Ologies with Alie Ward - Bisonology (BUFFALO) with various bisonologists

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Bison bison! Not just something to holler into the sky, but also the scientific name for North America's majestic wild bovines that once roamed the plains in the tens of millions. What's up with their humps? On what occasion do they wear capes? What noises do they make? How many are out there? What are the best ways to help them? In this special episode, you get 4x the usual number of ologists as we talk to archeologist Dr. Ken Cannon, wildlife biologist Dr. Dan McNulty, Alie's cousin Boyd and his wife Lila Evans, of the Blackfeet Tribe, who are bison ranchers based in Northern Montana. Also, once and for all: is it buffalo or bison? And can Alie hug one?A donation went to: InterTribal Bison Council (ITBC)More episode sources & linksSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts & bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's your forgotten half can of La Croix that's just cold, just fizzy enough to keep drinking it and not throw it away, alleyward. Back with a very, very weird odd episode of oligies. If this is not your first oligies, rodeo, you know that each episode, I usually talk to one oligist, but for some reason, I don't know, man, Bison just threw us for a very rare loop. So this episode is kind of more like a buffalo party, four times the usual number of interviews Yes, that's right, four times.

So if you were actually listening to this, it means that this episode did not kill me and I am thankful for that. So other things I'm thankful for every week, of course, are y'all, everyone on patreon.com slash oligies for supporting this show, everyone in oligiesmerch from oligiesmerch.com and all the folks who tweet or tell a friend and are subscribed and rate the show and of course review because you know, I creep them every week and it's proof I pick a fresh one. Such as this week, CMM says, oligies is charming, informative, hilarious, and consistently good. This podcast highlights the joy that comes from being curious with nothing dubbed too

boring because nothing is, if you think about it closely enough, five stars, Ellie. I've actually shed at least two tears reading out into that cup, it really got me this time. Also, Hannah Christopher, thanks for your review. I hope that your Tinder match who recommended this is a good one. Good luck out there. Okay, Bisonology. So Bison, it's Baltic or Slavic origin.

It comes from the word wesund, which means the stinking animal because of its musk while running. And the word Bison is distantly related to the word weasel, which is also stinky. So weasel and bison, one is hulking, billowing steam into the cold air and the other is a sock with a face. Etymology, y'all. Okay, so I had every intention of just following my usual very comfy, broken in, denim, and denim, oligies format, one oligist, but this episode was just like a pair of jeans that

just kept growing more pockets. And I first reached out to this well-known archaeologist who traces the history of Bison across like tens of thousands of years in North America. But before our meetup at a Hampton Inn, naturally, in Utah, he was like, hey, can I bring a plus one? He actually wrote about a colleague via email beforehand and said, I thought having us both in the interview might be a bit more compelling since we're both working with Bison but on different ends of the holocene, mine being the pre-contact record and dance research

on the present population. We've been trying to find the time and our schedules to work together and discuss it over beer and coffee, not mixed, so this may do it. So I said, yeah, bring them along, let's shoot some Bison shit. So we met up, we had a good chat, but I also found myself wanting the voice of someone with an indigenous perspective and also perhaps someone who works day to day with Bison. And I'm like, I'm going to need a party bus to fit all the folks I wanted to talk Buffalo with.

But luckily, my wonderful cousin raises Bison in the snowy vistas of Browning in Northern Montana and his amazing wife is, of course, also a Bison rancher and a member of the Black Feet tribe. And so this past Sunday afternoon, I call them up, got them on the horn, and they got on speaker and they let me ask them all kinds of Buffalo questions, including if it's okay to hug one. So rather than one singular person's long thread becoming kind of like a crocheted blanket, this episode is just a rare oligies quilt of sorts, all about the world of Bison or

Buffalo. Fuck. I don't know. We got to figure out the difference. Okay, so you're going to hear from Ken Cannon, who is a New Jersey born and now Utah based research professor of anthropology at Utah State University, who studies ancient Bison and gives talks like Rolling Thunder, 10,000 years of Bison in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

And he has short, cropped hair, rosy cheeks, and a salt and pepper goatee. He looks like he could have been a rugby player in another life. So that's Ken. And he brought along Utah State University ecologist Dan McNulty, who spent years in Yellowstone studying animal behavior. And he has sandy blonde hair. He's a little more wiry than Ken. And I cannot explain why, but Dan looks like a Ken and Ken looks like a Dan.

And that screwed me up editing this entire episode. But yes, Dan studies the more modern era of Bison. Lila Evans is my beloved cousin-in-law and she served in the Montana House of Representatives. And I always just picture her in a business blazer, even though she's probably more likely like bundled in fleece because it's January in Montana right now. And her longtime husband is my cousin, Boyd Evans, who's tall and gangly and wrangler jeans. He has a handlebar mustache and a rain-stained cowboy hat and a great laugh.

So I told you, this is a weird and wonderful episode and a break from the usual format. And if you hear it and you're like, I don't like that it's four people instead of one, don't worry, calm down. This is a rare exception. If I did one of these every week, I would never sleep and I would be so tired, I would just move to another country and have a coconut stand. So I just made this one a Bison bonanza because I wanted to do the animal and the community and the topic justice.

So hop on, hang tight and learn how big a Bison is, what their fur feels like, how many there used to be, how many there are now, how do they do a headcount and what that lumpy hump is for, what a Bison's favorite treat is, and what noises they make and the difference between raising cows and Bison and how their very existence and survival has been politicized and continues to be and also maybe the worst sentence in the English language. As we talk to academics and hands-on ranchers, all four of whom in their own way are professional Bisonologists. Okay let's get right into it.

The first person I had approached was the one I interviewed. Dr. Ken Cannon. And you're a Bisonologist. That's part of my jobs, yes. Is this news to you that you're a Bisonologist? Yes it is, very much so. I haven't heard that term before.

Would you ever use that term like in a cocktail party, like, I'm a Bisonologist? I think so. Yeah? Yeah, I think so. Well, you're welcome. Yeah, thank you. And so how long have you been studying Bison? Well, I first got interested in Bison when I started working for National Park Service

in 1987 when I was just a little kid and I got interested in it because we were working at Grand Teton National Park and there was an archaeological site there that referred to itself as a Bison kill site, a Bison jump site. It was interpreted in numerous different ways and at the time there weren't that many Bison in Grand Teton National Park. P.S. Grand Teton is in Wyoming and if you're like, I'm in New Zealand, I have no idea where your parks are.

Yellowstone in Wyoming, the answer is yes and I'm sorry. So both are gorgeous, mountainous, grassy places in Wyoming. They're just a few miles away from each other, but they have separate entrance fees unless you get like one big pass that covers both. So essentially Yellowstone is Disneyland and Grand Teton is California Adventure. Okay. Anyway, in the late 1980s, when Ken started, there were not many Bison there. And the previous archeologists that worked there always minimized the presence of Bison

in there. And so I just started looking at the literature and the more I looked at the literature, every time there were fallen remains, bones preserved at archeological sites, nine out of 10 times there were Bison bones. And it's like, well, how can you minimize Bison in the archeological record when all the bones that you're finding are Bison bones? So that just got me going and I moved up and started working in Yellowstone National Park and got more interested in Bison and this wonderful mammal that's, that was an incredible

part of our ecosystem, shaped a large part of North American ecosystem and why we don't know a lot about it. Most of what we know about it is from small herds, anecdotal historical records. So I really wanted to try and understand at least the Yellowstone, Bison, a little bit more detail. How old were those kill sites and what exactly is a kill site? So a kill site, it can vary in a lot of different ways. The traditional ones that we always think of for Great Plains are running Bison over

a cliff, hundreds of Bison over a cliff and then dispatching them at the bottom of the cliff. This is a kind of a stupid question, but when you say a kill site, like let's say they were over a cliff, is that for to then use that meat and fur or was that like a hunting technique? Yes, it was a hunting technique, yeah. So that was the easiest, I guess, and most economically efficient way of getting a lot of Bison to get you into the winter. So typically they're in the fall, these events happen.

