There’s a long list of animals that you should never, under any circumstance, mess with, and towards the top of that list is the bison.
They might not seem as menacing as bears or mountain lions, but they can still pack a punch. People are often disarmed because they assume they are just harmless “furry, horned cows,” and I’m not sure where that misconception came from. There’s certainly more than enough evidence online that should deter tourists from getting near the 2,000 pound beasts.
Need some examples? Well, there’s the vintage video of a Yellowstone National Park tourist getting launched high up into a tree, there’s an example of a herd of bison taking on a group of bikers riding their motorcycle down the road, and then we have a more recent interaction where a lineman (from Texas, not from Wichita) got headbutted by a bison after he went in to scratch the big animal’s head.
And if those aren’t enough, here’s another one from Yellowstone National Park, where visitors started to gather around a grazing bison to snap pictures and take selfies. This isn’t the first time that a dumb tourist (often called a “touron”) tried to take a picture with a bison, though this video below does feature a larger gathering of idiots.
As the bison just tries to mind its own business and munch on a patch of green grass, a group of 15 or so people decided that the best and smartest thing to do would be to put their backs to the wild animal (fully capable of putting a hurting on human beings) to take pictures. You’ll see many tourists posing for pictures, while others sit down on the ground and snap selfies with the big ole beast in the background.
That went well for probably 10 seconds, and then the bison started to do “normal bison things” and charged at the group of Yellowstone National Park visitors. The video was being taken by some people nearby that were sitting in the safety of their vehicle, and their reaction to watching people running for their lives from the bison perfectly summed it up:
“Oh, well what do you expect?”
Exactly. What were these people expecting? For the bison to say “hey, delete that picture, let me pose with my good side,” and for the whole thing to go as smooth as a SEARs photo shoot? Some of you readers are too young to understand that reference, and that hurts me.
And everyone in the footage was very fortunate that no one got hurt. The bison got within inches of one of the photo taking couples, and as we all know, bison can easily utilize those horns and send people to the hospital. Long story short, stay away from wild animals, and if you do want to take a picture with one, just make sure you have your will in order.
Check it out:
