Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your forgotten half can of lacroix. That's
Speaker 1: just cold, just fizzy enough to keep drinking it and
Speaker 1: not throw it away. Ali Ward back with a very
Speaker 1: very weird, odd episode of Ologies. If this is not
Speaker 1: your first Ologies rodeo, you know that each episode I
Speaker 1: usually talk to one ologist, but for some reason, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man Bison just threw us for a very
Speaker 1: rare loop. So this episode is kind of more like
Speaker 1: a buffalo party. Four times the usual number of interviewees. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, four times. So if you were actually listening
Speaker 1: to this, it means that this episode did not kill me,
Speaker 1: and I am thankful for that. So other things I'm
Speaker 1: thankful for every week. Of course, are y'all everyone on
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com slash Ologies for supporting the show, everyone
Speaker 1: in Ologies Merch from ologiesmerch dot com, and all the
Speaker 1: folks who tweet are tell a friend and are subscribed
Speaker 1: and rate the show, and of course review because you
Speaker 1: know I creep them every week and as proof I
Speaker 1: pick a fresh one such as this week. CMM says
Speaker 1: I'll Jesus charming, informative, hilarious, and consistently good. This podcast
Speaker 1: highlights the joy that comes from being curious with nothing
Speaker 1: dubbed too boring, because nothing is if you think about
Speaker 1: it closely enough. Five stars, Sally. I've actually shed at
Speaker 1: least two tears reading out into that cop but really
Speaker 1: got me this time. Also, Hanna Christopher, thanks for your review.
Speaker 1: I hope that your Tinder match who recommended this is
Speaker 1: a good one. Good luck out there. Okay. Bisonology. So
Speaker 1: bison it's Baltic or Slavic origin. It comes from the
Speaker 1: word wesund, which means the stinking animal because of its
Speaker 1: musk while rudding, and the word bison is distantly related
Speaker 1: to the word weasel, which is also stinky. So weasel
Speaker 1: and bison. One is hulking billowing steam into the cold air,
Speaker 1: and the other is a sock with a face etymology. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I had every intention of just following my usual
Speaker 1: very comfy broken in denim ologies format one ologist, but
Speaker 1: this episode was just like a pair of genes that
Speaker 1: just kept growing more pockets. And I first reached out
Speaker 1: to this well known archaeologist who traces the history of
Speaker 1: bison across like tens of thousands of years in North America.
Speaker 1: But before our meetup at a Hampton n naturally in Utah.
Speaker 1: He was like, hey, can I bring a plus one?
Speaker 1: He actually wrote about a colleague via email beforehand and said,
Speaker 1: I thought having us both in the interview might be
Speaker 1: a bit more compelling, since we're both working with bison
Speaker 1: but on different ends of the Holocene, mine being the
Speaker 1: pre contact record and dance research on the present population.
Speaker 1: We've been trying to find the time and our schedules
Speaker 1: to work together and discuss it over beer and coffee
Speaker 1: not mixed. So this may do it. So I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: bring them along, let's shoot some bison shit. So we
Speaker 1: met up. We had a good chat, but I also
Speaker 1: found myself wanting the voice of someone with an indigenous
Speaker 1: perspective and also perhaps someone who works day to day
Speaker 1: with bison. And I'm like, I'm going to need a
Speaker 1: party bus to fit all the folks I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk buffalo with. But luckily, my wonder cousin raises bison
Speaker 1: in the snowy vistas of Browning in northern Montana, and
Speaker 1: his amazing life is of course also a bison rancher
Speaker 1: and a member of the Blackfeet tribe. And so this
Speaker 1: past Sunday afternoon, I call him up, got him on
Speaker 1: the horn, and they got on speaker, and they let
Speaker 1: me ask him all kinds of buffalo questions, including if
Speaker 1: it's okay to hug one. So rather than one singular
Speaker 1: person's long thread becoming kind of like a crow shaped blanket,
Speaker 1: this episode is just a rare ologies quilt of sorts
Speaker 1: all about the world of bison or buffalo. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We got to figure out the difference. Okay, So you're
Speaker 1: going to hear from Ken Cannon, who is a New
Speaker 1: Jersey born and now Utah based research professor of anthropology
Speaker 1: at Utah State University who studies ancient bison and gives
Speaker 1: talks like rolling Thunder ten thousand years of bison in
Speaker 1: the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. And he has short cropped hair,
Speaker 1: rosy cheeks, and as salt and pepper goateee. He looks
Speaker 1: like he could have been a rugby player and another life.
Speaker 1: So that's Ken, and he brought along Utah State University
Speaker 1: ecologist Dan McNulty, who spent years in Yellowstone studying animal behavior.
Speaker 1: And he has sandy blonde hair. He's a little more
Speaker 1: wiry than Ken, and I cannot explain why, but Dan
Speaker 1: looks like a Ken, and Ken looks like a Dan,
Speaker 1: and that screwed me up editing this entire episode. But yes,
Speaker 1: Dan studies the more modern era of bison. Lyla Evans
Speaker 1: is my beloved cousin in law, and she served in
Speaker 1: the Montana House of Representatives, and I always just picture
Speaker 1: her in a business blazer, even though she's probably more
Speaker 1: likely like bundled than fleece, because it's January in Montana
Speaker 1: right now. And her longtime husband is my cousin, Boyd Evans,
Speaker 1: who's tall and gangly and wrangler jeans. He has a
Speaker 1: handlebar mustache and a rain stained cowboy hat and a
Speaker 1: great laugh. So I told you this is a weird
Speaker 1: and wonderful episode and a break from the usual format.
Speaker 1: And if you hear it and you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: like that it's for people instead of one, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Calm down. This is a rare exception. If I did
Speaker 1: one of these every week, I would never se and
Speaker 1: I would be so tired I would just move to
Speaker 1: another country and have a coconut stand. So I just
Speaker 1: made this one a bison Bonanza because I wanted to
Speaker 1: do the animal and the community and the topic justice.
Speaker 1: So hop on, hang tight and learn how big a
Speaker 1: bison is, what their fur feels like, how many there
Speaker 1: used to be, how many there are now, how do
Speaker 1: they do a head count, and what that lumpy humpus for,
Speaker 1: what a bison's favorite treat is, and what noises they make,
Speaker 1: and the difference between raising cows and bison, and how
Speaker 1: their very existence and survival has been politicized and continues
Speaker 1: to be. And also maybe the worst sentence in the
Speaker 1: English language as we talk to academics and hands on ranchers,
Speaker 1: all four of whom, in their own way are professional bisonologists. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get right into it. So the first person I
Speaker 1: had approached was the one I interviewed, 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 2: Yes, it is very much So. I heard that term before.
Speaker 1: Would you ever use that term like in a cocktail party, like, Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm a buson know news, I think so? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: 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 3: And.
Speaker 2: I got interested in it because we were working at
Speaker 2: Grant Teeta 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 were that
Speaker 2: many bison in Grant Teeton 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.
Speaker 2: There, and the previous archaeologists that work there always minimize
Speaker 2: the presence of bison in there, and so I just
Speaker 2: started looking at the literature and the more I looked
Speaker 2: at the literature, every time there were fallen remains bones
Speaker 2: preserved at archaeological sites, nine out of ten times there
Speaker 2: were bison bones. And it's like, well, how can you
Speaker 2: minimize bison and the archaeological record when all the bones
Speaker 2: that you're finding are bison bones. So that just got
Speaker 2: me going, and I moved up and started working in
Speaker 2: Yellowstone National Park and got more interesting in bison and
Speaker 2: you know this wonderful mammal that's that was an incredible
Speaker 2: part of our ecosystem, shaped a large part of North
Speaker 2: American ecosystem, and why we don't know a lot about it.
Speaker 2: Most of what we know about it is 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?
Speaker 2: Keil site so kill site. It can vary in a
Speaker 2: lot of different ways. The traditional ones that we always
Speaker 2: think of for great planes are running bison over a cliff,
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: who over a cliff? Is that for to then use
Speaker 1: that meat and or was that like a hunting technique?