Bison are coming into the fall in the winter, so they're really fat and fat's good. Not like today, but fat was good back then. Everybody, all hunter-gatherers, everybody wanted fat. So you hunted Bison in the fall, they're at their prime nutritionally, their fur is at prime, so you get some really nice skins for making clothing and teepees and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, so that was an efficient way of doing it. Going back into some history, much, much more recent, tell me a little bit about how you

started to love Bison. Now you mentioned that you have a New Jersey accent. Yeah. Okay. So now you grew up in New Jersey, but what brought you out to Yellowstone and the Natural Park Service? At what point did you want to start working in nature? Well, I've always wanted to work in nature.

I grew up in New Jersey, sure, and I actually started out as wanting to be a marine biologist. So my undergraduate work was as a biologist, like Jacque Rousseau, because I used to scoop a dive and hang out on a beach and I swear when I was 17, I would never live more than half a mile from the ocean. And here we are in Utah. So be careful about the things that you say, put out there in nature, until the gods. Okay, no, you're not losing your mind. Last week's guest, futurologist Rose Evelith, also wanted to follow in the flipper steps

of Jacque Rousseau before finding her own path, weird, cute, right? Anyway, so I went there and I got a little bit frustrated with the biology program there. It was largely geared towards pre-med students, but then I started taking anthropology courses. It was a small program, really good professors, treated you like a human being and not just a number. And I learned that I could do biology as an archaeologist. So Ken graduated from the University of Florida and did grad school in Tennessee and then got his PhD from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln studying the biogeography of prehistoric

bison isotopes. So how did this Jersey dude wind up so far from the sea? I wanted to get out of town, essentially, and see something different. And as a fluke, I just applied for a job at the National Park Service and got hired by the Midwest Archaeological Center. And the first job was to go and work in Grand Teton National Park. So it's just those weird things that happen in life and you just got to kind of go, okay, let's go.

Let's go. Let's go. So yeah, it wasn't a plan. But it seems like it served you well. Yeah, yeah, I'm very glad that it all happened. I remember when I got hired and drove out, I had this, of course, I had a nice little VW bug that I drove all the way out to Grand Teton from Tennessee. And when I got there, my boss told me, it's like, you were the last person we picked.

Ouch. I said, okay, well, mostly because I didn't have any experience out there. But it was a slam and I was like, okay, I'm going to take that as a challenge. Right. You know. Do you live up to it then? I don't know. I'm still trying.

You're still trying. It's an ongoing process. Is there something about Bison themselves that intrigued you? I feel like as an American, I think there's so much lore and history and maybe even a dark history to them as well. Is that something that kind of grabbed you as an archaeologist? It grabbed me as an archaeologist because in the mountains, they were never seen as being an important part of the subsistence economy of Native American groups.

And that was intriguing to me. But also, I think you're right. Yeah, there's an iconic history to Bison. It is a deep, dark history, but it's also a very exciting positive history because we brought them back from extinction and it was the efforts by a small group of people that this is crazy. We go from 30 million to down to 19 or 100 or whatever the number was at the turn of the last century.

I think that's a big part of it is that story, that resurrection story is there too, but they're cool animals. I mean, just go out and they're just cool to sit and watch. They're majestic. They are majestic, yes. Now, Ken's colleague, Dr. Dan McNulty, no relation to Squid Expert, Sarah McNulty, got his bachelor's in environmental studies at the University of Colorado and got a master's in wildlife conservation and a PhD in ecology, evolution, and behavior from the University

of Minnesota. So, how did he get lured into the Bison life? And now, are you from Utah? No. I was born in Illinois, grew up in California, went to school in Colorado. So one might say you've been roaming around as well? I have been a bit nomadic. No, not lately.

And so you are a bisonologist. You study bison as part of your job, whether you would call yourself that or not. I would say that bisonology is part of my program, yeah. And so how long have you been into science and field work and animals? What was it that drew you to this? Well, I lived in Hong Kong for three years when I was in junior high. And so that was obviously a very urban environment. And when I got back to California, I was like in the eighth or seventh grade, and we lived

on the edge of big open space, lots of live oaks and hills, and it kind of just sucked me in. Sucked me right in. Soon after we got back, and I've been kind of at it since then. And actually, even before that, I grew up riding horses with my dad in that country and just got really into it once I got back from that little stay in Hong Kong. And just a lot of time spent camping, hiking. Dan said growing up, he always loved animals and being out in nature, observing them.

But I never really thought I'd actually make a career of it. I was an undergraduate at Boulder, Colorado, and then went up to Yellowstone. And actually, that was kind of when I was sort of the aha moment that, yeah, you know, I think I can make science into a career was when I arrived in Yellowstone. This was 95. And I just got to see wildlife biologists in action, you know, the folks that I worked up up there had made it their career, had met other people that had been at it for a very long time.

And it sort of dawned on me that, well, you know, if you work hard and focus, you know, it's possible to make this a career. So that's kind of where I really sort of got started. Now, how did you end up in the bison arena sort of? Following wolves. Okay. Yeah. The wolves brought me to the bison.

So the wolves brought him to the buffalo. But you know, before we go much further, let's clear this up, buffalo or bison. So buffalo, etymologically, comes from the word for an African antelope and then expanded to mean a wild European ox. And then French fur trappers saw bison and called them booth, meaning oxen or beefs. So they were like, buffalo, but currently, is there a difference when referring to the woolly, hookhorned, beautiful beasts of the North American plains? I called my cousin, Boyd, and his longtime love and wife, Lila, up in Browning, Montana,

which is a small town of just a few thousand people. And with the Blackfeet Reservation, over 90% of the town are indigenous folks. Lila is a member of the Blackfeet tribe, and I've been lucky to learn about her heritage and their family's tribal involvement over the years. And about buffalo, bison, you don't mind if I have buffalo questions? No, I absolutely do not. I'm so excited to talk to you about this because it's like, oh, I know people who actually get to see buffalo and bison every day.

This is so exciting. Okay, my first question is the difference between a buffalo and a bison? Super question. There is none. No such thing as a difference? No difference. Yeah, I mean, just whatever. Okay, so it's either or?

Yeah. Yeah. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. Yeah, that's kind of what it is. And then how long have you had buffalo? 20 years. 20 years? Yeah.

Boyd and Lila started with just six a few decades ago. What made you go get the buffalo? Just thought we'd try that. Just give it a shot. Yeah. Didn't know you have to take those chances. Once again, the life lesson is get a buffalo or six. Cut bangs, text your crush because we're all going to die.

So they took a chance. They now have 52 bison. So I felt very stupid because I've read and heard both Blackfeet or Blackfoot and the name comes from the dark souls of these bison hunters moccasins. And I didn't want to say it wrong. So I asked a very smart person a stupid question. And it corrects me, is it Blackfoot Indian, Blackfoot Confederacy, Blackfeet Nation? I want to make sure I say it right.

Okay. There is a Blackfoot Confederacy, which is our Blackfeet tribe, the blood tribe in Canada, and the Blackfoot tribe in Canada, and the Sarsi tribe, and one other tribe. But I don't remember what it is. They're all connected. That's the Blackfoot Confederacy. Okay. But we are actually the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, and we're the only ones on this side

of the line. But traditionally and historically, what has the Blackfeet relation to bison and buffalo been like? Historically, that's what they lived on. They followed the buffalo. And then when they became big things back east, like when their hides became really valuable back east for hats and overseas, then everybody went to killing buffalo, and that's basically how the buffalo almost died completely out.

Before we talk about the brutal decline, the lumbering comeback, and their hopeful future, let's get some history down with archaeologist Ken. And going backwards a little bit. What is a buffalo? What is a bison? What is the difference? What is this animal? What is a bison?

I think the bison and buffalo, they're interchangeable terms, I think. I'm sure some taxonomists will write you an email and say, yeah, I don't know what he's talking about, but I refer to him as bison. So North American bison, the species is bison-bison. I read that. Isn't it bison-bison-bison? It can be bison-bison-bison, yes. The taxonomy of bison is still being debated.

