American bison

The American bison, commonly known as the American buffalo, or simply buffalo, is a species of bison that is endemic to North America. It is one of two extant species of bison, along with the European bison. Its historical range circa 9000 BC is referred to as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland spanning from Alaska south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Seaboard, as far north as New York, south to Georgia, and according to some sources, further south to northern Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750.
Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described: the plains bison, smaller and with a more rounded hump; and the wood bison, the larger of the two and having a taller, square hump. Furthermore, the plains bison has been suggested to consist of a northern plains and a southern plains subspecies, bringing the total to three. However, this is generally not supported. The wood bison is one of the largest wild species of extant bovid in the world, surpassed only by the Asian gaur. Among extant land animals in North America, the bison is the heaviest and the longest, and the second tallest after the moose.
Once roaming in vast herds, the species nearly became extinct by a combination of commercial hunting and slaughter in the 19th century and introduction of bovine diseases from domestic cattle. With an estimated population of 60 million in the late 18th century, the species was culled down to just 541 animals by 1889 as part of the subjugation of the Native Americans, because the American bison was a major resource for their traditional way of life. Recovery efforts expanded in the mid-20th century, with a resurgence to roughly 31,000 wild bison as of March 2019. For many years, the population was primarily found in a few national parks and reserves. Through multiple reintroductions, the species now freely roams wild in several regions in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Others are kept in smaller natural areas as conservation herds, while some are also kept in private commercial herds. The American bison has also been introduced in Russia, with a population established in Ingilor Nature Park in Yakutia.
Spanning back millennia, Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains have had cultural and spiritual connections to the American bison. It is the national mammal of the United States.

Etymology

In American English, both buffalo and bison are considered correct terms for the American bison. However, in British English, the word buffalo is reserved for the African buffalo and water buffalo and not used for the bison.
In English usage, the term buffalo was used to refer to the American mammal as early as 1625. The word bison was applied in the 1690s.
Buffalo was applied to the American bison by Samuel de Champlain as the French word buffles in 1616, after seeing skins and a drawing. These were shown to him by members of the Nipissing First Nation, who said they traveled forty days to trade with another nation who hunted the animals. Buffel in turn comes from Portuguese bufalo, which comes from Latin bufalus, from Greek boubalos. The same Greek word boubalos is also the origin for the Bubal hartebeest.
Bison was borrowed from French bison in the early 17th century, from Latin bison, from a Proto-Germanic word similar to wisent and, per Etymonline, first applied to American buffalo in the 1690s.
In Plains Indian languages in general, male and female bison are distinguished, with each having a different designation rather than there being a single generic word covering both sexes. Thus:

in Arapaho: bii, henéécee
in Lakota: pté, tȟatȟáŋka

Such a distinction is not a general feature of the language, and so presumably is due to the special significance of the bison in Plains Indian life and culture.

Description

A bison has a shaggy, long, dark-brown winter coat, and a lighter-weight, lighter-brown summer coat. Male bison are significantly larger and heavier than females. Plains bison are often in the smaller range of sizes, and wood bison in the larger range. Head-rump lengths at maximum up to for males and for females long and the tail adding. Heights at withers in the species can reach up to for B. b. bison and B. b. athabascae respectively. Typically weights can range from, with medians of and in males, and with medians of in females, although the lowest weights probably representing typical weight around the age of sexual maturity at 2 to 3 years of age.
The heaviest wild bull for B.b.bison ever recorded weighed while there had been bulls estimated to be. B.b.athabascae is significantly larger and heavier on average than B.b.bison while the number of recorded samples for the former was limited after the rediscovery of a relatively pure herd. Elk Island National Park, which has wild populations of both wood and plains bison, has recorded maximum weights for bull bison of and , but noted that three-quarters of all bison over were wood bison. When raised in captivity and farmed for meat, the bison can grow unnaturally heavy and the largest semidomestic bison weighed. The heads and forequarters are massive, and both sexes have short, curved horns that can grow up to long with to width, which they use in fighting for status within the herd and for defense.
Bison are herbivores, grazing on the grasses and sedges of the North American prairies. Their daily schedule involves two-hour periods of grazing, resting, and cud chewing, then moving to a new location to graze again. Sexually mature young bulls may try to start mating with cows by the age of two or three years, but if more mature bulls are present, they may not be able to compete until they reach five years of age.
For the first two months of life, calves are lighter in color than mature bison. Though extremely rare, white buffalos exist.

Evolution

Bison are members of the tribe Bovini. Genetic evidence from nuclear DNA indicates that the closest living relatives of bison are yaks, with bison being nested within the genus Bos, rendering Bos without including bison paraphyletic. While nuclear DNA indicates that the two living bison species are each other's closest living relatives, the mitochondrial DNA of European bison is more closely related to that of domestic cattle and aurochs, which is suggested to be the result of either incomplete lineage sorting or ancient introgression.
Bison first appeared in Asia during the Early Pleistocene, around 2.6 million years ago. Bison only arrived in North America 195,000 to 135,000 years ago, during the late Middle Pleistocene, descending from the widespread Siberian steppe bison, which had migrated through Beringia. Following their first appearance in North America, the bison rapidly differentiated into new species, such as the largest of all bison, the long-horned Bison latifrons, along with Bison antiquus. The first appearance of bison in North America is considered to define the regional Rancholabrean faunal stage, due to its major impact on the ecology of the continent. Modern American bison are thought to have evolved from B. antiquus at the end of the Late Pleistocene - beginning of the Holocene, with likely intermediates between the species referred to as Bison "occidentalis". The North American bison population experienced demographic stability during the Middle Holocene but began a slow decline in the Late Holocene beginning about 2,700 BP.

Differences from European bison

Although they are superficially similar, the American and European bison exhibit a number of physical and behavioral differences. Adult American bison are slightly heavier on average because of their less rangy build and have shorter legs, which render them slightly shorter at the shoulder. American bison tend to graze more and browse less than their European relatives because their necks are set differently. Compared to the nose of the American bison, that of the European species is set farther forward than the forehead when the neck is in a neutral position. The body of the American bison is hairier, though its tail has less hair than that of the European bison. The horns of the European bison point forward through the plane of its face, making it more adept at fighting through the interlocking of horns in the same manner as domestic cattle, unlike the American bison, which favors charging. American bison are more easily tamed than the European and breed more readily with domestic cattle.

Crossbreeding with cattle

During the population bottleneck, after the great slaughter of American bison during the 19th century, the number of bison remaining alive in North America declined to as low as 541. During that period, a handful of ranchers gathered remnants of the existing herds to save the species from extinction. These ranchers bred some of the bison with cattle in an effort to produce "cattalo" or "beefalo". Accidental crossings were also known to occur. Generally, male domestic bulls were crossed with bison cows, producing offspring of which only the females were fertile. The crossbred animals did not demonstrate any form of hybrid vigor, so the practice was abandoned. The proportion of cattle DNA that has been measured in introgressed individuals and bison herds today is typically quite low, ranging from 0.56 to 1.8%. Many claimed "beefalo", even those regarded as pedigree, have no detectable bison ancestry. In the United States, many ranchers are now using DNA testing to cull the residual cattle genetics from their bison herds. The U.S. National Bison Association has adopted a code of ethics which prohibits its members from deliberately crossbreeding bison with any other species.