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a hunting technique. Yeah, so that was
Speaker 2: the best, the easiest, I guess, and most economically efficient
Speaker 2: way of getting a lot of bison to get you
Speaker 2: into the winter. So typically they're they're in the fall
Speaker 2: at these these events happen, bisoner are coming into the
Speaker 2: to the fall in the winter, so they're really fat
Speaker 2: and fat's good. Not like today. The fat was good
Speaker 2: back then everybody all hunter gathers. Everybody wanted fat. So
Speaker 2: you hunted bison in the fall, they're at their prime nutritionally,
Speaker 2: they're their fur is at prime. So you get some
Speaker 2: really nice skins for making clothing and and tps and
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff. So so yeah, so that was
Speaker 2: 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 or now you mentioned you mentioned that you have
Speaker 1: a New Jersey accent. H Yeah, so now you grew
Speaker 1: up in New Jersey, But what brought you out to
Speaker 1: Yellowstone in the natural Park Service. At 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 because
Speaker 2: I used to scuba dive and hang out on the beach,
Speaker 2: and I swear when I was seventeen, I would never
Speaker 2: live more than a half a mile from the ocean.
Speaker 2: So here we are, yes, and here we are in
Speaker 2: so so be careful about those things that you say
Speaker 2: 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 Evlith, 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 the biology program there.
Speaker 2: It was largely geared towards pre med students. But then
Speaker 2: I started taking anthropology courses. It was a small program,
Speaker 2: really good professors treated you like a human being and
Speaker 2: not just a number. And I learned that I could
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was 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 my when I got hired and drove out, I
Speaker 2: had this, of course, I had a nice little VW
Speaker 2: bug that I drove all the way out to grant
Speaker 2: Teeta from Tennessee, and when I got there, my boss
Speaker 2: told me, it's 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 5: 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 cribbed he as an archaeologist because in the mountains
Speaker 2: they were never seen as being an important part of
Speaker 2: the subsistence economy of Native American groups, and that was
Speaker 2: 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 that we go
Speaker 2: from thirty million to down to nineteen or one hundred
Speaker 2: or whatever the number was, and at the turn of
Speaker 2: the 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.
Speaker 1: Watch, and they're majestic.
Speaker 2: They are majestic.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, Ken's colleague, doctor Dan McNulty no relation to squid
Speaker 1: expert Sarah McAnulty 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 bis in life? And now are you from Utah?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: I born in Illinois. I grew up in California, went
Speaker 4: to school in Colorado.
Speaker 1: So one might say you've been roaming around as well.
Speaker 4: 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 or.
Speaker 4: Not, I would say that bisonology is part of my program.
Speaker 1: Yet Okay, yep, and so how long have you been
Speaker 1: into science and field work and animals. What was it
Speaker 1: that drew you to this?
Speaker 4: Well, I lived in Hong Kong for three years when
Speaker 4: I was in junior high and so that was obviously
Speaker 4: very urban environment. And when I got back to California,
Speaker 4: I was like in the eighth or seventh grade, and
Speaker 4: we lived on the edge of big open space, lots
Speaker 4: of live oaks and hills, and it kind of just
Speaker 4: sucked me in, suck me soon after we got back,
Speaker 4: and I've been kind of at it since then. And
Speaker 4: actually even before that. I grew up, you know, riding
Speaker 4: horses with my dad in that country, and just got
Speaker 4: really into it once I got back from that little
Speaker 4: stay in Hong Kong and just a lot of time
Speaker 4: spent camping, hiking.
Speaker 1: Dan said, growing up he always loved animals and being
Speaker 1: out in nature observing them.
Speaker 4: But I never really thought i'd actually make a career
Speaker 4: of it. I was an undergraduate at Boulder, Colorado, and
Speaker 4: then went up to Yellowstone, and actually it was that
Speaker 4: was kind of when I was sort of the aha
Speaker 4: moment that, yeah, you know, I think I can make
Speaker 4: science into a career was when I arrived in Yellowstone.
Speaker 4: This was ninety five, and I just got to see
Speaker 4: wildlife biologists in action. You know, the folks that I
Speaker 4: worked up up there had made it their career, had
Speaker 4: met other people that had been at it for a
Speaker 4: very long time, and it sort of dawned on me that, well,
Speaker 4: you know, if you work hard and you focus, you know,
Speaker 4: it's possible to make this a career. So that's kind
Speaker 4: of where I really sort of got started.
Speaker 1: And now, how did you end up in the bison arena?
Speaker 4: Sort of following wolves? Okay, yeah, the wolves brought me
Speaker 4: to the bison.
Speaker 1: So the wolves brought him to the buffalo. But you know,
Speaker 1: before we go much further, let's clear this up. Buffalo
Speaker 1: or bison. So buffalo etymologically comes from the word for
Speaker 1: an African antelope and then expanded to mean a wild
Speaker 1: European ox and then French fur trappers saw bison and
Speaker 1: called them booth, meaning oxen or beefs, so they were
Speaker 1: like buffalo. But currently is there a difference when referring
Speaker 1: to the wooly, hookhorned, beautiful beasts of the North American Plains.
Speaker 1: I 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. Llla
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 6: No difference, just whatever.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it's either or yeah, yeah, potato, potato, tomato, tomato.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's kind of what it is.
Speaker 1: And then how long have you had buffalo?
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 7: Yeah, 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
Speaker 1: Blackfoot Indian Blackfoot Confederacy, Blackfeet Nation? I want to make
Speaker 1: sure I.
Speaker 6: Say, okay, all right, there is a Blackfoot Confederacy, which
Speaker 6: is our black Feet tribe, the black Tribe in Canada,
Speaker 6: and the Blackfoot tribe in Canada, and the Sarci tribe
Speaker 6: and 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 life.
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 the when and then when they became big things
Speaker 6: back east, like when your 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 almost died completely out.
Speaker 1: Before we talk about the brutal decline, the lumbering comeback,
Speaker 1: and their hopeful future, let's get some history down with
Speaker 1: archaeologist Ken and going backwards a little bit. What is
Speaker 1: a buffalo? What is a bison? What is the difference?
Speaker 1: What is this animal? What is a bison?
Speaker 2: I think the bison and buffalore 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 some And the textomy a bison
Speaker 2: is still being debated.
Speaker 4: Really, yeah, what are.
Speaker 1: They thinking the bison derived from? Where are they what
Speaker 1: taxonomy is being debated and where do they think these
Speaker 1: 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 places scene,
Speaker 2: we had a species of bison called bison antiquis. Some
Speaker 2: people might say bison bison antiquis, but that was probably
Speaker 2: about a third larger than the modern bisonar. The herd
Speaker 2: sizes probably weren't as big, their behavior might have been
Speaker 2: somewhat different than bisonar today. But over probably once a
Speaker 2: glaciers retreated between about ten and seven eight nine or
Speaker 2: seven to five six thousand years ago, they went through
Speaker 2: this diminution, so they became small are in size and
Speaker 2: became what we know is the modern bison bison, And
Speaker 2: we think a lot of that might have to do
Speaker 2: with just changes in the environment. The climate was drying
Speaker 2: out somewhat, the vegetation was changing, so it wasn't quite
Speaker 2: as nutritious. It's just there's a lot of theories that
Speaker 2: 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 Lyed told me that they're even bigger,
Speaker 1: I think twenty eight hundred pounds as opposed to the
Speaker 1: smaller two thousand pound 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: so what's bison? Mike Koria, but they'll probably say sorry, eh.
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's bison. 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, longer humps, and that was
Speaker 2: an adaptation to deeper snows trying to forge 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 timeline, A.
Speaker 2: Brief, brief timeline. So bison originated in Eurasia migrated to
Speaker 2: North America during periods of interglacial They've been here in
Speaker 2: North America probably summer twenty million years ago in different forms.
Speaker 1: Twenty million years, billion years, and in a period of
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty years they were nearly extinguished from the
Speaker 1: 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, breda horns. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just a monster.