Really? Yeah. What are they thinking the bison derived from? What taxonomy is being debated, and where do they think these species came from? Well, I think what's being debated is the Holocene or the last 10, 12,000 years of bison history. So during the Pleistocene, we had a species of bison called bison antiquus. Some people might say bison-bison antiquus, but that was probably about a third larger

than the modern bison are. The herd sizes probably weren't as big. Their behavior might have been somewhat different than bison are today, but over, probably once the glaciers retreated between about 10,000 to 5,000,000 years ago, they went through this diminution. So they became smaller in size and became what we know as the modern bison-bison. And we think a lot of that might have to do with just changes in the environment. The climate was drying out somewhat.

The vegetation was changing, so it wasn't quite as nutritious. There's a lot of theories that are being pushed around out there. So bison-bison-bison, plains of Buffalo. But there's another subspecies of North American bison, and it's bison-bison Athabasci, I think, which were nearly extinct in the early 1900s until this small group of about 200 were discovered in this remote reach of Alberta, Canada. And Boyd and Lye told me that they're even bigger, nearly 2,800 pounds as opposed to the smaller 2,000-pound plains bison.

So these wood bison are kind of like our Canadian neighbors. They're beautifully husky. And if you act like a hosier and get too close, a wood bison might gory you, but they'll probably say, sorry. And then there was also some argument that the woods bison extended down and was present in the Rocky Mountains. And that was different than the plains bison. Some people think, have argued that they looked a little bit differently.

Their skull structure was a little bit different. They tended to maybe have longer legs, longer humps. And that was an adaptation to deeper snows, trying to forage in the winter time. Going back to bison history, where did they evolve from? What species do they evolve from? When did they get to North America and how many were there? Give me a brief timeline. A brief timeline.

So bison originated in Eurasia, migrated to North America during periods of interglacial. They've been here in North America probably somewhere 20 million years ago, in different forms. 20 million years, 20 million years. In a period of 20 to 30 years, they were nearly extinguished from the continent and rendered extinct. One of the coolest bison species I was around is called bison latifrons. And I was here during the Pleistocene, probably died out 12, 15,000 years ago, but had huge, huge, huge horns, like 10 feet long. Oh, my God.

Spread of horns. Yeah, just a monster. She's a bice, mate. And then that became stank. And then we had, you know, bison antiquus, which was probably a contemporary of latifrons. And then, you know, then modern bison. So that's a really dirty history of bison. But yeah, bison latifrons are really cool, too.

So I just looked up bison latifrons and boy, how did be Jesus, these horns? Oh, God, they look like if a buffalo made a malicephant Halloween costume out of like half a hula hoop. Oh, my God. These gore, Jess, get it. Megafauna became extinct between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago, but they're Luke. Ooh. And how far back does your research go when it comes to the history of bison in, say, North America? Well, the history of bison in my research is kind of dependent on preservation.

We've worked on older sites, up to 10,000-year-old sites, but I haven't been lucky enough to find bison at old in the archaeological record. And a big part of that, I think, is just preservation issues. Yellowstone and the mountains in general are just not a great place for preservation. There's lots of, soils tend to be acidic. They get turned over a lot. Here's a good term, bioturbation. Bioturbation.

So it's trees that are turning up the soils, animals that live and burrow in the ground are turning up the soils. So you have both chemical and mechanical breaking down of these bones. So they just don't preserve very well. Let's say that we're looking at a bison. Can you explain to me any of the pieces, parts of the bison? I know that there are horns. There is a hump of some sort.

How big is a bison? If I say just beamed down to earth from an outer planet, I'm a Martian. And I'm like, what is this big furry creature? So I'm about five foot six on a good day. I think a good bull, we would be looking at each other straight on. I mean, I'd probably be looking at his forehead. So pretty good size, up to 1,200 pounds. A good size male.

What about females? Smaller? Females, a little bit smaller. Okay. Yeah, probably 800 pounds. The hump is, so they have these really big spinal processes that come off of the thoracic vertebrae. And the hump is the fat and the skin that goes over that. It stores a lot of its fat and energy in that hump.

That's the part that Hunter Gather is really like, because that's where all your nutrition comes from. What's pretty cool, they've got beards. I've noticed that. Is that a fashion thing or is that a fashion thing? I don't know, they've been hipsters for a long, long time. They're not hipsters. Side note, bison beards, kind of like a scarf on an airplane,

serve to insulate these critters in the snow. And get this, I just found out that their hair, your shoulder region, it's a cape. So more evidence that these creatures are not only strong and powerful, but also just quietly flamboyant. So let's get back to Dan, who describes a situation similar to the wood bison discovery in Canada. So in the late 1800s, in Yellowstone's Pelican Valley, something cool happened. Pelican Valley historically is significant in the story of bison generally in the United States, because it was there that the last wild bison survived back in the very early 20th century.

In 1906, 1912, there were only a couple dozen bison left. Those were the last wild bison and they were hiding out in Pelican Valley. And the reason why they were hiding out back there is, well, there weren't people, but also because it was geothermally active. We all know about the geysers and old faithful and all that. Well, there's a lot of other warm ground that melts the snow off in the wintertime. And so these little pockets of warm ground that the bison were using as refuge in the wintertime. For more on the super volcano that is Yellowstone Park, please see Episode 1,

Volcanology with Jess Phoenix. But yes, anyway, most of today's American bison are descended from those Pelican Valley survivors. Tell me a little bit about the bison population and where it has been in the last, say, 150 years. What's happened to the bison population? Well, it's like the sea. It's just sort of receded and got really small. The tide went out with bison. And like I said earlier, they found refuge in places like Pelican Valley and the interior

of Yellowstone, one of the most remote areas in the lower 48 United States, especially back then, the early part of the 20th century. And remarkably, since then, we have more bison now in Yellowstone National Park than at any time since Europeans showed up. Granted, it's not 30 million, but it is 5,000 or so is about where we're at now. That's a massive turnaround. That's a massive cultural shift. Because you have to understand that bison were weaponized in a lot of ways.

They were being eliminated to basically drive Indians onto reservations. It was part of the colonization of the Western Hemisphere. Western North America was taking out the bison. To bring those bison back is to challenge some of those ideas, those colonial attitudes that also holds with the wolf as well. These numbers aren't huge, but they're significant nonetheless. And I think that that's an important cultural process, as well as it is a process of conservation and a biological process.

I asked Ken, the geobiologist, archaeologist, if bison are on the move a lot, like equally enigmatic hardcore Dave Matthews fans. What's their yearly life cycle like? Did they tend to migrate in certain times of the year? Do they go from the north to the south? Do they look for... where are they moving around? I think, well, the males, they migrate around a lot. They seem to have a pretty big range.

And the females, they tend to stay in cow calf groups for most of the year. And a lot of the younger males probably stay with the herds, those cow calf groups for a couple years. And the fall is when you have the rut. Because I'm in a rut. So all the males come back from the high country and beat on each other for selection of females. The rut is pretty exciting to watch. They're pushing around each other and snorting and trying to see who's going to be the biggest

baddest one out there that gets all the cows. Is that how that works? Is there an alpha bison? There's usually several alpha bison that have access to the females, the cows. Is that common in an ungulate group or...? Yeah, I think so. Elk are pretty interesting. They gather up what's known as a harem.

So 10, 12 cows get... Elk cows get... Wow. ...get one guy. Wow. 00:32:18,700 --> 00:32:20,220 So it's like sister wives.

00:32:22,220 --> 00:32:24,220 I mean, I guess we are in Utah. You know what, quick aside, before you tell me that I'm making generalizations, I'm just honestly sharing data. I looked it up and there are an estimated 30,000 folks in polygamous marriages in Utah, which is six times the population of wild bison in America. Now, PS, I don't know or really care how they counted the population. Or how they counted the polygamous people. It's not in my business.

But what about the bison? I asked Dan if they have microchips in them, or is there like a census taker for Buffalo? Someone with snowshoes and a clipboard, just knocking on bison's doors. Is there an exact number? Is there a spreadsheet that has them all kind of catalogued? Are they tagged? How do you keep track? Counting with aircraft.

Really? How does that work? They just get into a small, they being park service biologists, will get into a small fixed wing aircraft, a super cub. They will fly certain routes through the park where bison are known to range. And they just count them up. So it's a total count. It's a census.

And they do that at least once a year. Sometimes they do it multiple times. And do they just film it and then later look at the footage? No, they'll count them as they go. As they go? You lose track. That seems so easy to lose track. But they're so big, they're actually easy to count I think compared to say like elk.

