Like humans, bison always take a moment to honor those that they’ve lost.
Often times with nature videos, we see the battle for survival, or a predator taking down prey. If you think about it, we never really see the aftermath of these types of events. The footage below shows that there are major life implications following death in the animal kingdom, just like there are when humans lose a loved one.
Bison are the type of animals that prefer to live in groups, and often use their “strength in numbers” mentality to fend off attackers. However, tragedy often strikes herds, like this one Yellowstone National Park. Evidently, there wasn’t much the bison could do to prevent the death of one of their herd mates.
But there was something they were honored to do after its passing.
On numerous occasions, bison herds have been known to mourn the death of their close friends and family. They’ll circle around the fallen herd mate for hours after they die, and they appear to express grief as they protect the body. It makes for what’s effectively called a “bison funeral,” and as I said, it’s something that the large beasts seem to instinctively do.
The even more interesting part about it all is that other animals, like wolves and grizzly bears, generally keep their distance during the mourning process. Granted, it could just be that the predators don’t want to try and challenge or mess with that many bison at once. But respecting the mourning process does seem to play a factor in it as well.
That’s not exactly how things seem to be playing out in this video out of Yellowstone National Park that was taken by wildlife photographer Julie Argyle. From the looks of it, a bison had passed on from sort of complication, and its body was laying in one of the valleys of the national park.
The bison herd stayed close by after the herd mate passed, and right in the middle of their “bison funeral,” some wolves caught wind of the death and tried to swoop in for an easy meal. Argyle also said that grizzly bears moved in as well, but none of them got close to the bison that had passed on.
Herd mates surrounded the carcass and protected it for hours, and predators were only able to get to the body when the grouping of bison decided that their “bison funeral” was over. Things out in nature are generally cutthroat, so other predators giving the bison their space makes for quite the scene. And for all those people out there who argue that animals don’t have souls… I’d like to see you try to explain this:
“Wolves tried to come in and were chased away several times and two grizzly bears also tried to come in. None of them were allowed to get close to the dead bison until hours after it happened. Nature has an incredible way in life and death.”
Though nature can be and often is brutal, this video goes to show that it’s a very beautiful place too.