Speaker 4: 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 then and then monitor bison. So
Speaker 2: that's a really dirty history. But yeah, bison latifrons are
Speaker 2: really cool too.
Speaker 1: So I just looked up bison ladifrons and boy, how
Speaker 1: did be Jesus these horns? Oh god, they look like
Speaker 1: if a buffalo made a Melissa Fant 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 they're 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 sites,
Speaker 2: up to ten thousand year old sites, but I haven't
Speaker 2: been lucky enough to find bison that old and the
Speaker 2: archaeological record, and a big part of that I think
Speaker 2: is just preservation issues. Yellowstone and the mountains in general
Speaker 2: are just not a great place for preservation. There's lots
Speaker 2: of soils tend to be acidic. They get turned over
Speaker 2: a lot. Here's a good term bioturbation, biolturbation. So it's
Speaker 2: trees that are turning up the soils. Animals that live
Speaker 2: and burrow in the ground are turning up the soils.
Speaker 2: So you have both chemical and mechanical breaking down of
Speaker 2: these of these bones. So we just they just don't
Speaker 2: 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 frey 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'd probably be
Speaker 2: looking at his forehead. Okay, so pretty good size. Up
Speaker 2: to twelve hundred pounds a good sized male.
Speaker 1: What about females?
Speaker 2: Smaller females a little bit smaller, Yeah, probably eight pounds.
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 that in that hump. That's the
Speaker 2: part that hunter gatherers really like because that's where all
Speaker 2: your nutrition comes from. What's pretty cool they've got they've
Speaker 2: got beards.
Speaker 1: I have noticed that.
Speaker 4: Is that a fashion.
Speaker 1: Thing or that?
Speaker 2: I don't know. They've been hipsters for a long long
Speaker 2: time time.
Speaker 4: They're not hipsters.
Speaker 1: Side note, Bison beards kind of like a scarf on
Speaker 1: an airplane served to insulate these critters in the snow.
Speaker 1: And get this, I just found out that their hair
Speaker 1: your shoulder region, it's a cape. So more evidence that
Speaker 1: these creatures are not only strong and powerful, but also
Speaker 1: just quietly flamboyant. So let's get back to Dan who
Speaker 1: describes 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 Pelican Valley.
Speaker 4: His story significant in the story of bison generally in
Speaker 4: the United States because it was there that the last
Speaker 4: while bison survived. Back in the very early twentieth century,
Speaker 4: in like nineteen oh six, nineteen twelve, they are only
Speaker 4: like a couple dozen bison left. Those are the last
Speaker 4: while bison, and they were hiding out in Pelican Valley.
Speaker 4: And the reason why they were hiding out back there
Speaker 4: is well, there weren't people, but also because it was
Speaker 4: geothermally active. We all know about the geysers and Old
Speaker 4: Faithful and all that. Well, there's a lot of other
Speaker 4: warm ground that melts the snow off in the wintertime,
Speaker 4: and so these little pockets of warm ground that the
Speaker 4: bison were 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 Chnology with jess 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 4: Well, it's like the sea, it's just sort of receded
Speaker 4: and got really small. The tide went out with bison,
Speaker 4: and they, like I said earlier, they found refuge in
Speaker 4: places like Pelican Valley in the interior of Yellowstone, one
Speaker 4: of the most remote areas in the lower forty eight
Speaker 4: United States, especially back then in the early part of
Speaker 4: the twentieth century, and remarkably since then, we have more
Speaker 4: bison now in Yellowstone National Park than at any time
Speaker 4: since Europeans showed up. Granted it's not thirty million, but
Speaker 4: it is five thousand or so, is about where we're
Speaker 4: at now. That's a massive turnaround, that's a massive cultural
Speaker 4: shift because you have to understand that, you know, bison
Speaker 4: were weaponized in a lot of ways that you know,
Speaker 4: they were being eliminated to basically, you know, drive Indians
Speaker 4: onto reservations. It was part of, you know, the sort
Speaker 4: of colonization of the western hemisphere unit. You know, Western
Speaker 4: North America is taking out the bison, and so to
Speaker 4: bring those bison back is to sort of challenge some
Speaker 4: of those ideas, those sort of colonial attitudes. That also
Speaker 4: holds with the wolf as well. And so, yeah, these
Speaker 4: numbers aren't huge, but they're significant nonetheless, and I think
Speaker 4: that that's an important sort of cultural process as well
Speaker 4: as it is a process of sort of conservation on
Speaker 4: a biological process.
Speaker 1: I asked Ken the geobiologist archaeologist, if bison are on
Speaker 1: the move a lot like equally enigmatic hardcore Dave Matthews
Speaker 1: fans and 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 CALCLF 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. So they all the males
Speaker 2: come back from the high country and you know, beat
Speaker 2: on each other for selection of females. The rut is
Speaker 2: pretty pretty exciting to watch. They're pushing around each other
Speaker 2: and snorting and trying to see who's going to be
Speaker 2: the biggest, baddest one out there that gets all the
Speaker 2: 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 calm in an ungulate group or yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so. Elk are pretty interesting. They gather up
Speaker 2: what's known as a harem. So ten twelve cows get
Speaker 2: 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 Yutah. You know what, 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 population of wild bison in America. Now, ps,
Speaker 1: I don't know or really care how they counted the
Speaker 1: polygamous people. It's not in my business. But what about
Speaker 1: the bison, I asked Dan if they have microchips in them?
Speaker 1: Or is there like a census taker for Buffalo, someone
Speaker 1: with snowshoes and a clipboard just knock, knock, knocking on
Speaker 1: bison's doors. Is there an exact number? Is there a
Speaker 1: spreadsheet that has them all kind of cataloged? Are they tagged?
Speaker 1: How do you keep track?
Speaker 4: Counting with aircraft?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 4: How does that work? They just get into a small
Speaker 4: day being park service biologist will get into a small
Speaker 4: fixing aircraft, a supercub. They will fly certain routes through
Speaker 4: the park where bison are known to range, and they
Speaker 4: just count them up, so it's a total count. It's
Speaker 4: a census. And they do that at least once a year.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they do it multiple times.
Speaker 1: And do they just film it and then later look
Speaker 1: at the footage.
Speaker 4: No, they'll count them as they go. Yeah, that seems
Speaker 4: so easy to lose track, but they're so big they're
Speaker 4: actually easy to count. I think to say, like elk
Speaker 4: really well, yeah, bison are darker elk or lighter okay,
Speaker 4: and they and the bison tend to be more out
Speaker 4: in the open. Some of the elk will be in
Speaker 4: the trees.
Speaker 1: So counting sheep is out counting bison where it's at,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 4: I think so. Yeah, if I had to choose, I
Speaker 4: would count bison.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think that bison biologists dream of bison? Do
Speaker 1: you dream of bison sometimes? What kind of bis dreams
Speaker 1: do you have?
Speaker 4: I can't remember if any off the top of my head,
Speaker 4: but I definitely have had dreams, especially when I'm in
Speaker 4: the field.
Speaker 1: Real quick, What does it mean if you dream of buffalo? Well,
Speaker 1: according to sleep culture dot com, which likely employees kind
Speaker 1: hearted interns to make up omens for like every noun
Speaker 1: in the dictionary, seeing a buffalo in a dream is
Speaker 1: a symbol of survival and abundance. It means that you
Speaker 1: should pay attention to the path you're following in your life. Sure.
Speaker 1: Also Ward family side notes, So, Boyd and Lila and
Speaker 1: my cousins Crystal and James and Jamie bring a huge
Speaker 1: traditional tepee to our reunions, and the first year I
Speaker 1: ever got to sleep in it. They told me to
Speaker 1: pay attention to my dreams because in a tp they
Speaker 1: could have certain significance. And in the morning I recalled,
Speaker 1: I had a dream about seeing Don Johnson from Miami
Speaker 1: Vice at Costco. It was such a bummer. So maybe
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work on silly white ladies.