Really? Well, yeah, bison are darker, elk are lighter. And the bison tend to be more out in the open. Some of the elk will be in the trees. So counting sheep is out, counting bison's where it's at I guess. I think so, yeah. If I had to choose, I would count bison, yeah. Do you think that bison biologists dream of bison?

Do you dream of bison? Sometimes. What kind of bison dreams do you have? I can't remember of any off the top of my head. But I definitely have had dreams, especially when I'm in the field. Real quick, what does it mean if you dream of buffalo? Well, according to sleepculture.com, which likely employs kind-hearted interns to make up omens for like every noun in the dictionary.

Seeing a buffalo in a dream is a symbol of survival and abundance. It means that you should pay attention to the path you're following in your life. Sure. Also, Ward Family side note, so Boyd and Lila and my cousins Crystal and James and Jamie bring a huge traditional teepee to our reunions. And the first year I ever got to sleep in it, they told me to pay attention to my dreams because in a teepee, they could have certain significance. And in the morning, I recalled, I had a dream about seeing Don Johnson from Miami Vice at Costco.

It was such a bummer. So maybe it just doesn't work on silly white lighties. I think being in Yellowstone and seeing how tourists think that they are like cows and can go up to them and take their picture and I think that's a big myth is that somehow Yellowstone is this petting zoo out there and these are big wild animals and they are fairly tolerant, I think, of people. They're a lot more tolerant than I would be if I was them and somebody was coming up and snapping pictures.

So I think that's kind of an interesting misconception about wild animals and especially wild animals in Yellowstone. The myths about bison, I think maybe a big thing for people to understand is how pervasive they were on the landscape 150 years ago, especially on the Great Plains. If you live in California or New York, you probably didn't see a lot of bison. But out on the Great Plains, they're an amazingly prevalent part of the ecosystem and to have them disappear in such a short period of time, I think that's really hard for people to understand.

It's hard for me to understand how you can go from 30 million bison if you want to use that number. There's lots of different estimates of how many bison were out on the Great Plains and then within a 20-30 year period, they're gone and how we can do that. And the technology at that time, it wasn't like we're out there spraying them with guns, gunships. People with single shot rifles going out and they completely cause a collapse of amazing population animals.

How did that happen over 20 or 30 years? Well, I think that's hard to understand, but I think a big part of it was just the trade in bison robes. And there was this great demand in the 1860s and 70s for bison robes and people were going out there, they were killing them and I think they were disrupting herds. They were just taking the hides. It wasn't like they were using them for food or anything and I think that had a great disruption of the breeding process and the populations just crashed.

I think that's a pretty indisputable thesis about how it all happened. I think it's difficult to imagine, but I think once you start disrupting those herds, because they were easy to kill and hunters got pretty close to them and could shoot them and the bison didn't necessarily scatter very quickly and then once you start disrupting those herd structures and scattering bulls and cows, I think it's easy for the system to crash. They weren't a big animal to flee. I mean, they really didn't have any predators. Humans are probably bison's biggest predators and I think that's,

you know, humans were the only predator there and so they were the biggest thing out there. They didn't need to fear anything and they were big enough herds that they could fend off wolves. They're other biggest predator. They didn't need to flee. They're not like antelope. Antelope, you know, as soon as they see something, you can't get within 100 yards of an antelope and it's gone. Yeah, bison, they were the biggest things out there so they didn't have to flee. And now, how do you work also with indigenous groups and anthropologists and other archaeologists to learn more about the relation between hunter-gatherers in what's now North America

and in a prominent food source, which is bison, does that figure in a lot to your work? Yeah, most of the work that we do is either on public lands or funded by public dollars and we do consult with tribes in Yellowstone. Typically, we consult with the Shoshone Banach on the Fort Hall Reservation and also the Eastern Shoshone that are over on the Wind River Reservation and they're kept a prize of our work and are certainly able to come and visit and comment on it and we try and do more and more of that consultation process. When I was working up in Yellowstone, I worked a lot with an elder who's since passed away, Haman Wise, and he gave us a lot of information about the Shoshone and their life ways and so that was a pretty

interesting and nice relationship. Ken told me that he's been helping out using his archaeological techniques to understand the events and the landscape of the 1863 Bear River Massacre that killed possibly hundreds of members of the Shoshone tribe in a place that's now South Idaho near a town called Preston. And there's a small memorial there now, but the tribe is trying to raise funds for an interpretive center to memorialize what had happened on that site. Does that ever get emotional for you? Working at the Bear River Massacre site is incredibly emotional just because it was a horrible event and no way shape or form could ever be justified. And seeing people that are two generations removed

from the survivors of that and them telling their story, yeah, it's hard not to be emotional. If you wouldn't be a human if you're not. So yeah, that does get to be pretty emotional. My wife Molly and I also worked on the Sand Creek Massacre site and we're sitting with a lot of descendants of the Sand Creek Massacre and talking with them and seeing how close that is to them still. I mean, they get very emotional and it's not my history. And how do indigenous communities keep that history alive? The Intertribal Buffalo Council, ITBC, is this collection of 69 tribes from 19 different states and they work on programs to return buffalo to tribal lands. But hyper locally in their own community, Boyd and Lila themselves

donated one of their own prized buffalo. I know that in terms of giving back to the community, you guys donated a buffalo a year or so ago to one of the Browning schools to kind of learn how the buffalo is used in traditional food and other things. What was that like? What prompted that? Oh, it was an Indian studies class at the high school. They wanted to get a hands-on experience and show everybody how they originally butchered buffalo, what all the parts they took. Also, you may be too embarrassed to ask, is it Indian or Native American? And there are several opinions on words like Indian versus Indigenous versus Native versus First Nations. And different people have different preferences depending on the era and the region. This deserves

its own whole episode and that is in the works. So, if you are Native, thank you for any emotional labor that you have spent educating others. And I highly recommend podcasts like All My Relations, So Good, and Following. Indigenous folks from all over the world on social media, we all have so much listening and so much learning to do. And that's okay. Learning is exciting. Now back to Dan. I asked about the heritage of the bison and the introduced cattle. What's happening there? What is a wild bison versus what is a bison that has now domesticated bovine DNA and do people care? Where are we at with that? I was at a meeting in Bozeman, Montana a few years ago. National Academy of Sciences was doing a review on brucellosis and they had the chair of the

Intertribal Bison Cooperative give a talk. And one of the things he said that struck me was that, you know, from his point of view, it doesn't really make much of a difference if this bison has got, you know, if it's 80% bison and 20%, you know, Hereford or 5%, you know, it's a bison. You know, from his point of view, this is a bison. And I think he was speaking too from sort of a cultural point of view because there's a lot of, you know, mixing among human populations. And, you know, Native Americans have to deal with this in terms of blood quantum to prove, you know, that they belong to a certain tribe and a certain reservation and so forth. And there's a lot of controversy around that. And he was sort of referring to that in the context of what percent

of bison do you need in order to be a bison? And I think he was saying, you know what, that's kind of nonsense. Right. It's all a bunch of hogwash. What is a bison is in some ways in the eye of the beholder, I think. And I think that's how I'd answer that question. Okay. So what about raising bison? I've looked it up and it turns out that bison babies are cute to the point that it is enraging. They are like shaggy muppets. It's infuriating. My heart hurts. I want to hug him. Any idea where we're at in terms of bison as a livestock commodity? Like, where is that industry going to do? That's Ted Turner. That's what he does. Yeah. Go to, you can go to Ted's Grill and order yourself up a bison steak. I mean, he's, he's, and this is,

this is not a secret. That's part of what he's been doing for a number of years. He's been growing bison on a number of his properties and using that bison and selling it in his restaurants. Ted's Grill, I think is what it's called. Do you eat bison? Sure. Yeah. You're not like, oh, sorry. No, I don't know. Bison are super tasty. Oh, bison, but are raising them better for the planet and cows? Some ecologists argue yes, because their poops and their hooves have evolved along with the plains. And unlike Nambi Pambi cows, bison typically don't need winter shelter, which saves on energy costs. And bison meat also tends to be leaner meat. Void and Lila supply a few local restaurants and sell little steaks to private buyers, but said not all bison burgers are created equal. And some

