When you are as big as a bison, you can basically do whatever you want. Just for reference, male bison can stand as tall as six feet and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, which equates to one ton if you needed a refresher on units of weight.
And when you see something of that size, you would normally just assume that the behemoths aren’t that fast, but that’s simply not the case.
Bison can top out at 35 miles per hour, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Imagine driving your car at 35 miles per hour, then looking to your left or right and seeing a bison keeping pace with you.
Apparently these massive animals have underrated agility, can swim like a regular Michael Phelps, and actually have pretty decent “hops” and can easily jump over fences.
So with all of that being said, I’ve just got one question for everyone that visits Yellowstone National Park…
Why on God’s green Earth would you get close to a bison when it has the athleticism and built-in weapons (horns) to easily wipe the floor with you?
I think part of the problem with people approaching bison is that they think they are just “furry cows.” Am I generalizing there? Possibly, but do you have a better explanation as to why people walk up to bison all the time?
In this video, the bison sort of brings the fight to the people, though I will also point out that some of the tourists are (for some dumb reason) standing outside of their vehicles when the bison starts running on the road.
The grunts that the bison lets out as it walks up onto the road are terrifying, and undoubtedly comes from a guttural place deep within. I’d argue that it was a warning to all the people and cars that it was about to intimidate.
Once it lets out a certain amount of grunts (almost like a QB’s snap count), the big beast starts to pick up speed and run right towards a group of people standing on the road.
Those tourists start to flee the scene (a little too late if you ask me) as the bison closes in, and though the video cuts off to where we can’t see how it all ends, one can assume that the bison asserted its dominance in some form or fashion.
Take a look at the big ole’ bison owning the road below:
