch the car.
Speaker 4: The picture.
Speaker 1: They're models, they're total goofballs, and then they act when
Speaker 1: people are looking so cute. I want to come visit
Speaker 1: when I come in summer for the reunion. Can I
Speaker 1: come visit?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, and welcome. We have an extra bed at the house.
Speaker 8: Ya.
Speaker 1: One more very important question. Do buffaloes accept hugs or
Speaker 1: is that a bad idea?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 6: Bad idea?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, all right, fine, I'll cross that off my list.
Speaker 1: Then I won't hug a b.
Speaker 6: Yeah you don't want to when you okay, I'll.
Speaker 1: Make sure my health insurance policy is up to date before.
Speaker 6: But when you come up, we'll take you out to
Speaker 6: a guy's place sets out by the border that has
Speaker 6: white buffal What there's white buffalo.
Speaker 7: Some of them are born white and some of them
Speaker 7: are born brown and then turn white.
Speaker 1: Wow. Oh that's nuts. I want to look that up.
Speaker 1: I don't even know that existed.
Speaker 6: White buffalo is yeah, that's yeah. What is really big
Speaker 6: medicine to all the tribes?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Big medicine?
Speaker 4: It's like the top of the medicine.
Speaker 5: Insists, so alease like god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh wow, gosh, I bet that's gotta be such
Speaker 1: a sight to see, especially in the snowy cool. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, this makes me want to look at pictures
Speaker 1: of Buffalo all day now. I just want to go
Speaker 1: online look at pictures of Buffalo. Let me go do that.
Speaker 1: We'll have a good rest of your Sunday. Guys. Yup
Speaker 1: you too, Okay, bye, love you guys, love you by
Speaker 1: bye bye. Sen love you too. But I will not
Speaker 1: hug you out of respect of your big ass horns.
Speaker 1: So if you loved all of these folks, head to
Speaker 1: aliward dot com slash ologies slash Bisonology to find out
Speaker 1: more about them and some links to the organizations we
Speaker 1: talked about and to the sponsors of the show. Those
Speaker 1: links are also always in the show notes, and you
Speaker 1: can please be our friend on Instagram and Twitter. We're
Speaker 1: at Ologies. I'm at ali Ward with one L on
Speaker 1: both and you can subscribe and rate and leave a
Speaker 1: review for me to read possibly on podcast on Apple
Speaker 1: podcasts or iTunes. Ologies t shirts and hats and toats
Speaker 1: and sweatshirts and socks are available at ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch of the comedy
Speaker 1: podcast You Are That for managing that. Thank you Aaron
Speaker 1: Taalberg for admitting the ologies Facebook group. Leaped episodes and
Speaker 1: transcripts are up at aliward dot com slash ologies dash extras.
Speaker 1: There's a link in the show notes. And thank you
Speaker 1: Emily White and all the ologies transcribers in the Facebook
Speaker 1: group for your amazing hard work. The theme music was
Speaker 1: written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands.
Speaker 1: And special thanks to Hearthrob Jared Sleeper for staying up
Speaker 1: way too late helping me string this beastly beastly episode
Speaker 1: out and Mom, I'm I'm so sorry that I told
Speaker 1: the buffalo story, but I'm very proud to share your
Speaker 1: curly headed Jens. And thank you, as always every week
Speaker 1: to the rare gentle creature Stephen Ray Morris and his
Speaker 1: buffalo mustache for bearing with tight deadlines and multiple files
Speaker 1: and editing all our pieces together to get it to
Speaker 1: your ears on time. And if you last until the
Speaker 1: end of the episode each week you hear secret. This
Speaker 1: week's secret is a sweet one. Our Ward family Rudians
Speaker 1: every few years in Montana are what made me love
Speaker 1: science so much. And I'm so lucky to have gotten
Speaker 1: to sit on a dock in the summer and watch
Speaker 1: these bats at dusk and see these big, huge osprey nests,
Speaker 1: and get to sleep at a family teepee and hear stories.
Speaker 1: For the longest time, I thought that when you just
Speaker 1: get older, you start talking weird, And then I learned
Speaker 1: later that it was just my aunt's Montana accents. And
Speaker 1: we'd sometimes call my grandpa on the phone and we'd
Speaker 1: ask what he was up to you and he'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, just watching the wind blow. And the older
Speaker 1: I get, the more the hobby seems like tied as hell.
Speaker 8: Okay, by bye, pacadermatology, hobbiology or do zoology, lithology, zeminology, meteorology, ptology, anthology, seriology, sethnology.
Speaker 6: Don't touch it.