commercial ones you might find in chain restaurants might be made from older animals and might be higher in fat. I asked how they were in general to raise though. How is it different from raising cows? Yeah, they're a lot smarter. Really? Yeah. They're independent. They're wildlife. Do they kind of communicate with each other more than cows do? Are they more social or less social? What are they? Oh, way more social. Yeah. They run around in one little pack. What kind of noises do buffalo make? Grunts. They're grunt? Yeah. Kind of like sheep. Kind of like pigs. Oh, yeah. Kind of like pigs. That's kind of what they sound like. PS, thank you, YouTuber Jim Doss, who posted this 9-second video of a male bison sticking

his tongue out like it was a fraternity burping contest and just letting the grunts rip. When do they have occasion to grunt? Do they do when they're happy or when they're pissed off or what? When they communicate with each other and mostly when they're in a little bunch there. Yeah, they talk to each other that way. Do they have any favorite treats? Are they like, yes, it's apple season or is it just like they eat grain? That's it. They love crab. Absolutely love that. Do they grunt to each other? Like, yo, come and get these, man. I don't know. Buffalo going batshit on crab apples is such a joy to imagine. I would like to be their friends and I asked Dan if bison are social, mostly because I would like to know if they will

be my friends. So they're extremely social, bison are. They aggregate together and they'll help each other. They're not like elk which sort of flee in every direction. It's sort of every man for himself. Generally, bison are very cooperative in how they defend themselves. But when there's deep snow, that defense breaks down and it becomes every man for himself or a woman. Side note, of course, or non-binary bison. I'm sure they're out there. I was recently reading American Indian Thought, which is an Anne Waters anthology of native writers. And I came across this passage by Alice Kehoe, which happens to relate to the Blackfoot Confederacy. Alice writes, What really matters to a Blackfoot is autonomy. If a person competently engages in work or behavior

ordinarily the domain of people of the other sex or another species, onlookers assume the person has been blessed. Anyway, back to bison. We need more, I think, right? Let's ask an expert. And where are we going in the future in terms of bison conservation and growing the numbers? What do you see kind of coming up around the bend? Well, in my experience in the Greater Yellowstone, I would say we're running up against limits. Just in the 20, 25 years that I've been working up there, areas that used to be range land, have houses on them now. So it isn't just an issue of livestock grazing on the borders of the park. It's pavement, it's houses, it's fences, it's people, swing sets, that kind of stuff.

It's encroaching. And there doesn't really seem to be any end of that. And so bison and I think wildlife in particular are increasingly hemmed in in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. On the other hand, you've got initiatives like out in Eastern Montana at the American Prairie Foundation where they're cobbling together private lands, buying up lands from willing sellers. These lands are adjacent to public lands and they're trying to recreate the kind of shortgrass prairie that we had at the time of European conquest basically out there. So taking cornfields and alfalfa fields and converting those back into prairie, which is not an easy thing to do by the way. I also think a big part of the future of bison is on Native American

reservations. So increasingly you see tribes building up their herds on their lands under their management. And I think that's a big part of the bison story going forward as well. Ward and Lila echo that. Is there anything like population wise of the Plains Buffalo that y'all would like to see happen as people who have land and have livestock? Would you like to see the population rise again to closer to what it used to be like? How do you guys feel about like how many buffaloes should there be on the Plains? Not a hundred million. They would overrun Nebraska and Kansas, Missouri and there wouldn't be any cornfields, there wouldn't be any wheat fields. They have a place but it's proportionately.

Okay, I know futureology was last week, but I asked Dan about what might be in store for our Buffalo friends. What is the aim? What's the goal in terms of numbers of bison? What can the continent support given what we've maybe done to the land in terms of agriculture? Well, it's completely in our hands. Our hands being sort of American society. If we want more bison, we can have more bison. There are ways of doing that, likewise with other wildlife. The question is whether or not we're willing to make the choices and the trade-offs in order to do that. So for example, in Northern Yellowstone, very few bison are permitted outside the park because they interfere with agriculture. Not only just conflicts in terms of rating hay fields and

busting down fences, but they also carry diseases, both elk and bison carry brucellosis. Okay, side note, brucellosis is caused by bacteria and in humans it's most commonly picked up by eating unpasteurized milk or soft squishy cheeses like a goat cheese. But who is Bruce? And why did someone name a disease after him? Well, it turns out it's named after David Bruce, an Australian-born microbiologist who worked on investigating the disease right around the time, I guess folks were running around North America killing all the bison. Also, David Bruce did not have brucellosis, but he did perish and fall from life's supple grasp just four days after his wife at her memorial service. He died at her memorial service, which is either really sweet or incredibly

obnoxious, but I hope to heaven that the funeral director just gave that poor family an impromptu bogo by one get one discount. Okay, back to brucellosis. And if a domestic cow contracts this disease, they're at risk of a spontaneous abortion, there's a massive economic cost to having livestock infected with bison because it means that you can't move your livestock out of state, meaning that you can't sell them across the state lines because other states don't want to get infected with brucellosis. And so it's a major economic issue to having these species that carry that disease to range far and wide. And so all these decisions by wildlife management, these are all social decisions. These aren't necessarily biological

processes exclusively. They're very much social and cultural processes. And a lot of these decisions get made in public meetings, in various different situations with different agencies, state, local, federal. And so when you say, well, how many bison could we have? Well, it really is sort of dependence on sort of the social, economic, caring capacity. How much are people willing to tolerate? We get a bison in Cache Valley if all the farmers that are grazing cows or growing corn decided they wanted to raise bison. That's possible. You have private landowners in the plain states elsewhere in the Rockies that are doing just that. They are raising bison for profit. They're trying to make money off of it. So there is a model for doing

that. But are those livestock or are they wild bison? And those are social decisions. And so those are the kinds of conversations we need to have knowing that up front, that these are sort of cultural discussions that we're having, social economic discussions, and not so much biology. So what we really need to be talking to you as a sociologist and economist. And a psychologist too, probably. Sociologists, I have not done an episode on you yet, but I will. And economists, I am so sorry, but you are not ecologists. Hey, all those in favor of some spin-off shows, maybe an ology's network, you can tweet at me. Okay, but first, let's bust some more myths. What about any myths or any flim flam that you would debunk that you see people

having a misconception? There's so much flim flam. I know. Debunk it. You got the stage here. About bison specifically? Well, yeah, I would just sort of echo Ken's point that they're not farm animals. And so if you're going to Yellowstone in the summer to see bison, don't underestimate how quick they can be to, you know, kick you, pounce on you, stomp on you, hurt you. I will cut you. Keep your distance. Other myths about bison. Here's a big myth. Okay. And that is that they are a major source of brucellosis. That's a massive myth that needs to be debunked, that is, has direct bearing on their conservation outlook and how people perceive them, how the livestock industry perceives them. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been

any instance of bison infecting livestock, cows outside of Yellowstone, and then all those transmissions have involved elk that have been infected with brucellosis. So bison get a bad rap. So there's still a lot of, I would say, sort of bias culturally against bison in the livestock community. They're, you know, bison are looked at as competitors and threats. Boyd and Lila echoed that and they said that it's a big limiting factor in growing bison numbers via ranching. They're never going to populate like beef because there's too many myths out there. But one thing is brucellosis is a big scare and it has nothing to do with the meat. But like even people here on this reservation don't eat buffalo because they're

afraid of this brucellosis stuff. Really? Really. So that's a big, that's some flimflam right there. Yeah, it really is. And our food program has buffalo meat. They have buffalo meat that they ration out, but they have trouble getting people to take it. Really? That's kind of, that's surprising. Given that buffalo is such a part of Blackfeet history, is it ever weird to you that it's difficult to get over the myths? Yeah, it is. I mean, because they've spread these rumors. I don't, you know, I don't know for how many, a hundred years or whatever, you know? And so it's, it's, it's kind of frustrating that these... The meaties won't even really try, try it. And is there, is there anything, any kind of causes or any charities that are helping Bison or

helping people maybe relate to Bison or helping like Boyd how you guys donated a buffalo to, to a school? Anything like that that is doing good stuff that you guys would want to shout out or have like a donation go to at all? Yeah, you know, the, they do have several buffalo coalitions. Mm-hmm. One in North Dakota, one in South Dakota, and then one, several Indian tribes are all in, put buffalo in different places. Mm-hmm. When, if, if somebody in New Mexico wants buffalo, they can get buffalo from the Tribal Coalition. So they, I mean, there's, there's lots of opportunities in buffalo. Okay, quick aside, I found one in this week's donation goes to the Intertribal Buffalo Council whose mission is to restore Bison on tribal lands for cultural and

spiritual enhancement and preservation. So the ITBC coordinates education and training programs and the transfer of surplus buffalo from national parks to tribal lands and works with their partners, including National Bison Association, the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Conservation Society and more. So you can find out more about them at ITBC, BuffaloNation.org. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show. So you may hear about them now. Okay, so Ken, if you'll remember, gave us the history of Bison and we haven't heard from him in a bit. So let's ask him stuff. Can I ask you some questions from listeners? Oh, sure. Yeah, they might be, they might be stupid. You okay with that?

