Bisonology (BUFFALO) Encore with various bisonologists

Bison bison! Not just something to holler into the sky, but also the scientific name for North America's majestic wild bovines. In this encore, we explore a beast that once roamed the plains in the tens of millions. What's up with their humps? On what occasion do they wear capes? What noises do they make? How many are out there? What are the best ways to help them? In this special episode, you get 4x the usual number of ologists as we talk to archeologist Dr. Ken Cannon, wildlife biologist Dr. Dan McNulty, Alie's cousin Boyd and his wife Lila Evans, of the Blackfeet Tribe, who are bison ranchers based in Northern Montana. Also, once and for all: is it buffalo or bison? And can Alie hug one?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F O R H E R S dot com slash ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. Peppa Pig is your preschooler's best friend. Give the gift of bike riding confidence this year and help Peppa learn to ride her bike. Kids can imagine learning to ride a bike

• 0:45Alie Ward?

  with the Ready Pedal Go Peppa Bicycle Playset. Put Peppa's helmet on, attach the push stick to her bike, and push to make her pedal. Ready Pedal Go Peppa and more from Peppa Pig are now available at all major retailers this holiday season.

• 1:05Alie Ward?

  Oh, trips are full of unexpected discoveries. Maybe you see a sea slug, or you find out that your friend still sleeps with a stuffed animal. But when it comes to your vacation rental, there should not be any surprises. When you book a Verbo vacation rental, if what you expect isn't what you get, Verbo Care has you covered. If something's broken or just not right, Verbo will work to make it right. Plus, you get 24/7 live human support with every booking. Grab your stuffy, we're going on vacay. So book today on the Verbo app. If you know, you're Verbo. Terms apply. See verbo.com/trust for details. Oh, hi. So 2025, me here. And last night was our first ever live in-person show. It was at the Bell House in Brooklyn, and it was so fun. I got to see so many of you in person. We talked about tree sap.

• 1:49Alie Ward?

  We talked about funeral bells. I don't know if we're ever going to release that one. It was just sort of a fun experiment, and I think I'll go on the road more in the future. But this is an encore episode just because it's been kind of a heavy week, and I'm going to take a couple of days off. Okay, enjoy this one. I love it. Oh, hey, it's your forgotten half can of La Croix that's just cold, just fizzy enough to keep drinking it and not throw it away. Ali Ward, back with a very, very weird, odd episode of Ologies. If this is not your first Ologies rodeo, you know that each episode, I usually talk to one ologist, but for some reason... I don't know, man. Bison just threw us for a very rare loop. So this episode is kind of more like a buffalo party.

• 2:31Alie Ward?

  And thank you to patrons of the show who support us, anyone in Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. We have Smologies, they're shorter, kid-friendly episodes that are available now in their own feed. Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews. I read them all. This is 2025, me thanking MRM Kennedy for the review that said, "Going through the worst breakup my poor meat robot has ever beep bopped through. Thank you for this treasure trove of tiny joys and distractions." MRM Kennedy, my heart wishes your heart the best. Maybe a good rebound. Okay, Bisonology. So Bison, it's Baltic or Slavic origin. It comes from the word "wesund," which means "the stinking animal" because of its musk while rutting.

• 3:14Alie Ward?

  And the word Bison is distantly related to the word weasel, which is also stinky. So weasel and Bison. One is hulking, billowing steam into the cold air, and the other is a sock with a face. Etymology, yep. Okay, so you're gonna hear from Ken Cannon, who is a New Jersey-born and now Utah-based research professor of anthropology at Utah State University, who studies ancient Bison and gives talks like "Rolling Thunder: 10,000 Years of Bison in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem." And he has short, cropped hair, rosy cheeks, and a salt and pepper goatee. He looks like he could have been a rugby player in another life. So that's Ken. And he brought along Utah State University ecologist Dan McNulty, who spent years in Yellowstone

• 3:59Alie Ward?

  studying animal behavior. And he has sandy blonde hair, he's a little more wiry than Ken, and I cannot explain why, but Dan looks like a Ken, and Ken looks like a Dan, and that screwed me up editing this entire episode. But yes, Dan studies the more modern era of Bison. Lila Evans is my beloved cousin-in-law, and she served in the Montana House of Representatives, and I always just picture her in a business blazer, even though she's probably more likely like bundled and fleece, because it's Montana. And her longtime husband is my cousin Boyd Evans, who's tall and gangly. And Wrangler jeans, he has a handlebar mustache and a rain stained cowboy hat and a great laugh. So I told you, this is a weird and wonderful episode and a break

• 4:43Alie Ward?

  from the usual format. So hop on, hang tight, and learn how big a bison is, what their fur feels like, how many there used to be, how many there are now, how do they do a head count, and what that lumpy hump is for, what a bison's favorite treat is, and what noises they make, and the difference between raising cows and bison, and how their very existence and survival has been politicized and continues to be, and also maybe the worst sentence in the English language. As we talk to academics and hands-on ranchers, all four of whom, in their own way, are professional bisonologists.

• 5:40Alie Ward?

  Okay, let's get right into it. So the first person I had approached was the one I interviewed, Dr.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Ken Cannon.

• 5:47Alie Ward?

  And you're a bisonologist?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Uh, that's part of my jobs, yes.

• 5:52Alie Ward?

  This is, is this news to you that you're a bisonologist?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yes, it is, very much so. I hadn't heard that term before.

• 5:57Alie Ward?

  Would you ever use that term, like, in a cocktail party, like, "Hi, I'm a bisonologist"?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 6:02Alie Ward?

  Yeah?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 6:03Alie Ward?

  Well, you're welcome.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 6:05Alie Ward?

  Um, and so how long have you been studying bison?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Um, well, I first got interested in bison when I started working for National Park Service in 1987, when I was just a little kid. And, uh, and I got interested in it because we were working at Grand Teton National Park, and there was an archaeological site there that referred to itself as a As a bison kill site, a bison jump site, it was interpreted numerous different ways. And at the time, there weren't that many bison in Grand Teton National Park.

• 6:37Alie Ward?

  P.S. Grand Teton is in Wyoming. And if you're like, I'm in New Zealand, I have no idea where your parks are. Isn't Yellowstone in Wyoming? The answer is yes. And I'm sorry. So both are gorgeous, mountainous, grassy places in Wyoming. They're just a few miles away from each other, but they have separate entrance fees unless you get like one big pass that covers both. So essentially Yellowstone is Disneyland and Grand Teton is California Adventure. Okay. Anyway, in the late 1980s, when Ken started, there were not many bison there.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  And the previous archaeologists that worked there always minimized the presence of bison in there. And so I just started looking at the literature. And the more I looked at the literature, every time there were fall remains, bones preserved at archaeological sites, nine out of 10 times, there were bison bones. And it's like, well, how can you minimize bison in the archaeological record when all the bones that you're finding are bison bones? So that just got me going. And I moved up and started working in Yellowstone National Park and got more interested in bison and, you know, this wonderful mammal that's, that was an incredible part of our ecosystem, shaped a large part of North American ecosystem,

• 7:52Speaker 01

  and why we don't know a lot about it. Most of what we know about it is from small herds, anecdotal historical records. So I really wanted to try and understand, at least the Yellowstone bison, a little bit more detail. So.

• 8:05Alie Ward?

  How old were those kill sites? And what exactly is a kill site?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  So a kill site, it can vary in a lot of different ways. The traditional ones that we always think of for great plains are running bison over a cliff.

• 8:17Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Hundreds of bison over a cliff and then dispatching them at the bottom of the cliff.

• 8:23Alie Ward?