Speaker 4: 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 and I think that's a that's
Speaker 2: a big myth, is that somehow Yellowstone is this is
Speaker 2: this petting zoo out there, and and and you know,
Speaker 2: these are big, wild animals, and and they they are
Speaker 2: fairly tolerant. I think of people are a lot more
Speaker 2: tolerant than I would be if I was them and
Speaker 2: somebody was coming up and snapping pictures. So I think
Speaker 2: I think that's that's kind of an interesting misconception about wild,
Speaker 2: wild animals, and especially wild animals and Yellowstone. The miss
Speaker 2: about bison. I think, I think maybe a big thing
Speaker 2: for people to understand is how pervasive they were on
Speaker 2: the landscape one hundred and fifty years ago, especially on
Speaker 2: the Great Planes. I mean, you know, if you living
Speaker 2: in California or New York, you probably didn't see a
Speaker 2: lot of bison, but out on the Great Planes, they're
Speaker 2: they're amazingly prevalent part of the ecosystem. And to have
Speaker 2: them disappear in such a short period of time, I
Speaker 2: think that's really hard for people to understand. It's hard
Speaker 2: for me to understand how you can go from thirty
Speaker 2: million bison, if you know, if you want to use
Speaker 2: that number people, there's lots of different estimates on how
Speaker 2: many bison we're out on the Great Planes and then
Speaker 2: within twenty thirty year peer they're gone, right, you know,
Speaker 2: And how we can we can do that? And the
Speaker 2: technology at that time, it wasn't like we're out there
Speaker 2: spraying them with guns, gunships, these you know, people with
Speaker 2: single shot rifles going out and they and they they
Speaker 2: completely cause a collapse 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 understan 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 killing them and
Speaker 2: I think they were they were disrupting herds. They were
Speaker 2: just taking the hides. They weren't it 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, the 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, there 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,
Speaker 2: Bison they were the biggest things out there, so they
Speaker 2: didn't have 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 Shoshone 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 to do more
Speaker 2: and more of that that consultation process. When I was
Speaker 2: working up in Yellowstone, I worked a lot with an
Speaker 2: elder known who's uh who since passed away him and Wise,
Speaker 2: and he gave us a lot of information about about
Speaker 2: the Shoshone and their life ways, and so that was
Speaker 2: that was a pretty interesting and nice relationship.
Speaker 1: Ken told me that he's been helping out using his
Speaker 1: archa logical techniques to understand the events and the landscape
Speaker 1: of the eighteen sixty three Bear River massacre that killed
Speaker 1: possibly hundreds of members of the Shoshone tribe in a
Speaker 1: place that's now South Idaho, near a town called Preston,
Speaker 1: And there's a small memorial there now, but the tribe
Speaker 1: is trying to raise funds for an interpretive center to
Speaker 1: memorialize what had happened on that site. Does that ever
Speaker 1: get emotional for you?
Speaker 2: Working at the Bear River massacre site is incredibly emotional,
Speaker 2: just because it was a horrible event in no way,
Speaker 2: shape or form could ever be justified. And seeing people
Speaker 2: that are two generations removed from the survivors of that
Speaker 2: and them telling their story, Yeah, it's hard not to
Speaker 2: be emotional if you wouldn't be a human if you're not,
Speaker 2: so yeah, that does get to be pretty emotional. My
Speaker 2: wife Molly and I also worked on the Sand Creek
Speaker 2: massacre site, and we're sitting with a lot of descendants
Speaker 2: of the Sand Creek Massacre and talking with them and
Speaker 2: seeing how close that is to them still. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, they get very emotional and it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's not my history.
Speaker 1: And how do indigenous communities keep that history alive? The
Speaker 1: Inner Tribal Buffalo Council ITBC is this collection of sixty
Speaker 1: nine tribes from nineteen different states, and they work on
Speaker 1: programs to return buffalo to tribal lands, but hyper locally
Speaker 1: in their own community. Boyd and Lilah themselves donated one
Speaker 1: of their own prized buffalo. I know that in terms
Speaker 1: of giving back to the community, Like you guys donated
Speaker 1: a buffalo a year or so ago to one of
Speaker 1: the Browning schools to kind of learn how the buffalo
Speaker 1: is used in traditional food and other things.
Speaker 4: What was that like?
Speaker 1: What prompted that?
Speaker 5: Oh, it was the Indian Studies class school. They wanted
Speaker 5: to get a hands on experience and show everybody what
Speaker 5: how they originally butchered buffalo, what all the parts stays up.
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: Relations so good, and following indigenous folks from all over
Speaker 1: the world on social media. We all have so much
Speaker 1: 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 4: I was at a meeting in Bozeman, Montana a few
Speaker 4: years ago. National Academy of Sciences was doing a review
Speaker 4: on brucellosis and they had the chair of the Inner
Speaker 4: Tribal Bison Cooperative give a talk, and one of the
Speaker 4: things he said that struck me was that, you know,
Speaker 4: from his point of view, it doesn't really make much
Speaker 4: of a difference if this bison has got you know,
Speaker 4: if it's eighty percent bison and twenty percent you know
Speaker 4: hereford or five percent, you know, like it's a bison.
Speaker 4: You know, from you know, from his point of view,
Speaker 4: this is a bison. And and I think he was
Speaker 4: speaking too from sort of the cultural point of view,
Speaker 4: because there's a lot of you know, mixing among human populations,
Speaker 4: and you know, Native Americans have to deal with this
Speaker 4: in terms of blood quantum to prove, you know, that
Speaker 4: they belong to a certain tribe and a certain reservation
Speaker 4: and so forth, and there's a lot of controversy around that,
Speaker 4: and he was sort of referring to that in the
Speaker 4: context of what percent of bison do you need in
Speaker 4: order to be a bison? And I think he was saying,
Speaker 4: you know what, that's kind of nonsense, right, It's all
Speaker 4: a bunch of hogwash. What is a bison is in
Speaker 4: some ways in the eye of the beholder, I think,
Speaker 4: 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 Byson 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 do.
Speaker 4: As Ted Turner that's what he does. Yeah, go to
Speaker 4: you can go to Ted's Grill and order yourself up
Speaker 4: a bison steak. I mean, he's he's and this is
Speaker 4: this is not a secret. That's part of what he's
Speaker 4: been doing for a number of years. He's been growing
Speaker 4: bison on a number of his properties and using that
Speaker 4: bison and selling it in his restaurants Ted's Grill, I
Speaker 4: think is what it's called.
Speaker 1: Do you eat bison?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not like, oh.
Speaker 4: Sorry, no, No, bison are super tasty.
Speaker 1: Oh bison? But are raising them better for the planet
Speaker 1: than cows? Some ecologists argue yes, because their poops and
Speaker 1: their hoofs have evolved along with the planes, and unlike
Speaker 1: namby Pamba cows, bison typically don't need winter shelter, which
Speaker 1: saves on energy costs, and bison meat also tends to
Speaker 1: be leaner meat. Boyd and Lila supply a few local
Speaker 1: restaurants and sell steaks to private buyers, but said not
Speaker 1: all bison burgers are created equal, and some commercial ones
Speaker 1: you might find in chain restaurants might be made from
Speaker 1: older animals and might be higher in fat. I asked
Speaker 1: how they were in general to raise though, How is
Speaker 1: it different from raising cows? Yeah?
Speaker 6: There are a lot smarter really?
Speaker 3: Uh, 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 3: What? Are they way more social? Yeah? They run around,
Speaker 3: They run around in one little pack.
Speaker 1: What kind of noises do buffalo make?
Speaker 6: Grunts?
Speaker 1: The grunt?
Speaker 7: Yeah, they kind of like sheep, kind of like pigs. Really, yeah,
Speaker 7: kind of like pigs. That's kind of what they sound like.
Speaker 1: Ps. Thank you YouTuber Jim Dass who posted this nine
Speaker 1: second video of a mail bison sticking his tongue out
Speaker 1: like it was a fraternity burping contest and just letting
Speaker 1: the grunts rip. What 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 5: When they're communicating with each other and mostly when they're
Speaker 5: in a little bunch there. Yeah, they talk to each
Speaker 5: 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. It's absolutely love.
Speaker 1: Do they grunt to each other like, yo, come and
Speaker 1: get these man?
Speaker 6: 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 4: So they're extremely social Bison, are they?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 4: They aggregate together and they'll help each other. They're not
Speaker 4: like elk, which sort of flee in every direction. It's
Speaker 4: sort of every man for himself generally. Bison, you know,
Speaker 4: are very cooperative in how they defend themselves. But when
Speaker 4: there's deep snow, that defense breaks down and it becomes
Speaker 4: every 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 see
Speaker 1: kind of coming up around the bend?
Speaker 4: Well, in my experience in the Greater Yellowstone, I would
Speaker 4: say we're running up against limits. Just in the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five years that I've been working up there is
Speaker 4: that used to be range land have houses on them now.
Speaker 4: So it isn't just an issue of livestock grazing on
Speaker 4: the borders of the park. You know, it's pavement, it's houses,
Speaker 4: it's fences, it's people, swing sets, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: It's encroaching and there doesn't really seem to be any
Speaker 4: end of that. And so bison and I think wildlife
Speaker 4: in particular, are increasingly hemmed in in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, you've got initiatives like out in
Speaker 4: eastern Montana with the American Prairie Foundation, where they're cobbling
Speaker 4: together private lands, you know, buying up lands from willing sellers.
Speaker 4: These lands are adjacent to public lands, and they're trying
Speaker 4: to recreate the kind of short grass prairie that we
Speaker 4: had at the time of you know, European conquest basically
Speaker 4: out there, so taking corn fields and alfalfa fields and
Speaker 4: converting those back into prairie, which is not an easy
Speaker 4: thing to do, by the way. I also think a
Speaker 4: big part of the future of bison is on Native
Speaker 4: American reservations. So increasingly you see tribes building up their
Speaker 4: herds on their lands under their management, and I think
Speaker 4: that's a big part of the bison story going forward
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: Mord and Lila echo that is there anything like population
Speaker 1: wise of the plains buffalo that y'all would like to
Speaker 1: see happen as people who have land and have livestock,
Speaker 1: would you like to see the population rise again too
Speaker 1: closer to what it used to be? Like, how do
Speaker 1: you guys feel about like how many buffalo should there
Speaker 1: be on the planes?
Speaker 3: Not one hundred million?
Speaker 5: They would overrun they would overrun Nebraska and Kansas, Missouri,
Speaker 5: and there wouldn't be as there wouldn't be any wheat fields.
Speaker 3: You know, there's they have a place, but it's.
Speaker 1: Proportionately Okay, I know futurology was last week, but I
Speaker 1: asked Dan about what might be in store for our
Speaker 1: buffalo friends. What is the aim, what's the goal in
Speaker 1: terms of numbers of bison? What can the continent support
Speaker 1: given what we've maybe done to the land in terms
Speaker 1: of agriculture.
Speaker 4: And well, it's completely in our hands. Were our hands
Speaker 4: being sort of you know, American society. If we want
Speaker 4: more bison, we can have more bison. There are ways
Speaker 4: of doing that. Likewise with other wildlife. The question is
Speaker 4: whether or not we're willing to make the choices and
Speaker 4: the trade offs in order to do that. So, for example,
Speaker 4: in Northern Yellowstone, very few bison are permitted outside the
Speaker 4: park because they interfere with agriculture. Not only just conflicts
Speaker 4: in terms of you know, raiding hayfields and busting down fences,
Speaker 4: but you know they also carry diseases, both elk and
Speaker 4: by saying Carrie, brucellosis Okay.
Speaker 1: Side note, Brucellosis is caused by bacteria and in humans
Speaker 1: It's most commonly picked up by eating unpasteurized milk or soft,
Speaker 1: squishy cheeses like a goat cheese. But who is Bruce
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 4: Back to brucellosis, and if a domestic cow contracts this disease,
Speaker 4: they're at risk of a spontaneous abortion. There's a massive
Speaker 4: economic cost to having livestock infected with bison because it
Speaker 4: means that you can't move your livestock out of state,
Speaker 4: meaning that you can't sell them across the state lines
Speaker 4: because other States don't want to get infected with brucellosis,
Speaker 4: and so it's a major economic issue having these species
Speaker 4: that carry that disease to range far and wide. And
Speaker 4: so you know, all you know, all these decisions about
Speaker 4: life management, these are all social decisions. You know, these
Speaker 4: aren't necessarily biological processes exclusively. They're very much social and
Speaker 4: cultural processes. And you know, a lot a lot of
Speaker 4: these decisions get made in you know, public meetings in
Speaker 4: very different situations with different agencies state, local, federal. And
Speaker 4: so when you say, well, how many bison could we have, well,
Speaker 4: it really is sort of depends on sort of the
Speaker 4: social economic you know, caring capacity. You know, how much
Speaker 4: are people willing to tolerate we get a bison in
Speaker 4: Cash Valley if you know, all the farmers that are
Speaker 4: graising cows or growing corn decided they wanted to raise bison.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's possible. You have private landowners in the
Speaker 4: Plane States elsewhere in the Rockies that are that are
Speaker 4: doing just that. They are raising bison for profit. They're
Speaker 4: trying to make money off of it, you know. So
Speaker 4: so there is a model for doing that. But are
Speaker 4: those you know, those livestock or they wild bison, and
Speaker 4: those are social decisions, and so that those need to
Speaker 4: be those are the kinds of conversations we need to have,
Speaker 4: knowing that upfront that these are sort of, you know,
Speaker 4: cultural discussions, that we're having social economic discussions is not
Speaker 4: so much biology, right, So what we really need to
Speaker 4: be talking to you is a sociologists and economists, right,
Speaker 4: and psychologists too, probably sociologists.
Speaker 1: I have not done an episode on you yet, but
Speaker 1: I will. Any economists, I am so sorry, but you
Speaker 1: are not econologists. Hey, all those in favor of some
Speaker 1: spin off shows maybe anologies network, you can tweet at me. Okay,
Speaker 1: but first let's bust some more myths. What about any
Speaker 1: myths or any flim flam that you would debunk that
Speaker 1: you see people having a much flam, I know, debunk it.
Speaker 1: You got the stage here.
Speaker 4: About bison specifically, Well, yeah, that I would just sort
Speaker 4: of echo Ken's point that they're not farm animals. And
Speaker 4: so if you're going to Yellowstone in the summer to
Speaker 4: see bison, don't underestimate how quick they can be to
Speaker 4: you know, kick you, pounce on you, stomp on you,
Speaker 4: and hurt you.
Speaker 6: I will cut you.
Speaker 4: Keep your distance. Other myths about bison. Here's a big myth, okay,
Speaker 4: and that is that they are a major source of brucellosis.
Speaker 4: That's a massive myth that needs to be debunked. That
Speaker 4: is has direct bearing on their conservation outlook and how
Speaker 4: people help people perceive them, how the livestock industry perceives them.
Speaker 4: To the best of my knowledge, there has not been
Speaker 4: any instance of bison infecting livestock cows outside of Yellowstone,
Speaker 4: and that all those transmissions have involved elk that have
Speaker 4: been infected with brucellosis. So bison get a bad rap.
Speaker 4: So there's still a lot of kaya would say, sort
Speaker 4: of bias culturally against bison in the livestock community. Bisoner
Speaker 4: looked at as competitors and threats.
Speaker 1: Bryden Lila echoed that and they said that it's a
Speaker 1: big limiting factor in growing bison numbers via ranching.
Speaker 5: They're they're never going to populate like beef because there's
Speaker 5: too many myths out there. For one thing is brucellosis
Speaker 5: is a big scare and it has nothing to do
Speaker 5: with the meat.
Speaker 3: But like even people here.