Yep. We may have gone over a little bit of this too, but John Worcester wants to know how many Bison were around during their peak population period. Do you think 30 million? Yeah, I think yeah, I think 30 million is a good number. And how long ago was that? 1860s, they were probably at their peak, 1850s, 1860s. 30 million. Me and Dingman says, for a very long time, I thought the American Bison was extinct, that the good old boys back in the railroad days had hunted them to extinction, fast forward to me being today years old. And I still don't know what the story is. So they are not extinct. This is the same species from the 1800s. It's not a hybrid species or a, let's see, a bunch of people, I'm going to read their names as fast as I can. Anna Thompson,

Allison Turry, Lacey J. Shure, Sidney Brown, Kelly Brockington, Jessica Bailey, Ashra Elhaktar, all kind of want to know, and Sebastian Osterbrink, all want to know how related are American Bison and European Bison? Like, what is their essentially their closest? I know you're like, where are they in terms of the musk ox and water buffalo? I guess I didn't realize it was a European bison. Yeah, so yeah, bison, what's bison bonacis is the European bison, a little bit smaller, mostly seems like it was adapted to woodlands. Okay. Probably not nearly as prevalent, but probably just as good to eat. They show up in the archaeological record. So they're all, they're all bovines. Okay. Okay, so side note, an ungulate is an animal that has hooves and a

bovine is a type of ungulate that includes cattle and African buffalo and yaks and water buffalo and bison. And the bison, like cows, are also ruminants, which means it chews its food and then kind of yags it back in its mouth and enjoys an encore meal of it. And I dare you to try that during the salad course at your next business dinner. Just do it. So gross, so baller. A bunch of people had questions about their fur, Stephanie Rortes, Bonnie Fairbanks, Jen Athanas, they want to know, oh, Colette Ayers, they want to know why do they have so much hair and fur and what makes the hair so good at insulating them. And was that helpful during colder periods? Yeah, they have really thick dense fur that they grow throughout the year, plus they're fat.

Yeah, they're well adapted to cold temperatures. It gets 20, 30 below in Yellowstone and up into Canada and these animals are out there. And what really I think is really amazing to see is in the middle of the winter, they have snow on their backs and the snow is not melting because of the insulation. So they're not losing a lot of heat that way. So they're well insulated and well adapted to that really extreme environments. And they live in environments that go from minus 30 to over 100 degrees. So they're incredibly well adapted to North American extremes. And they can handle the 100 degree weather because, again, the insulation? I think they, well, they lose a lot of their fur and look at the difference between a bison in the

winter and a bison in the summer. They don't have a lot of fur left on them in the summertime. Oh wow, it just sheds off and just bye-bye. I wonder if there's any application for that. Just go around collecting bison fur. Yeah, you go up there and look for it. So all that fur protects them from the elements. And I asked Boyd and Lila about it, having seen it firsthand half the year, where it can get to negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, just super side note, just this past week, my dad, which is your granddad, just told us a story about growing up in Montana walking to school a mile and a half each way in snowy negative 70 degree weather. And Pop, I am so sorry, I live in LA and I use a space heater when it dips below

70. I just do not possess the Montana vigor of the bison. How do they do in the snow? Like, how cold does it get up in Browning? Snow doesn't bother them at all. Yeah. No, cold doesn't bother them either. They're kind of the opposite of cows. The buffalo looks into the wind, into the storm, and the cow turns back to the snow. They really do. I mean, they're totally different in storms. And then what does their fur feel like? Because I've gotten a chance to sleep and obviously feel your buffalo hide because we have one. But how would you describe their hide and their fur? Kind of woolly. They have a nice fur, but they're more woolly than it's not

just hair. It's more of a cross between hair and wool. Do you remember that story when we were up at the homestead and you guys had the teepee up and it was me and my parents sleeping in it? So we're sleeping in the teepee and the the plane's winds are flapping the smoke flaps and you can see the stars, you know, through the top of the teepee and my parents are sleeping in there, you know, to keep warm. They're sleeping on one of your buffalo hides. And then we go to sleep and about five minutes later, I just hear my dad say to my mom, oh, I thought I was petting your hair, but here's a buffalo. Because my mom and I have such curly hair. My dad mistook the buffalo hide for my mom's

curly hair. Well, if he ever gets lonesome, now you know what to give him a piece of buffalo. But every time I have to go flat iron my hair, I always think it's a lot like a buffalo. Man, if I want a haircut, though, I can't roll around like a bison until it just falls off. Well, it's pretty damaged actually, so I probably couldn't. That's why they roll around and yeah. And that's what they pull off is just wallowing. Yeah. That makes sense because someone asked why they wallow and I thought they just meant like in disposition that they were kind of emo. So I thought they just seemed like an E or and I was like, that's rude. But okay, so wallowing is an actual verb that relates to behavior.

That makes sense. Some people asked Melissa Houston and Mike Milchier asked about the roaming and why they roam. Also, Mike Milchier wanted to know how do buffalo manage their cell phone bills with all the roaming charges? I don't think that's a serious question. But yeah, why did they roam? Why were they on the move so much and did the planes make that easy because it wasn't mountainous? Well, they're moving to find food. So they're constantly looking for good nutritious grasses to eat. So that's why they're constantly on the move. Get in, loser. We're going shopping. So they've already eaten that patch and now they're just keep going. Yep. Oh, God, it kind of like really big furry locusts, but cute.

Yeah. That makes some sense. Very big locusts. Huge locusts. Let's see. More cuddly than locusts, though, I think. I think they're more cuddly. I think they would probably beg to differ. They're like, no, we're not. Don't touch me. Okay, so side note, the excellent science writer Ed Young published a piece in The Atlantic a few months back titled What America Lost When It Lost the Bison. And it was about bison surfing a green wave of new shoots and grasses to eat. And researchers recently discovered that the bison's grazing changes the landscape. And Young writes, in areas where bison graze, plants contain 50 to 90% more nutrients by the end of the summer. This not only provides extra nourishment for other grazers, but prolongs the growing season

of the plants themselves. Young continues, when we lose animals, we also lose everything those animals do. When bison are exterminated, springtime changes in ways we still don't fully understand. Ed Young, so good. Okay, other things we don't understand? But as always, Mackenzie Miller wants to know why, oh, why are their rears so small? It doesn't make any sense visually. Please rescue me, evolutionary logic. Why do they have such small butts? That's a good question. I guess it's all in the hump. I guess, I mean, that's where their their power comes from. He explains that by having a big chest upfront, the bison is able to act like a wedge through

the snow, pushing aside these frozen drifts so that they can forage at these grasses below the snow. And they invested all of their muscular material toward their head and their shoulder muscles. So business in the front, they're like, why are you even bothering with my butt? Look, look at my hump. This is where I get my stuff done. Okay, so that makes some sense. Azrael King wants to know, how did buffalo become a term for so many things? Like, are buffalo mean? What's their temperament like? Do they have friends? This is a lot of questions that I'm not sorry, they say. I don't know. They're certainly prevalent in our lexicon. And I think maybe that goes back to their, just because they're such an iconic species.