  This is a kind of a stupid question, but when you say a kill site, like, let's say they were, phew, over a cliff, is that for to then use that meat and fur? Or was that like a hunting technique?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yes, it was. Hunting technique, yeah. So that was the best, the easiest, I guess, and most economically efficient way of getting a lot of bison to get you into the winter. So typically, they're they're in the fall that these these events happen. Bison are are coming in to the to the fall and the winter, so they're really fat. And fat's good. Not like today, but fat was good back then. Everybody, all hunter gathers, everybody wanted fat. So you hunted bison in the fall. They're at their prime nutritionally. Their their fur is at prime. So you get some really nice skins for making clothing and and teepees and all kinds of stuff. So so yeah, so that was an efficient way of doing it.

• 9:19Alie Ward?

  Going back into some history, much, much more recent, tell me a little bit about how you started to love bison. Or now you mentioned, you mentioned that you have a New Jersey accent?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 9:33Alie Ward?

  Okay. So now you grew up in New Jersey, but what brought you out to Yellowstone and the Natural Park Service? At what point, at what point did you want to start working in nature?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Well, I've always wanted to work in nature. I grew up on the Jersey Shore. And I actually started out as wanting to be a marine biologist. So my undergraduate work was as a biologist, like Jacques Cousteau and and because I used to scoop a dive and hang out on the beach. And I and I swear, when I was 17, I would never live more than a half mile from the ocean. So

• 10:05Alie Ward?

  And here we are in Utah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yes, and here we are in Utah. So so be careful about the things that you say, put out there in nature. To the gods.

• 10:15Alie Ward?

  Okay, no, you're not losing your mind. Last week's guest, futurologist Rose Eblith, also wanted to follow in the flipper steps of Jacques Cousteau before finding her own path. Weird, cute, right?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  And anyway, so I went there. I got a little bit frustrated with the biology program there. It was largely geared towards pre-med students. But then I started taking anthropology courses. It was a small program, really good professors, treated you like a human being and not just a number. And I learned that I could do biology as an archaeologist.

• 10:52Alie Ward?

  Oh, so Ken graduated from the University of Florida and did grad school in Tennessee and then got his PhD from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln studying the biogeography of prehistoric bison isotopes. So how did this Jersey dude wind up so far from the sea?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  I wanted to get out of town, essentially, and see something different. And as a fluke, I just applied for a job with the National Park Service and got hired by the Midwest Archaeological Center. And the first job was to go and work in Grand Teton National Park. So, you know, it's just those weird things that happen in life and you just gotta kind of go, okay, let's go.

• 11:31Alie Ward?

  Let's go.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it wasn't a plan.

• 11:35Alie Ward?

  But it seems like it served you well.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm very glad that it all happened. I remember when I got hired and drove out, I had this, of course, I had a nice little VW Bug that I drove all the way out to Grand Teton from Tennessee. And when I got there, my boss told me, it's like, you were the last person we picked.

• 11:56Alie Ward?

  Ouch.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  I said, okay. Well, mostly because I didn't have any experience out there. But it was a slam and I was like, okay, I'm gonna take that as a challenge.

• 12:07Alie Ward?

  Right. Do you live up to it then?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm still trying. It's an ongoing process.

• 12:14Alie Ward?

  Is there something about bison themselves that intrigued you? I feel like as an American, I think that there's so much lore and history and maybe even a dark history to them as well. Is that something that kind of grabbed you as an archaeologist?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  It grabbed me as an archaeologist because in the mountains, they were never seen as being an important part of the subsistence economy of Native American groups. And that was intriguing to me. But also, I think you're right. Yeah, there's an iconic history to bison. It is a deep, dark history, but it's also a very exciting, positive history because we brought them back from extinction. And it was, you know, it was the efforts by a small group of people that said, this is crazy. We go from 30 million to down to 19 or 100 or whatever the number was at the turn of the last century.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  I think that's a big part of it is that just that's, you know, that story, that resurrection story is there too. But they're cool animals. I mean, you just go out and they're just, they're just cool to sit and watch.

• 13:28Alie Ward?

  They're majestic.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  They are majestic, yes.

• 13:30Alie Ward?