Speaker 5: On this reservation don't eat buffalo because they're afraid of
Speaker 5: this brucellosis stuff.
Speaker 1: Really really, so that's a big that's some flim flam
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it really is. In our our food program has
Speaker 5: buffalo meat. They have buffalo meat that they ration out,
Speaker 5: but they have they have trouble getting people to take it.
Speaker 1: Really, that's that's surprising given that buffalo is such a
Speaker 1: part of black the history. Is it ever weird to
Speaker 1: you that it's difficult to get over the myths?
Speaker 6: You know? It is?
Speaker 5: I mean because they they've spread these rumors, I don't
Speaker 5: you know, I don't know for how many a hundre
Speaker 5: years or whatever, you know.
Speaker 3: And so it's it's, uh, it's kind of frustrating that these.
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 6: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 5: The they do have several buffalo coalitions, one in North
Speaker 5: Dakota and one in South Dakota, and then one several
Speaker 5: Indian tribes are all in put buffalo.
Speaker 3: In different places.
Speaker 2: When if.
Speaker 5: Somebody in New Mexico wants buffalo, they can get buffalo
Speaker 5: from the tribal coalition.
Speaker 3: So I mean there's lots of opportunities in Buffalo.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, I found one in This week's donation
Speaker 1: goes to the Intertribal Buffalo Council, whose mission is to
Speaker 1: restore bison on tribal lands for cultural and spiritual enhancement
Speaker 1: and preservation. So the ITBC coordinates education and training programs
Speaker 1: and the transfer of surplus buffalo from national parks to
Speaker 1: tribal lands, and works with their partners including National Bison Association,
Speaker 1: the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
Speaker 1: the Wildlife Conservation Society, and more. So you can find
Speaker 1: out more about them at ITBC Buffalo Nation dot org.
Speaker 1: And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show,
Speaker 1: 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? Oh? Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: they might be stupid you okay with that? Yep, we
Speaker 1: may have gone over a little bit of this too.
Speaker 1: But John Worcester wants to know how many bison were
Speaker 1: around during their peak population period. Do you think thirty million?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think yeah.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Thirty 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. Anna Thompson, Allison Turry,
Speaker 1: Lacy j Shure, Sydney Brown, Kelly Brockington, Jessica Astra Olhaktar
Speaker 1: all kind of want to know. And Sebastian ostroprink I
Speaker 1: want to know how related are American bison and European
Speaker 1: bison like, what is there? Essentially their their closest. I know,
Speaker 1: you're like, where are they in terms of the musk
Speaker 1: ok ox and uh and water buffalo. I guess I
Speaker 1: 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 seems like it
Speaker 2: was adapted to woodlands. Okay, probably not nearly as prevalent,
Speaker 2: but probably this is good to eat. They show up
Speaker 2: in the archaeological record, so they're all they're 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.
Speaker 4: Just do it.
Speaker 1: So gross, soballer. A bunch of people had questions about
Speaker 1: their fur. Stephanie Rowerties, Bonnie Fairbanks, jen Athanos. They want
Speaker 1: to know, oh, collect airs. They want to know why
Speaker 1: do they have so much hair and fur and what
Speaker 1: makes the hair so good at insulating them? And was
Speaker 1: 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 year. Plus they're fat. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: they're they're they're well adapted to cold temperatures that you know,
Speaker 2: it gets twenty thirty below and 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 winter they have snow on
Speaker 2: their backs and the snow is not melting because of
Speaker 2: the insulation, so they're not losing a lot of heat
Speaker 2: that way. So they're well insulated and well adapted to
Speaker 2: that really extreme environments. And they you know, they live
Speaker 2: in in environments that go from minus thirty to over
Speaker 2: one hundred degrees, so they're credibly well adapted to North American.
Speaker 1: Extremes and they can handle the one hundred degree weather
Speaker 1: because again the insulation.
Speaker 2: I think they well, they lose a lot of their
Speaker 2: fur and look at the difference between a bison and
Speaker 2: the winter and a pison the summer. There they don't
Speaker 2: have a lot of fur left on them in the summertime.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it just sheds off. And yeah, just I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's any application for that, just go around
Speaker 1: collecting pison.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you go up there and look for so while that.
Speaker 1: Fur protects them from the elements. And I asked Boyd
Speaker 1: and Lila about it, having seen it firsthand half the
Speaker 1: year where it can get to negative fifty degrees fahrenheit. Also,
Speaker 1: just super side note, just this past week, my dad,
Speaker 1: which is your grandpad, just told us a story about
Speaker 1: growing up in Montana walking to school a mile and
Speaker 1: a half each way in snowy negative seventy degree weather,
Speaker 1: and Pop, I am so sorry. I live in LA
Speaker 1: and I use a space heater when it dips below seventy.
Speaker 1: I just do not possess the Montana vigor of the bison.
Speaker 1: How do they do in the snow? Like? How cold
Speaker 1: does it get up in Brownie?
Speaker 6: Snow doesn't bother them at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, cold cold doesn't bother me either.
Speaker 5: They're kind of the opposite of cows.
Speaker 3: Buffalo looks into the wind into the storm and the
Speaker 3: cow turns back to right. They really do. I mean,
Speaker 3: in fact, they're totally different than storms.
Speaker 1: And then what is 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 fur.
Speaker 3: Kind of wooly?
Speaker 5: They have a nice fur, but they're more wooly than
Speaker 5: It's not just hair, it's more of a cross between
Speaker 5: hair and bold.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that story when we were up at
Speaker 1: the homestead and you guys had the teepee up and
Speaker 1: it was me and my parents sleeping in it. So
Speaker 1: we're sleeping 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 it was a buffalo because
Speaker 1: my mom and I have such curly hair. My dad
Speaker 1: miss took the buffalo hide for my mom's curly hair.
Speaker 7: Well, if he ever gets lonesome, now you know what,
Speaker 7: I'll get 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, and.
Speaker 1: That's where they full off is just wallowing. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes sense because someone asked why they wallow and I
Speaker 1: thought they just meant, like in disposition that they were
Speaker 1: kind of emo. So I thought they just seemed like
Speaker 1: an eore and I was like, that's rude. But okay,
Speaker 1: so wallowing is an actual orb but it relates to
Speaker 1: behavior that makes some sense. Some people asked Melissa Houston
Speaker 1: and Mike Melscheer asked about the roaming and why they roam. Also,
Speaker 1: Mike Melscheer 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 did they roam?
Speaker 1: Why were they on the moon so much? And did
Speaker 1: 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 eat. So that's
Speaker 2: why they're constantly on a move.
Speaker 1: Were going shoving, so they've already eaten that patch and
Speaker 1: now they're just keep going yep.
Speaker 2: Oh god.
Speaker 1: It kind of like really big furry locusts.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that makes some sense. Very big locus, huge locus.
Speaker 2: Let see more cuddly than locus though, I think.
Speaker 1: I think they're more cuttly. I think they would probably
Speaker 1: pick to differth They're like, no, we're not, don't touch me, okay,
Speaker 1: So side note. The excellent science writer and Young published
Speaker 1: a piece in The Atlantic a few months back titled
Speaker 1: What America Lost When it Lost the Bison, and it
Speaker 1: was about bisons surfing a green wave of new shoots
Speaker 1: and grasses to eat, and researchers recently discovered that the
Speaker 1: bison's grazing changes the landscape and young rights. In areas
Speaker 1: where bison grays, plants contain fifty more nutrients by the
Speaker 1: end of the summer. This not only provides extra nourishment
Speaker 1: for other grazers, but prolongs the growing season of the
Speaker 1: plants themselves, Yong continues, when we lose animals, we also
Speaker 1: lose everything those animals do. When bison are exterminated, springtime
Speaker 1: changes in ways we still don't fully understand. At you
Speaker 1: all so good? Okay, other things you don't understand. But
Speaker 1: as always, McKenzie Miller wants to know why, oh why
Speaker 1: are their rears so small? It doesn't make any sense visually,
Speaker 1: Please rescue me evolutionary logic. Why do they have such
Speaker 1: small butts? That's a good question. I guess. It's all
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 2: Hump, I guess, and that's where their power 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, mean,
Speaker 1: what's their temperament? Like do they have friends? This is
Speaker 1: a lot of questions, and I'm not sorry they say,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: They're certainly prevalent in our lexicon, and I think maybe
Speaker 2: that goes back to their just because they're such an
Speaker 2: iconic species.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have this question. Raymond J. Deutsge,
Speaker 1: Laura Kunitz, and Heather Dunsmore all wanted to know our
Speaker 1: bison related to wooly mammoths.