A lot of people have this question. Raymond J. Duage, Laura Kunitz, and Heather Densmore, all wanted to know, are bison related to woolly mammoths? Not in the least. Really? Other than their mammals. The bison, by the way, as of 2016, was the official mammal of the United States. So their hair has nothing, nothing to do with it? No. Okay. Laura Merriman wants to know, in Theodore Roosevelt National Park bathrooms, there's a sign that says bison can weigh up to 2000 pounds and run up to 30 miles per hour, which is three times faster than you. Is that true? And what do you do if you upset a danger cow? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Hide behind a rock. Yeah, the best thing is not to get them mad.

Get them mad. Charlotte Grazarowicz wants to know, I heard somewhere that bison can jump six feet in the air. Is this true? I don't think so. We did see a bison when we were working up along Yellowstone Lake. And this site, I think, attests to the quality of their, their eyesight. As we had an excavation unit opened up and we were eating lunch and a little bit removed from probably about 20 yards away from our excavation unit. And this lone bull came, came walking up and got right to the edge of our, our hole and saw it. And he kind of wheeled up like, yeah, that was pretty freaking. Can you imagine if a bull tumbled into your hole? Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, that's all we could think. I was like, okay, who's going to get that one out?

Oh, no. Have you ever had a scary encounter with a bison? Yeah. Again, working along Yellowstone Lake with geologist Ken Pierce, because we were trying to understand how the archeological record is related to lake level changes. So we were walking along the cut bank and collecting samples and Ken doing his thing of describing soils and everything. And we came up around this little, um, wash that we were able to climb up and there was a bison sitting right there. And he's like, and then we jumped back down and he went on his merry way. And but that was, that was kind of freaky. I'm surprised that they startle. I mean, I guess they're, they're probably not. Yeah, I think a lot. Yeah. I think their, their eyesight is not great and,

you know, useful suddenly to this funny white guy with a head on. It's like, what would you do? Coming up out of the, Oh my gorya. That's just me. Um, Evan Jude wants to know how similar a bison to domesticated bovine can a bison produce offspring with a cow the way a horse can with a donkey? That was a big thing that was going on in the, in the 19th century, the late 1890s and into the teens, they were, they were trying to breed cows and, and bison. Um, I don't think they were, I think the biggest problem was is they were using male or bull bison and, and cow cattle. And a lot of times the, the, um, the babies, the fetuses were too big and were killing the cow. You know,

there's, there's beefelows out there. So yeah, you wouldn't breed like a Yorkie mom with a great Dane dad. Also, I feel you should know that some cattle, bison hybrids are called beefalo or catalog. And I think personally, ancient catalog sounds like a really good TV spy name. P.S. Neither one of them have a favorite Buffalo movie. I tried. I asked. I have a Buffalo joke though. I'll hear it. Hey, what did, uh, what does the mom of Buffalo say to their kids as they go off to school? Bison. That's great. How did I not see that? How did I not see that coming? I'm like a bison. I have very poor eyesight when it comes to wonderful jokes. I have finally been outdated. And also,

that's a great note to leave on. So now let's get to the questions that you asked wildlife ecologist Dan, who I always want to call Ken, but Ken is the archeologist. This is Dan. Okay, let's talk to wildlife ecologist Dan. Can I ask you some Patreon questions, some listener questions? Okay. Victoria Demarest, Kathleen Fast, Ivory Deter, want to know what's up with birds and bison? And also, why are they just hanging out, just kicking it, sitting on their humps and picking at their wounds? What's going on with the birds? They're eating parasites. Okay. Yeah, ticks, flies, things like that. You see this with magpies, we'll sort of perch on a bison and do a little foraging. Okay. They're bros, though, they're

friends. Yes. That's not very convincing. However, if the bison is sick and if it does have a wound, it can attract a lot of scavengers and it turns into sort of more of a harassment type of an issue. Of course. Yeah. But generally speaking, it's not a big deal for bison to have a magpie on them. Kristen Smith wants to know, do bison really only have one lung or was that just a myth made up by white people who couldn't fathom how Native Americans were able to kill an animal so big without a gun? Wow, that's a really interesting question. I did not know of that myth and so I really can't comment on whether it was a good one or a bad one. Other than obviously, it's not true, they do have two lungs. Okay. PS, this myth started because while bison have two

lungs, they share one lung cavity with no division between the lungs. Now you know that little trivia nugget and all you will talk about will be buffalo. This is a question I got from two past ologists, Jennifer Boos, an areologist, she's a Mars expert, also Julie Lesnick, who studies eating bugs, a sustainable protein. They both asked, can you please dissect the sentence buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo. Do you have any idea what they're talking about? No, I'm afraid not. This was also asked by Graham Tattersall. In your experience, do buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, and I have no idea what they're talking about. But I have a feeling that there's something, some kind of grammatical loop

hole where that is a sentence. Yeah, I'm sort of queasy just thinking about it. Yeah. Right. I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to all unpack it. Let's see. I know. I was like, I was like, is this our two, how are twoologists both on the same hallucinogen submitting questions? Of course, I look this up. And in this case, it's indeed a grammatically correct English language sentence with buffalo meaning of buffalo New York, another buffalo meaning bison, and another buffalo meaning the verb to buffalo or to bully. So according to my friend, workerpedia, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, is translated to mean the buffalo from buffalo who are buffaloed by buffalo from buffalo,

buffalo, other buffalo from buffalo. God, I need to nap. So a lot of people asked this question, and I will put them all in the side. Possibly hungry patrons, Teresa DiZazzo and Lael Stefkova, plus a bounty of first time question askers, Brittany K, Milo Cuesta, Holly Bood, Daniela Buchanan, Michelle Grondin, and Samantha Kenney, specifically all asked, why do we eat bison burgers? Are there enough bison for that? And if they're threatened to low numbers, how can they be used as a food product? Oh, well, they're commercial herds. Okay. Yeah, they live on big ranches out in places like South Dakota, elsewhere. Yeah, so these are not what I would call conservation herds, like Yellowstone

or Wind Cave or the Henry Mountains or National Bison Range. Those wild conservation herds are they're not turned into burgers at restaurants. Now, they're hunted, right? So Yellowstone bison are hunted. But there's a tribal hunt every fall that occurs on the northern end of the park. And then the Henry Mountains herd is hunted. The Utah Division wildlife oversees that hunt. But these aren't animals that are, you know, being shipped to processing plants. These are that's more like a regulated hunt. Yes. The interesting thing about bison is even though they were down to a couple dozen at the turn of the last century, they've never been on the endangered species list.

Why is that? That's a good question. I don't know, but they have never been nominated as an endangered species, even today. No one has taken that task on. That seems, is that a political choice? It couldn't be that big an oversight. I'll look into that. There's probably some interesting history there. Yeah, that's bananas. I'll look into that. That's nuts. So from what I can gather, the population was so

regally boned by European settlers that bison were just considered ecologically extinct. And while there may only be a few thousand in wild herds, ranching has now grown bison's numbers to several hundred thousand in the US. So they're considered near threatened, which is the lowest level of concern. It offers pretty much a, it'll be fine, kiddo, level of protection. Bridget Fitzgerald, Queen Bee Ceramics and Carla Hickenlooper said, Queen Bee Ceramics asked, I just found out that Yellowstone bison population is managed by culling the bison herd every winter. Reading about this makes my heart hurt as I didn't realize that bison were not a protected species. So what's your take on the interagency bison management plan?

What are they doing right? What are they, what's going on with it? Well, they're dealing with a difficult problem in terms of increasing numbers of bison and not necessarily increasing amounts of area in which to have bison. And so they're forced to come up with a plan to keep numbers at a level that, you know, in which they have enough habitat for them. Because if bison aren't allowed to roam unhindered outside the park, then you're going to need fewer bison. But I think what listeners also have to be really clear about is that wildlife being culled in Yellowstone is not a new phenomena, new thing. And of course, bison now aren't being culled inside the park.

There's a sort of broader misconception that wildlife in Yellowstone are free from human interference. And that is not the case. You're moving across the park boundary and you're dealing with human beings. And that often means having to dodge a bullet. And that's been a part of life as a large mammal, large non-human mammal in Yellowstone, you know, really since Europeans arrived. Which of course is shitty. Now, what is shitty about archaeologist Ken's job? What's the hardest thing about your job? Or what is something that you dislike about your job? Something about your job that sucks that you're like, I wish this didn't happen. Lack of funding. Yeah.

That's the biggest thing. Grants. Trying to find funds. And spending an inordinate amount of time begging for money to do research. Do you have to present a case why this is important to ecology? What is your angle more ecological or anthropological? It's both. It depends on what we're looking for. My dissertation research and continued research on is bison ecology. So it's yeah, it's understanding the ecology of bison and yeah, it's tough. And we don't need a lot of money. We work really cheaply and get a lot out of the money we do get. How much does a field season cost? I asked this of a dinosaur, of a paleontologist.

He could fund a field season for less than a used Toyota. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. What? I was like, you could have the cheapest wedding or you could find a dinosaur? Yeah. So are we, so you have to petition and petition and petition for funding that other people might spend on like a rafting trip? Sure. Yeah. A very nice bicycle or something. Yeah, very nice bicycle I get. A lot of samples analyzed. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. And what's equally annoying is that it takes as much time to write a grant for $1,500 as it does for $150,000.

It's not a lot of time you could be spending looking at things. Yeah, politicians complain about they're always having to raise money to get reelected. Well, so do we. Yeah. And I think we do a better job with the money that we get. Bison for president. And let's talk crap with Yellowstone down. And what's the shittiest thing about your job? What sucks? Hmm. Does it get cold? You get snow in your pants. Something must suck.

And I think this is not an uncommon complaint. I think a lot of people have this problem with their jobs is just the volume of work that we're all expected to do in a very short period of time. And trying to do it all as well as you want to do it. That's tough. What's the best thing about Bison? Best thing about your job? The best thing about my job is that for the most part, I get to set my own agenda in terms of the questions that I ask, the people that I seek out as collaborators. Those are all decisions that I get to make. And what was the other part of your question?

Just what you like about your job or about Bison. Oh, about Bison. I like Bison because they're so tough. Bison are really interesting because, you know, you'll see them out in the landscape and they'll sort of lull you into the sort of false sense of knowing what they're all about because, oh, there they are. There's a herd of Bison. And that's the same herd of Bison that was there last year and the year before that and year before that. And all of a sudden, the following year, they're gone. You don't know why they're gone. Where did they go? Why did they leave? And so I think Bison are, they can be surprising in a very unpredictable way, right?

I mean, a lot, you know, that seems kind of silly to say, but they can catch you off guard. And so that's what makes them interesting subjects of study, I suppose. And a last question I always ask is, what do you love most about your job? What do you love about Bison? What do I love about my job? I think what's great about archaeology is that we get to do a lot of things. I mean, we get to be in the field, we get to collect data, we get to get dirty, we get to get rained on. And then we get to come back and sit in front of computers and try and make sense of all that stuff. So it uses a lot of different parts of

your brain and your body and some of the best people and my best friends I've met doing this work. My wife, I met doing this work. Is she a Bisonologist? She's not a Bisonologist, but she's an archaeologist and we work, we do a lot of work together. How'd you guys meet? She was working with me. Yeah. Did you guys work alongside each other for a while before you're like, oh no, there's a smoldering attraction happening?

Well, yeah, we have to, it's a different time period. Okay. And it's actually her boss. But it seemed like it worked out. Yeah, she has to file any suits against me. How long have you been married? Oh God, what are we now, 17 years? 17 years, so it's working out.

Yeah, got four kids. Oh, you don't wear a ring though? I broke. Oh no, how did it break? I think just got fat. Oh boy. Well, that's one way to do it. You're just starting up for the winter. You're just starting up for the winter.

Yeah, I've been doing that for way too long. So great people, wonderful people. Yes, wonderful people. It never gets old. It never gets old, no. It never does. Thank you so much for talking to me about bison. Oh, sure.

And thanks to your listeners for great questions. They care about bison. They do, yeah, that's nice to hear. All right, everyone loves a bison. Everyone, including my cousin Boyd and Lila. What is your favorite thing about a buffalo? Is there anything that's just like charmed its way into your heart?

Oh, they're really playful. Really? Oh yeah. Yeah, like you can watch them chase each other around over there and run and jump and play. And then if a car stops to watch them, they all stop and watch the car. They're posing for the picture.

They're models. They're total goofballs. And then they act cool when people are looking. That's so cute. I want to come visit. When I come in summer for the reunion, can I come visit? Oh, you're more than welcome. We have an extra bed at the house.

Yay. One more very important question. Do buffaloes accept hugs or is that a bad idea? Bad idea. Okay. All right, fine. I'll cross that off my list then. I won't hug a buffalo.

Yeah, you don't want to try. Well, you can when you come up. You can hug one. Okay. I'll make sure my health insurance policy is up to date before. But when you come up, we'll take you out to a guy's place that's out by the border that has white buffalo. What?

There's white buffalo? Some of them are born white and some of them are born brown and then turn white. Wow. Oh, that's nuts. I want to look that up. I don't even know that existed. White buffalo is, yeah.

He's big medicine to the Blackfoot tribe. Yeah. He's really big medicine to all the tribes. What does that mean, big medicine? It's like the top of the medicine. It exists. So he's like a god. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Gosh, I bet that's got to be such a sight to see, especially in the snow. Yeah, they're pretty cool. Wow. Oh, my gosh. This makes me want to look at pictures of buffalo all day now. I just want to go online and look at pictures of buffalo. I'm going to go do that.

We'll have a good rest of your Sunday, you guys. Yep, you too. Okay. Bye. I love you guys. Love you. Bye. Bye.

Bye, son. Love you too. But I will not hug you out of respect of your big ass horns. So if you loved all of these folks, head to alleywar.com slash allergies slash bisonology to find out more about them and some links to the organizations we talked about and to the sponsors of the show.

Those links are also always in the show notes. And you can please be our friend on Instagram and Twitter. We're at allergies. I'm at alleyward with one L on both. And you can subscribe and rate and leave a review for me to read possibly on the podcast, on Apple podcasts or iTunes. Allergies, T-shirts and hats and totes and sweatshirts and socks are available at allergiesmerch.com.

Thank you, Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the Comedy Podcast. You are that for managing that. Thank you, Erin Talbert and Hannah Lipo for admitting the Allergies Facebook group. Leaped episodes and transcripts are up at alleyward.com slash allergies-extras. There's a link in the show notes. And thank you, Emily White and all the Allergies transcribers in the Facebook group for your amazing hard work.

The theme music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the Band Islands and special thanks to Harthrob Jarrett Sleeper of the Mental Health Podcast, My Good Bad Brain, for staying up way too late helping me string this beastly, beastly episode out while I was in the middle of a really tough weekend wearing about my sick pops who's now on the ment. Love you, pops. And mom, I'm so sorry that I told the buffalo story,

but I'm very proud to share your curly-headed genes. And thank you, as always, every week to the rare gentle creature Stephen Ray Morris and his buffalo mustache for bearing with tight deadlines and multiple files and editing all our pieces together to get it to your ears on time. And if you'd like to spend time with Stephen Ray Morris, heads up on Saturday, January 18th. He's hosting Jurassic January with Jurassic Park Trivia

and Themed Cocktails. And it'll benefit Santador Kitty Rescue, and that is at idle hour on Vineland in LA. That's on January 18th. And if you last until the end of the episode each week, you hear a secret. This week's secret is a sweet one. Our award family reunions every few years in Montana

are what made me love science so much. And I'm so lucky to have gotten to sit on a dock in the summer and watch these bats at dusk and see these big huge osprey nests and get to sleep in a family teepee and hear stories. For the longest time, I thought that when you just get older, you start talking weird. And then I learned later that it was just my aunt's Montana accents. And we'd sometimes call my grandpa on the phone

and we'd ask just what he was up to when he'd say, oh, you know, just watching the wind blow. And the older I get, the more the hobby seems like tight as hell. Also, side note, if I can improve any language or if you have anyone you think I should interview, please email me through the website alleyword.com. And I'm so behind on emails, but I will get through as many as possible.

Okay, bye-bye. I don't know, bison are super tasty.