  Now, Ken's colleague, Dr. Dan McNulty, no relation to squid expert Sarah McEnalty, got his bachelor's in environmental studies at the University of Colorado and got a master's in wildlife conservation and a PhD in ecology, evolution, and behavior from the University of Minnesota. So how did he get lured into the bison life? And now, are you from Utah?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  No. I'm born in Illinois, grew up in California, went to school in Colorado.

• 14:01Alie Ward?

  So one might say you've been roaming around as well.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  I have been a bit nomadic.

• 14:05Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Although not lately.

• 14:07Alie Ward?

  And so you are a bisonologist. You study bison as part of your job, whether you would call yourself that or not.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  I would say that bisonology is part of my program, yeah.

• 14:19Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:21Alie Ward?

  And so how long have you been into science and fieldwork and animals? What was it that drew you to this?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Well, I lived in Hong Kong for three years when I was in junior high. And so that was obviously very urban environment. And when I got back to California, I was like in the eighth or seventh grade. And we lived on the edge of big, open space, lots of live oaks and hills. And it kind of just sucked me in. Sucked me right in. Soon after we got back. And I've been kind of at it since then. And actually, even before that, I grew up, you know, riding horses with my dad in that country. And just got really into it once I got back from that little stay in Hong Kong. And just a lot of time spent camping, hiking.

• 15:12Alie Ward?

  Dan said, growing up, he always loved animals and being out in nature, observing them.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  But I never really thought I'd actually make a career of it. I was an undergraduate at Boulder, Colorado, and then went up to Yellowstone. And actually, it was in, that was kind of when I was sort of the aha moment that, yeah, you know, I think I can make science into a career, was when I arrived in Yellowstone. This was 95. And I just got to see wildlife biologists in action. You know, the folks that I worked up there had made it their career. I'd met other people that had been at it for a very long time. And it sort of dawned on me that, wow, you know, if you work hard and you focus, you know, it's possible to make this a career. So that's kind of where I really sort of got started.

• 15:59Alie Ward?

  And now, how did you end up in the bison arena, sort of?

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Following wolves.

• 16:06Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, the wolves brought me to the bison.

• 16:08Alie Ward?

  So the wolves brought him to the buffalo. But, you know, before we go much further, let's clear this up. Buffalo or bison? So buffalo, etymologically, comes from the word for an African antelope, and then expanded to mean a wild European ox. And then French fur trappers saw bison and called them bœuf, meaning oxen or beefs. So they were like, bœuf alors. But currently, is there a difference when referring to the? Woolly, hook-horned, beautiful beasts of the North American plains. I called my cousin Boyd and his longtime love and wife, Lila, up in Browning, Montana, which is a small town of just a few thousand people.

• 16:51Alie Ward?

  And with the Blackfeet Reservation, over 90% of the town are indigenous folks. Lila is a member of the Blackfeet Tribe, and I've been lucky to learn about her heritage and their family's tribal involvement over the years, and about buffalo, bison. You, you don't mind if I have buffalo questions?

• 17:09Speaker 03

  No, I, we absolutely do not.

• 17:12Alie Ward?

  Um, I'm so excited to talk to you about this because it's like, oh, I, I know people who actually get to see buffalo and bison every day. This is so exciting. Okay, my first question is, um, the difference between a buffalo and a bison? Stupid question.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  There is none.

• 17:29Alie Ward?

  No such thing as a difference?

• 17:31Speaker 03

  No difference.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, there's, no, it's just whatever.

• 17:35Alie Ward?

  Okay, so it's either or?

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:39Alie Ward?

  Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's kind of what it is.

• 17:45Alie Ward?

  And then, um, how long have you had buffalo?

• 17:48Speaker 04

  20 years.

• 17:49Alie Ward?

  20 years?

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:52Alie Ward?

  Boyd and Lila started with just six a few decades ago. What made you go get the buffalo?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Just thought we'd try that.

• 18:02Alie Ward?

  Just give it a shot?

• 18:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  You know, you have to take those chances.

• 18:09Alie Ward?

