A recent video went viral of a woman taking selfies next to a bison, but fortunately for her the bison was in a good mood and didn‘t react. Other people are not so lucky.
Bison at Yellowstone National Park are popular subjects for photos but touching or taking pictures with them doesn’t always turn out to be the best idea.
A recent video went viral of a woman taking selfies next to a bison, but fortunately for her the bison was in a good mood and didn‘t react.
Another woman at Yellowstone National Park attempted to get a picture petting a bison that was walking close to them. The bison lunged at her but luckily just left her with a warning and didn’t charge at her.
“Bison can grow to be 2000 pounds, it could run 35 mph. This is not something you just go in there and you know smile and take a picture with,” Rob Magil, a wildlife and conservation expert with the Zoo Miami, tells Inside Edition Digital.
Even encountering a smaller bison can be deadly. A man noticed a calf far from the herd and wanted to help so he grabbed it and brought it to the herd.
While the man wanted to do a good deed, this is against Yellowstone rules which state visitors are prohibited from getting closer than 75 feet from the wildlife.
These rules are in place for a reason, which was seen when this calf made it back to the herd. Since the calf now smelled like a human, other bison repeatedly rejected the calf and the park had to euthanize the young animal.
“People touching and handling bison, we are actually transferring our scent onto the coats of those calves and babies. They don’t want to accept that animal back into the herd because it smells like a threat,” bison expert Jeff Martin tells Inside Editon Digital.
