When did the American buffalo disappear and become bison?

[Kablooie]

I just realized that the American animal that I've always known as the buffalo isn't a buffalo any more. It's a bison.
Buffaloes live in Africa only, I read.

I know they were sometimes referred to as bison but buffalo was the more common term.
Is the American buffalo now an obsolete term?

[Scootaloo]

1. It's a taxonomic thing

Basically the words mean the same thing - Bison being a greek word for "large ox-like thing" and Buffalo being a derivative of the French word for "large ox-like thing"

The buffaloes of Asia were called "buffalo" before their American cousins, and so they get to keep the term, while the American buffalo, to avoid confusion with critters it's only somewhat related to, was rechristened "bison."

Which is weird, when you think about it, since a more appropriate name would have been "American Wisent" but then you'd have to explain what a wisent is, and then people start staring blankly at you...

[vaberella]

12. + Infinity...because this is the best explanation ever.

I have never laughed so loud and I have to now look up "Wisent." "large ox-like thing"-- will forever live with me.

[rug]

32. I looked it up. Now I have to look up auroch.

[Xyzse]

33. That word...

Automatically reminded me of a book series by Stephen R. Lawhead, the Albion War.
Auroch - Large Ox-Like thing, some were on the British Isles.

[rug]

34. Screw it. I'm just going to start referring to Romney as that lare ox-like thing.

[GoCubsGo]

14. It's also the scientific name...

Genus and species are Bison bison. Just like the American alligator is Alligator mississippiensis.

[Odin2005]

18. I was amazed when I learned that Europe has their own bison species.

Given how well-loved bison are in North America I'm surprised the wisent is not more well known.

[RZM]

19. I've seen the European bison at a preserve over there

They look fairly similar to ours. If I remember correctly one species is a bit larger (I think the American, but it's been a while).

[Scootaloo]

24. Well-loved... Sure

[img][/img]

Much like the people it's associated with, the bison was pretty much considered vermin fit only for extermination, until they were very nearly completely destroyed. Suddenly when they're not around anymore, they become "iconic."

[Art_from_Ark]

2. Well, water buffalo are native to Asia

and to Bedrock

[cthulu2016]

3. The buffalo got all politically correct.

Last edited Sat Jun 2, 2012, 02:45 PM - Edit history (1)

When the Indians pointed out they had never even been to India the bison were emboldened to point out that there were in no way buffalo either.

Seriously, though, I think the Bison was also called the American Buffalo, and then the American got left off. Buffalo was never correct, but American Buffalo isn't so bad. They are as close to Buffalo as we've got.

A fascinating fact: When the white man reached the plains there were buffalo... sorry, bison as far as the eye could see, and they were probably grazing everything into desert. It is said the herds went from horizon to horizon.

That was not the normal state of bison. A big meaty animal that crazy-numerous will lead to predators evolved to eat them.

Sometimes we see this where people kill all the predators that eat their farm animals and then deer or bison population goes wild.

In the case of the bison, Europeans had killed off the bison's biggest predator, but without meaning to or even realizing it.

Smallpox ran ahead of the European settlers, sweeping across the continent a couple of centuries before any European settlers got to the heartland. When the Europeans got there the bison were out of control because so many native Americans had died off that the bison were not being hunted as much as before.

(I do not know whether native Americans kept down the population of wolves or cougars or whatever might threaten bison because of the competition for bison. Either way, it is safe to assume that circa 1500 the native American was the bison's greatest natural enemy.)

The Europeans met the nomadic plains Indians and marveled at their horsemanship, not realizing that horses were not native to America and were as new to the native Americans as the smallpox had been. Like disease, the horses had wandered far ahead of the white settlers and a culture developed around them.

Most evidence of some native American civilizations laid low by European disease had been reclaimed by nature before Europeans ever saw them. (Lots of Indian earthworks were assumed to be natural formations until the last century because it didn't really register until you saw them from the air.)

[Egalitariat]

4. If all that is factual, it's probably the most interesting thing I've ever read on DU

Thanks for posting.

[Monk06]

7. Check this out. A very good read.

David Thompson's Journals (b1770 - d1857) published by the Champlain Society in 1912

http://link.library.utoronto.ca/champlain/item_record.cfm?Idno=9_96855&lang=eng&query=thompson%20AND%20david&searchtype=Author&startrow=1&Limit=All

[Viva_La_Revolution]

9. and also, 1491: New Revelations in America Before Columbus

http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X

[joeybee12]

5. They were called buffalo, but were never buffalo...

Settlers assumed they were related to the water buffalos in Africa, but aren't...They're related to cattle.

[xchrom]

6. I still call them buffalo - but I buy bison at the store. Nt

[slackmaster]

11. I've found that elk makes better burgers

But it's all good.

[xchrom]

15. Agree - elk is very good. I have shop on line

For elk or wild boar - & I do both.

I can get buffalo at the store - because I'm a lazy, impatient Git I do that more.

[dionysus]

31. i made bison\beef mealoaf last week.. delish.

[newfie11]

8. their still buffalo in SD

Custer buffalo round up
http://www.allblackhills.com/events/custer_state_park_buffalo_roundup.php

[Go Vols]

40. +1

they are still buffalo here too,guy down the road has 50 or so and they sell buffalo burgers at the local watering hole.

[slackmaster]

10. It happened about the same time the potato famine completely wiped out the species

All of the items sold as "potatoes" now are artificial.

[NickB79]

21. Huh? The potato species has never been threatened with extinction

There are hundreds of native races of potato still grown in South America, and many are available for gardeners to grow in the US and around the world. Many of these are highly resistant to the potato blight disease that caused the Irish potato famine. The one or two varieties that were hammered in Ireland by the Irish potato famine's fungal outbreak were just a small sampling of what the New World had to offer.

[Scootaloo]

25. Actually, it was just one species in Ireland

And what's more, every single potato plant in Ireland was a clone. Every last one. Since the plant was propagated by cuttings, rather than by seed, every last individual plant was genetically identical to every other one. This was true in most of Britain and mainland Europe as well; potato blight actually struck in the Netherlands before reaching Ireland. The culprit, apparently, is the result of hybridization between a water-mold species that lives in guano, and another water-mold species from central Mexico.

Potato blight is actually a very stunning example of the colombian exchange

As for those varieties in the Andes... a lot of them are toxic. They're still cultivated, they just need special preparation or even condiments to actually make them edible (for instance; one mouthful of potato, followed by another mouthful of roasted clay dust, which bonds the alkali toxins. Yum yum)

And there you go. More information about potatoes than you probably ever wanted to know. But why not? These things are pretty much one of the cornerstones of the human diet nowadays (other potato fact; you can live perfectly healthily on a diet of nothing but potatoes and milk. All the nutrients are there)

[NickB79]

27. As an avid gardener, thank you for that information

Wonderful to know, especially the part about eating potatoes and clay

[L. Coyote]

38. Species vs. variety

There are many "varieties" of the potato species, about five thousand potato varieties worldwide. Not many species of potato. And, the common potato can be toxic if you allow the sun to turn the tubers green. Don't eat any potato that is chlorophyllous.

1500 Peruvian Potato Varieties Latest Addition to Seed Vault
http://www.organicauthority.com/blog/organic/1500-peruvian-potato-varieties-latest-addition-to-seed-vault/

[Scootaloo]

42. Yup, Solanum tuberosum is the widespread cultivar species

With lots of varieties. The variety in most of Europe during the blight was the lumper;
[img][/img]

[slackmaster]

26. You've been taken in by one of the most elaborate shams in history

Those items you have been led to believe are real potatoes are all made in a secret factory in Belize by a consortium of big Agribusiness companies. There hasn't been a living real potato plant anywhere on Earth since 1861.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

13. We're talking about basically four types of animals in this thread, no?

The American bison, that used to be called the buffalo; the water buffalo that is a domesticated animal in Asia (and some varieties are still in the wild), the wild African buffalo or Cape buffalo that is unrelated to any of the others; and the wizent or European bison that looks somewhat like an American bison or buffalo, with which it can interbreed, and that was nearly hunted to extinction as well but which has made a resurgence? I'm getting confused with all the buffaloes or bison without pictures of what people are talking about.

Here's a pic of the American buffalo's (or bison) European cousin.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. Yes, there are 4 species in this

Wikipedia says the African Cape buffalo (Syncerus) is not particularly related to the others, but it also has a reference to a 2009 paper on the genetics, which says that they are closer to the Asian water buffalo (Bubalus) than to the others (or to domestic cattle):

We identified 3 distinct lineages after the Bovini split from the Boselaphini and Tragelaphini tribes, which has lead to the (1) Buffalo clade (Bubalus and Syncerus species) and a more recent divergence leading to the (2) Banteng, Gaur and Mithan and (3) Domestic cattle clades. A fourth lineage may also exist that leads to Bison and Yak. However, there was some ambiguity as to whether this was a divergence from the Banteng/Gaur/Mithan or the Domestic cattle clade. From an analysis of approximately 30,000 sites that were amplified in all species 133 sites were identified with ambiguous inheritance, in that all trees implied more than one mutation at the same site. Closer examination of these sites has identified that they are the result of ancient polymorphisms that have subsequently undergone lineage sorting in the Bovini tribe, of which 53 have remained polymorphic since Bos and Bison species last shared a common ancestor with Bubalus between 5–8 million years ago (MYA).

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/10/177/abstract

But, just to throw a spanner in the works, the Gaur is also called the Indian Bison.

[Mairead]

41. And the aurochs, which *was* hunted to extinction (nt)

[applegrove]

16. Don't know. Read a history of my great great aunt's brother in law. He worked in a trading post

in Winnipeg, Manitoba in the 1880s. He saw thousands of pelts coming in a day so he saved 13 orphaned buffalo and raised them. They were the last of the breed I think. They were called "Buffalo" in the article. We called them buffalo in public school in the 1970s.

[Odin2005]

17. I'm a stickler who gets annoyed when bison are called buffalo.

[whistler162]

28. I am fairly sure that Buffalo is correct

never heard of Bison NY!

[daaron]

20. It was Manifest Destiny. Hunters, period.

According to WikiPedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison):

Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the late 19th century primarily by market hunters and were reduced to a few hundred by the mid-1880s. They were hunted for their skins, with the rest of the animal left behind to decay on the ground.

[msanthrope]

22. "Give me a home, where the bison roam....." Doesn't have the same ring. nt

[kwassa]

23. So, what's all this I hear about bison wings? I didn't know bison had wings ..

or that they tasted good spicy hot with a blue cheese dip.

[blockhead]

30. In my area they were originally called Tatanka

[FSogol]

35. Wait until you hear what happened to the brontosaurus.

[slackmaster]

36. Yes, and to Pluto

[Joseph28]

37. When did the American buffalo disappear and become bison?

[IMG][/IMG]Good point

[L. Coyote]

39. When will the American Republican disappear and become extinct?

Right after the have a Tea Party