  Once again, the life lesson is get a buffalo or six. Cut bangs, text your crush, because we're all gonna die. So they took a chance. They now have 52 bison. Also, I felt very stupid because I've read and heard both Blackfeet or Blackfeet, and the name comes from the dark souls of these bison hunters moccasins. And I didn't want to say it wrong, so I asked a very smart person a stupid question. And I, correct me, is it, is it Blackfeet Indian, Blackfeet Confederacy, Blackfeet Nation? I want to make sure I say that.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  All right. There is a Blackfeet Confederacy, which is our Blackfeet tribe, the Blood Tribe in Canada, and the Blackfeet Tribe in Canada, and the Sarce Tribe, and one other tribe, but I don't remember what it is. They're all connected. That's the Blackfeet Confederacy.

• 19:06Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  But we are actually the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana, and we're the only ones on this side of the line.

• 19:13Alie Ward?

  And traditionally and historically, what has the Blackfeet relation to bison and buffalo been like?

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Historically, that's what they lived on. They followed the buffalo. And then when, and then when they became big things back east, like when their hides became really valuable back east for hats and overseas, then everybody went to killing buffalo. And that's basically how the buffalo almost died completely out.

• 19:49Alie Ward?

  And it should also be noted that the mass slaughter of bison has been cited as part of the genocide of Indigenous people in North America. Because killing off a major food source and a foundation to their way of life had irreparable and intentional impacts on not just the bison, obviously, but the people who have depended on them. And we talk more about that genocide in the 2024 Genocideology episode with Dr. Dirk Moses. But. Before we talk about the brutal decline, the lumbering comeback, and their hopeful future, let's get some history down with archaeologist Ken. And going backwards a little bit,

• 20:28Alie Ward?

  what is a buffalo? What is a bison? What is the difference? What is this animal? What is a bison?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I think the bison and buffalo, they're interchangeable terms.

• 20:39Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  I think. I'm sure some taxonomist will write you an email and say, "Yeah, I don't know what he's talking about." But I refer to them as bison.

• 20:49Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  So, North American bison, the species is bison, bison.

• 20:53Alie Ward?

  I read that. Isn't it bison, bison, bison?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  It can be bison, bison, bison, yes. And the taxonomy of bison is still being debated.

• 21:02Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:03Alie Ward?

  What are they thinking the bison derived from? Where do they? What taxonomy is being debated? And where do they think these? This species came from?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Well, I think what's being debated is the the Holocene or the, you know, the last 10, 12,000 years of bison history. After the so during the Pleistocene, we had a species of bison called Bison Antiquus. Some people might say Bison Bison Antiquus. But that was probably about a third larger than the modern bison are. The herd sizes probably weren't as big. Their their behavior might have been somewhat different than bison are today. But over probably once the glaciers retreated between about 10 and 7, 8, 9, or 7 to 5, 6,000 years ago, they went through this diminution.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  So they became smaller in size and became what we know as the modern Bison Bison.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  And we think a lot of that might have to do with just changes in the environment. The climate was was drying out somewhat. The vegetation was changing, so it wasn't quite as nutritious. It's just there's a lot of theories that are being pushed around out there.

• 22:19Alie Ward?

  So Bison Bison Bison, plains buffalo. But there's another subspecies of North American bison, and it's Bison Bison a Thabus guy, I think, which were nearly extinct in the early 1900s until this small group of about 200 were discovered in this remote reach of Alberta, Canada. And Boyd and Lyte told me that they're even bigger, like 2,800 pounds, as opposed to the smaller 2,000 pound plains bison. So these wood bison are kind of like our Canadian neighbors. They're beautifully husky. And if you act like a hoser and get too close, a woods bison might gore you. But they'll probably say sorry.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And then there was also some argument that the woods bison extended down and was was present in the Rocky Mountains. And that was different than the plains bison. Some people think have argued that they they looked a little bit differently. Their skull structure was a little bit different. They tended to maybe have longer legs, longer humps. And that was an adaptation to deeper snows trying to forage in the wintertime.

• 23:23Alie Ward?

