It only makes sense that this incredible video below took place in Yellowstone National Park. There’s an estimated 5,400 bison that call the beautiful national park home, and around 120 wolves also reside within Yellowstone boundaries. And a few hundred more in the greater Yellowstone area. That might not seem like a lot, but the Northern Rocky Mountain area only trails the Western Great Lakes area and the state of Alaska in wild wolf population.
Alaska’s numbers are estimated in the tens of thousands, in case you were wondering.
Though the wolves might be outnumbered by bison in Yellowstone, the canines have been known to hunt down North America’s largest land mammal. That being said, they often need to form a pack and work together to take down just one of the big beasts. The only problem? As you might imagine, bison are rather tough creatures and can be quite challenging to bring down.
They might appear top heavy, but they’re hard to topple over.
That’s especially true when bison practice “herd mentality.” Wolves have the best chance at a successful hunt when they single out a bison from the herd. Bison have become aware of this practice, and do their best to stick together and stand up for one another in an effort to keep their entire group safe. The word for that – if you might recall – is utilitarianism.
Often times, a bison herd will all run and rumble together at once, which makes it more challenging for wolves to break one of the big beasts away. In this case, the bison simply stuck together and stayed still. Wildlife photographer and Yellowstone guide, Andrea Baratte, was able to capture the encounter on video… and witnessed the bison’s peaceful conflict avoidance work like a charm.
As he described in the caption for the clip:
“It is always fascinating to me how bison and wolves react when they encounter each other. The atmosphere was fairly relaxed at this point in time with multiple wolves laying around this herd of bison. The bison were standing close to each other and were fully aware of the wolves, but no panic or running. The wolves left and traveled far up the mountain. A great day in the park.”
Pretty interesting tactic by the bison herd, eh?
The non-confrontational way they went about this encounter evidently worked wonders. They must have been thinking, ‘There’s a wolf pack nearby? So what! We’re just going to keep doing our regularly scheduled bison activities, and if we don’t bother them, they shouldn’t bother us.” It’s probably not the most common method of wolf pack avoidance, but according to this wildlife photographer, it worked out for the bison this time around.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite part of video. While a couple of wolves stalked the grazing bison… the canine in the background was busy doing snow angels. I don’t blame that wolf at all. If you’re not gonna hunt, you might as well have fun doing something else.