Speaker 2: Not in the least really, other.
Speaker 1: Than their mammals. The bison, by the way, as of
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, is the official mammal of the United States,
Speaker 1: so their hair has nothing nothing to do with it. Okay.
Speaker 1: Lower Merriman wants to know in Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Speaker 1: bathroom source as sign this as bison can weigh up
Speaker 1: to two thousand pounds and run up to thirty miles
Speaker 1: per hour, which is three times faster than you. Is
Speaker 1: that true? And what do you do if you upset
Speaker 1: a danger cow?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, hide behind a rock.
Speaker 2: The bessaying is not together?
Speaker 4: Mad, yeah?
Speaker 1: Mad. Charlotte Grazera Witz wants to know I heard somewhere
Speaker 1: that bison can jump six feet in the ar Is
Speaker 1: this 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 attests to the quality of their eyesight. As
Speaker 2: we had an excavation unit opened up and we were
Speaker 2: eating lunch and a little bit removed from probably about
Speaker 2: twenty yards away from our excavation unit and his loan
Speaker 2: bull came came walking up and got right to the
Speaker 2: edge of our hole and saw it, and he kind
Speaker 2: of wheeled up like who was Yeah, that was pretty
Speaker 2: freaking all.
Speaker 1: Like can you imagine if a bull tumbled into your hole?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all we could think. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: who's going to get that one out?
Speaker 5: Oh no?
Speaker 1: But have you ever had a scary encounter with a bison?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Again, working along Yellowstone Lake with geologist Ken Pierce were
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.
Speaker 4: He's like.
Speaker 2: And then we jump back down and he went on
Speaker 2: as merry way, and but that was that was kind
Speaker 2: of freaky.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that they startle. I mean, I guess they're
Speaker 1: probably not Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Think a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think their their eyesight is not great and
Speaker 2: you know, well suddenly say this funny white guy with
Speaker 2: a hat on and it's like, what would you do
Speaker 2: coming up out of the GORYA. 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 and bison. I don't think they were. I
Speaker 2: think the biggest problem was is they were using mail
Speaker 2: or bull bison and and cow cattle, and a lot
Speaker 2: of times the the the babies, the fetuses were too big,
Speaker 2: and we're killing the cow. You know, there's there's b
Speaker 2: flows out there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you wouldn't breed like a Yorky mom with
Speaker 1: a great Dane dad. Also, I feel you should know
Speaker 1: that some cattle by and hybrids are called buffalo or catalow,
Speaker 1: and I think personally agent Catalo sounds like a really
Speaker 1: good TV spy name. PS. Neither one of them have
Speaker 1: a favorite buffalo movie. I tried.
Speaker 4: I asked, I have a buffalo joke, though I'll hear it.
Speaker 2: Okay, what does the mom with buffalo say to their
Speaker 2: kids as they go off to school? By son?
Speaker 4: 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 ecologist 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 ecologist Dan. Can I ask you some
Speaker 1: Patreon questions, some listener questions?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 1: Victoria demerist, Kathleen fast Ivory, debtor want to know what's
Speaker 1: up with birds and bison and so why are they
Speaker 1: just hanging out just kicking it? Sitting on their humps
Speaker 1: and picking at their wounds.
Speaker 4: It's going on with the words, Oh, they're eating parasites, Okay, yeah, ticks, flies,
Speaker 4: things like that. You see this with magpies. We'll sort
Speaker 4: of perch on a bison and you know, do a
Speaker 4: little foraging.
Speaker 1: Okay, they're bros though they're friends.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's not very convincing. However, if the bison is
Speaker 4: sick and if it does have a wound, it can
Speaker 4: attract a lot of scavengers and it turns into sort
Speaker 4: of more of a harassment type of an issue. Yeah. Yeah, so,
Speaker 4: but generally speaking, you know, it's it's not a big
Speaker 4: deal for bison to have a magpie on them.
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 4: Wow, that's a really the interesting question. I did not
Speaker 4: know of that myth, and so I really can't comment on,
Speaker 4: you know, whether it was a good one or a
Speaker 4: bad one, other than obviously it's not true. They do
Speaker 4: 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 past ologists. 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 4: 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 4: Yeah, I'm sorry, 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 uestion, and
Speaker 1: I will put them all on the side, possibly hungry
Speaker 1: patrons Teresa Dizazzo and Layol Staffkova, plus a bounty of
Speaker 1: first time question askers Britney k Milo Questa, Hollybood, Dan
Speaker 1: Yellow Buchanan, Michelle Grondin, and Samantha Kenny specifically all asked
Speaker 1: why do we eat bison burgers? Are there enough bison
Speaker 1: for that? And if they're threatened to low numbers, how
Speaker 1: can they be used as a food product? Oh, well
Speaker 1: they're commercial herds, Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they live on big ranches out in places like
Speaker 4: South Dakota elsewhere. Yeah, so these are not what I
Speaker 4: would call conservation herds like Yellowstone or wind Cave or
Speaker 4: the Henry Mountains or National Bison Range. Those wild conservation
Speaker 4: herds are not you know, they're not turned into burgers
Speaker 4: at restaurants. Now. They're hunted, you know, right, So Yellowstone
Speaker 4: bison are hunted, but there's a tribal hunt every fall
Speaker 4: that occurs on the northern end of the park, and
Speaker 4: then the Henry Mountains heard is hunted. The Utah Division
Speaker 4: Wildlife oversees that hunt. But these aren't animals that are,
Speaker 4: you know, being shipped to processing plants. These are that's
Speaker 4: 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 4: 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
Speaker 2: task on.
Speaker 1: That seems is that a political choice? It couldn't be
Speaker 1: that big an oversight. I'll look into that.
Speaker 4: That's 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: boonmed by European settlers, the bison were just considered ecologically stinct,
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 he'll be fine, kiddo level of protection. Bridget Fitzgerald,
Speaker 1: Queen Bee Ceramics, and Carla Hickenlooper said Queen Bee 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's going on with it?
Speaker 4: Well, they're dealing with the difficult problem in terms of
Speaker 4: increasing numbers of bison and not necessarily increasing amounts of
Speaker 4: area in which to have bison, and so they're forced
Speaker 4: to come up with the plan to keep numbers at
Speaker 4: a level that, you know, in which they have enough
Speaker 4: habitat for him. Because if bison aren't allowed to roam
Speaker 4: unhindered outside the park, then you're gonna need fewer bison.
Speaker 4: But I think what listeners also have to be really
Speaker 4: clear about is that wildlife being called and Yellowstone is
Speaker 4: not a new phenomena new thing, and of course bison
Speaker 4: now aren't being called inside the park. There's a sort
Speaker 4: of broader misconception that wildlife and Yellowstone are free from
Speaker 4: human interference, and that is not the case. You're moving
Speaker 4: across the park boundary and you're dealing with human beings
Speaker 4: and that often means having to dodge a bullet and
Speaker 4: that's been a part of life as a large mammal,
Speaker 4: large non human mammal in Yellowstone, you know, really since
Speaker 4: 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 2: Lack of funding, Yeah, that's the biggest thing. Grants trying
Speaker 2: to find funds, Yeah, and spending an inordinate amount of
Speaker 2: time begging for money 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 your angle
Speaker 1: more ecological or anthropological?
Speaker 4: It's both.
Speaker 2: It depends on what we're looking for. My dissertation research
Speaker 2: and continue research on is bison ecology. So it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's understanding the ecology of bison. And yeah, it's it's tough.
Speaker 2: M We don't need a lot of money. We work
Speaker 2: really cheaply and get a lot out of the money
Speaker 2: we do get.
Speaker 1: How much does a field season cost? I asked this
Speaker 1: of a dinosaur, of a paleontologist. He could fund a
Speaker 1: field season for less than a used toyota?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: What I was like, you could have the cheapest wedding,
Speaker 1: or you could find a dinosaur. 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: to get reelected. Well so do we? Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: think we do a better job with the money that
Speaker 2: 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 3: What sucks?
Speaker 1: Does it get cold? Do you get snow in your pants?
Speaker 1: Something must suck?
Speaker 4: And I think this is not an uncommon complaint. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of people have this problem with their jobs.
Speaker 4: Is just the volume of work that we're all expected
Speaker 4: to do in a very short period of time and
Speaker 4: trying to do it all as well as you want
Speaker 4: 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 4: The best thing about my job is that, for the
Speaker 4: most part, I get to set my own agenda in
Speaker 4: terms of the questions that I ask the people that
Speaker 4: I seek out as collaborate. Is there all decisions that
Speaker 4: I get to make? And what was the other part
Speaker 4: of your question?
Speaker 1: Just what you like about your job or about Bison?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: About Bison? I like bison because they're so tough. Byson
Speaker 4: are really interesting because you know, you'll see them out
Speaker 4: in the landscape and they'll sort of lull you into
Speaker 4: this sort of false sense of knowing what they're all about, because, oh,
Speaker 4: there they are. There's a herd of bison, and that's
Speaker 4: the same herd of bison that was there last year
Speaker 4: and the year before that, year before that. All of
Speaker 4: a sudden, the following year, they're gone. You don't know
Speaker 4: why they're gone, where did they go, why did they leave?
Speaker 4: And so I think bison are they can be surprising
Speaker 4: in a very unpredictable way, right, I mean a lot
Speaker 4: that seems kind of silly to say, but they can
Speaker 4: catch you off guard, and so that's what makes them
Speaker 4: 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 and my
Speaker 2: best friends I've met doing this work. My wife I
Speaker 2: met 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.
Speaker 1: How'd you guys meet She was working with me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you guys work alongside each other for a while
Speaker 1: 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. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's actually her boss.
Speaker 1: But it seemed like it worked out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she has.
Speaker 2: You have to file any suits 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?
Speaker 3: Broke?
Speaker 1: Oh no, how did it break?
Speaker 4: 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 storing up.
Speaker 2: For them, doing that for way too long.
Speaker 1: So great people, wonderful.
Speaker 2: People, Yes, wonderful people.
Speaker 1: It never gets old.
Speaker 2: It never gets old. No, it never does.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for talking to me about bison.
Speaker 2: And thanks to your listeners, sir, great questions.
Speaker 1: They care about bison, they do.
Speaker 4: 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 char It's way into your heart.
Speaker 3: Oh they're really playful really Oh yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 5: You can watch them and chase each other around over
Speaker 5: there and run and jump and play.
Speaker 7: And then if a car stops to watch them, they
Speaker 7: all stop and watch the carture.
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 6: Oh, you're Martin, welcome. We have an extra bed at
Speaker 6: the house.
Speaker 1: Ya. One more very important question. Do buffaloes accept hugs
Speaker 1: or is that a bad idea?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 6: Bad idea?
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, all.
Speaker 1: Right, fine, I'll cross that off my list. Then I
Speaker 1: won't hug.
Speaker 3: Yeah you don't want to when you.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll make sure my health insurance policy is up
Speaker 1: to date.
Speaker 3: Before.
Speaker 7: But when you come up, we'll take you out to
Speaker 7: a guy's place set out by the border that has
Speaker 7: white buffalo.
Speaker 1: What there's white buffalo.
Speaker 5: Some of them are born white and some of them
Speaker 5: 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: The white buffalo is yeah, that's yeah. What is really?
Speaker 6: Big medicine to all the drives?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Big medicine.
Speaker 3: It's like the top of the medicine.
Speaker 6: Insists.
Speaker 1: So he's like, god, yeah, oh wow, gosh, I bet
Speaker 1: that's got to be such a sight to see, especially
Speaker 1: in the snow.
Speaker 3: They're pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this makes me want to look at
Speaker 1: pictures of buffalo all day now. I just want to
Speaker 1: go online look at pictures of buffalo. Me go do that.
Speaker 1: We'll have a good rest of your Sunday.
Speaker 6: You guys, yup, you too?
Speaker 1: Okay? Bye, love you guys. I love you, bye bye, son,
Speaker 1: love you too. But I will not hug you out
Speaker 1: of respect of your big ass horns. So if you
Speaker 1: loved all of these folks, head to Aliward dot com
Speaker 1: slash ologies slash bisonology to find out more. About them
Speaker 1: and some links to the organizations we talked about and
Speaker 1: to the sponsors of the show. Those links are also
Speaker 1: always in the show notes, and you can please be
Speaker 1: our friend on Instagram and Twitter. We're at Ologies. I'm
Speaker 1: at ali Ward with one l on both and you
Speaker 1: can subscribe and rate and leave a review for me
Speaker 1: to read possibly on the podcast on Apple Podcasts or iTunes.
Speaker 1: Ologies t shirts and hats and tots and sweatshirts and
Speaker 1: socks are available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon
Speaker 1: Feltus and Bonnie Dutch of the comedy podcast You Are
Speaker 1: That for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannahlippo
Speaker 1: for admitting the Ologies Facebook group. Leaped episodes and transcripts
Speaker 1: 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 of the mental
Speaker 1: health podcast My Good Bad Brain for staying up way
Speaker 1: too late helping me string this Beastly Beastly episode out
Speaker 1: while I was in the middle of a really tough
Speaker 1: weekend worrying about my sick pops, who's now on the ment.
Speaker 1: Love you, Pops and Mom. I'm so sorry that I
Speaker 1: told the buffalo story, but I'm very proud to share
Speaker 1: your curly headed gens. And thank you, as always every
Speaker 1: week to the rare, gentle creature Stephen Ray Morris and
Speaker 1: his buffalo mustache for bearing with tight deadlines and multiple
Speaker 1: files and editing all our pieces together to get it
Speaker 1: to your ears on time. And if you'd like to
Speaker 1: spend time with Stephen Ray Morris, heads up on Caturday,
Speaker 1: January eighteenth, He's hosting Jurassic January with Jurassic Park trivia
Speaker 1: and themed cocktail and it'll benefit Sante Door Kitty Rescue.
Speaker 1: And that is at idle Hour on Vineland in LA.
Speaker 1: That's on January eighteenth. 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 r
Speaker 1: Indians every few years in Montana are what made me
Speaker 1: love science so much. And I'm so lucky to have
Speaker 1: gotten to sit on a dock in the summer and
Speaker 1: watch these bats at dusk and see these big, huge
Speaker 1: osprey nests and get to sleep at a family teepee
Speaker 1: and hear stories. For the longest time, I thought that
Speaker 1: when you just get older, you start talking weird. And
Speaker 1: then I learned later that it was just my aunt's
Speaker 1: Montana accents. And we'd sometimes call my grandpa on the
Speaker 1: phone and we'd ask what he was up to you,
Speaker 1: and he'd say, oh, you know, just watching the wind blow.
Speaker 1: And the older I get, the more the hobby seems
Speaker 1: like tied as hell. Also side note, if I can
Speaker 1: improve any language, or if you have anyone you think
Speaker 1: I should interview, please email me through the website Aliward
Speaker 1: dot com. And I'm so hanging on emails, but I
Speaker 1: will get through as many as possible. Okay, Bye bye, pacodermatology,
Speaker 1: hobiology or do zoology, lithology, zerology, meteorology, pedatology, anthology, zeriology, elinology.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Bisner are super tasty.