  Going back to bison history. Where did they evolve from? What species did they evolve from? When did they get to North America? And how many were there? Give me a brief, give me a brief timeline.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  A brief, a brief timeline. So bison originated in Eurasia, migrated to North America during periods of interglacial. They've been here in North America probably somewhere 20 million years ago in different forms.

• 23:56Alie Ward?

  20 million years, 20 million years. And in a period of 20 to 30 years, they were nearly extinguished from the continent and rendered extinct.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  One of the coolest bison species that was around is called bison latifrons. And I was here during the Pleistocene, probably died out 12, 15,000 years ago, but had huge, huge, huge horns, like 10 feet long.

• 24:21Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Spread horns. Yeah, just a monster. She's a beast, mate. And then that became extinct. And then we had, you know, bison antiquus, which was probably a contemporary of latifrons. And then, you know, and then modern bison. So that's a really dirty history of bison. But, but yeah, bison latifrons are really cool, too.

• 24:48Alie Ward?

  So I just looked up bison latifrons and boy, how did be Jesus these horns? Oh, God, they look like if a buffalo made a Maleficent Halloween costume out of like half a hula hoop. Oh, my God, these are gorgeous. Get it? Megafauna became extinct between 20 and 30,000 years ago, but they're Luke. Ooh. And how far back does your research go when it comes to the history of bison in, say, North America?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Well, my, the history of bison in my research is kind of, kind of dependent on preservation. We've worked on older sites, up to 10,000 year old sites, but I haven't been lucky enough to find bison at old in the archaeological record. And a big part of that, I think, is, is just preservation issues. Yellowstone and the mountains in general are just not a great place for preservation. There's lots of, soils tend to be acidic, they get turned over a lot. There's a good term, bioturbation.

• 25:50Alie Ward?

  Hmm.

• 25:51Speaker 05

  Bioturbation.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  So it's trees that are turning up the soils, animals that live and burrow in the ground are turning up the soils. So you have both chemical and, and mechanical breaking down of these, of these bones. So we just, they just don't preserve very well.

• 26:07Alie Ward?

  Let's say that we're looking at a bison. Can you explain to me any of the pieces, parts of the bison? I know that there are horns, there is a hump of some sort. How big is a bison? If I say just beamed down to earth from an outer planet, I'm a Martian, and I'm like, what is this big furry creature?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  So I'm about five foot six.

• 26:26Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  On a good day. I think a good bull, we would be looking at each other, straight, straight on. I mean, I'd probably be looking at his, his forehead.

• 26:36Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Um, so, pretty good size. Up to 1,200 pounds. A good sized male.

• 26:43Alie Ward?

  Ooh, what about females? Smaller?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Females, a little bit smaller.

• 26:47Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably eight, 800 pounds.

• 26:49Alie Ward?

  What's with this?

• 26:50Speaker 01

  The hump is, um, so they have these really big spinal processes that come off of the thoracic vertebrae. And the hump is the, um, the fat and the skin that goes over that. It stores a lot of, a lot of its fat and energy in that, in that hump. That's the part that hunter gatherers really like, because that's where all your nutrition comes from. What's pretty cool, they've got, they've got beards.

• 27:17Alie Ward?

  I have noticed that. Is that a fashion thing, or is that?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I don't know. They've been, they've been hipsters for a long, long, long time.

• 27:25Alie Ward?

  Side note, bison beards, kind of like a scarf on an airplane, serve to insulate these critters in the snow. And get this, I just found out that their hairier shoulder region, it's a cape. So more evidence that these creatures are not only strong and powerful, but also just quietly flamboyant. So let's get back to Dan, who describes a situation similar to the wood bison discovery in Canada. So in the late 1800s, in Yellowstone's Pelican Valley, something cool happened.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Pelican Valley, historically significant in the story of bison generally in the United States, because it was there that the last wild bison survived back in the very early 20th century, in like 1906, 1912, there were only like a couple dozen bison left. Those were the last wild bison, and they were hiding out in Pelican Valley. And the reason why they were hiding out back there is, well, there weren't people, but also because it was geothermally active. We all know about the geysers in Old Faithful and all that. Well, there's a lot of other warm ground that melts the snow off in the wintertime. And so these little pockets of warm ground that the bison were using as refuge in the wintertime.

• 28:41Alie Ward?

  For more on the supervolcano that is Yellowstone Park, please see episode one, Volcanology, with Jess Phoenix. But yes, anyway, most of today's American bison are descended from those Pelican Valley survivors. Tell me a little bit about the bison population and where it has been in the last, say, 150 years. What's happened to the bison population?

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Well, it's like the sea, it's just sort of receded and got really small. The tide went out with bison. And they, like I said earlier, they found refuge in places like Pelican Valley and the interior of Yellowstone, one of the most remote areas in the lower 48 United States, especially back then, the early part of the 20th century. And remarkably, since then, we have more bison now in Yellowstone National Park than at any time since Europeans showed up. Granted, it's not 30 million, but it is 5,000 or so

• 29:47Speaker 02

  is about where we're at now. That's a massive turnaround. That's a massive cultural shift. Because you have to understand that, you know, bison were weaponized in a lot of ways. They were being eliminated to basically, you know, drive Indians onto reservations. It was part of, you know, the sort of colonization of the Western Hemisphere. You know, Western North America was taking out the bison. And so to bring those bison back is to sort of challenge some of those ideas, those sort of colonial attitudes. That also holds with the wolf as well. And so, yeah, these numbers aren't huge, but they're significant nonetheless.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  And I think that that's an important sort of cultural process, as well as it is a process of sort of conservation and a biological process.

• 30:38Alie Ward?

  I asked Ken, the geobiologist/archaeologist, if bison are on the move a lot, like equally enigmatic hardcore Dave Matthews fans. And now, what is their, what's their yearly life cycle like? Do they tend to migrate in certain times of the year? Do they go from the north to the south? Do they look for, where are they moving around?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  I think, well, the males, they migrate around a lot. They seem to have a pretty big range. And the females, they tend to stay in cowcalf groups for most of the year. And a lot of the younger males probably stay, stay with the herds, those cowcalf groups for a couple of years. And the fall is when you have the rut.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Because I'm in a rut.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  So, all the males come back from the high country and...

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Beat on each other for selection of females. The rut is pretty exciting to watch. They're pushing around each other and snorting and trying to see who's gonna be the biggest, baddest one out there that gets all the cows.

• 31:47Alie Ward?

  Is that how that works? Is there an alpha bison?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  There's usually several alpha bison that have access to the females, the cows.

• 31:57Alie Ward?

  Is that common in an ungulate group? Or?

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. Elk are pretty interesting. They gather up what's known as a harem.

• 32:07Speaker 06

  Oh, hey.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  So 10, 12 cows get, elk cows get...

• 32:15Alie Ward?

  Wow.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Get one guy.

• 32:18Alie Ward?

  Wow. So it's like sister wives. A little.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  A little.

• 32:22Alie Ward?

  I mean, I guess we are in Utah. You know, a quick aside, before you tell me that I'm making generalizations, I'm just honestly sharing data. I looked it up, and there are an estimated 30,000 folks in polygamous marriages in Utah, which is six times the population of wild bison in America. Now, P.S., I don't know or really care how they counted the polygamous people. It's none of my business. But what about the bison? I asked Dan if they have microchips in them, or is there like a census taker for buffalo, someone with snowshoes and a clipboard, just knock, knock, knocking on bison's doors? Is there an exact number? Is there a spreadsheet that has them all kind of cataloged? Are they tagged? How do you keep track?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Counting with aircraft.

• 33:08Alie Ward?

  Really? How does that work?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  They just get into a small, they being park service biologists, will get into a small fixed-wing aircraft, a Super Cub. They will fly certain routes through the park where bison are known to range, and they just count them up. So it's a total count. It's a census. And they do that at least once a year. Sometimes they do it multiple times.

• 33:33Alie Ward?

  And do they just film it and then later look at the footage?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  No, they'll count them as they go.

• 33:38Alie Ward?

  As they go?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  You lose track. Yeah.

• 33:40Alie Ward?

  That seems so easy to lose track.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  But they're so big. They're actually easy to count, I think, compared to, say, like elk.

• 33:45Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. Bison are darker, elk are lighter.

• 33:50Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And the bison tend to be more out in the open. Some of the elk will be in the trees.

• 33:56Alie Ward?

  So counting sheep is out. Counting bison's where it's at, I guess.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah. If I had to choose, I would count bison, yeah.

• 34:04Alie Ward?

  Do you think that bison biologists dream of bison? Do you dream of bison?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 34:09Alie Ward?

  What kind of bison dreams do you have?

• 34:11Speaker 02

  I can't remember of any off the top of my head, but I definitely have had dreams, especially when I'm in the field.

• 34:18Alie Ward?

  Real quick, what does it mean if you dream of buffalo? Well, according to sleepculture.com, which likely employs kind-hearted interns to make up omens for like every noun in the dictionary, seeing a buffalo in a dream is a symbol of survival and abundance. It means that you should pay attention to the path you're following in your life. Sure. Also, Ward family, side note, so Boyd and Lila and my cousins Crystal and James and Jamie bring a huge traditional teepee to our reunions, and the first year I ever got to sleep in it, they told me to pay attention to my dreams because in a teepee, they could have certain significance. And in the morning, I recalled, I had a dream about seeing Don Johnson from Miami Vice at Costco.

• 35:03Alie Ward?

  It was such a bummer. So maybe it just doesn't work on silly white ladies.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  I think being in Yellowstone and seeing how tourists think that they are like cows and can go up to them and take their picture, and I think that's a big myth is that somehow Yellowstone is this is this petting zoo out there and, you know, these are big wild animals and they are fairly tolerant, I think, of people. They're a lot more tolerant than I would be if I was them and somebody was coming up and snapping pictures. So I think that's kind of an interesting misconception about wild animals and especially wild animals in Yellowstone. The myths about bison, I think.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  I think maybe a big thing for people to understand is how pervasive they were on the landscape 150 years ago, especially on the Great Plains. I mean, you know, if you live in California or New York, you probably didn't see a lot of bison. But out on the Great Plains, they're amazingly prevalent part of the ecosystem. And to have them disappear in such a short period of time, I think that's really hard for people to understand. It's hard for me to understand how you can go from 30 million bison, if you want to use that number. There's lots of different estimates on how many bison were out on the Great Plains, and then within 20, 30-year period, they're gone.

• 36:33Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  And how we can do that. And the technology of that time, it wasn't like we were out there spraying them with guns, gunships. These people with single-shot rifles going out, and they completely caused the collapse of amazing population animals.

• 36:50Alie Ward?

  How did that happen over 20 or 30 years?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's hard to understand, but I think a big part of it was just the trade in bison robes. And there was this great demand in the 1860s and 70s for bison robes. And, you know, people were going out there, they were killing them, and I think they were disrupting herds. They were just taking the hides. It wasn't like they were using them for food or anything. And I think that had a great disruption of the breeding process, and the populations just crashed. I think that's a pretty indisputable thesis

• 37:36Speaker 01

  about how it all happened. And I think it's difficult to imagine, but I think once you start disrupting those herds, because they were easy to kill, and hunters got pretty close to them and could shoot them, and the bison didn't necessarily scatter very quickly. And then, once you start disrupting those herd structures and scattering bulls and cows, I think it's easy for the system to crash. They weren't a big animal to flee. I mean, they really didn't have any predators. Humans are probably bison's biggest predators. And I think that's...

• 38:16Speaker 01

  They, you know, they, the, yeah, humans were the only predator there and they, so they, they were the biggest thing out there. They didn't need to fear anything. And they were big enough herds that they could, they could fend off wolves, their other biggest predator. They didn't need to flee. They're, they're not like antelope. Antelope, you know, as soon as they see something, you can't get within a hundred yards of an antelope and it's gone. Yeah. Bison, they were the biggest things out there. So they didn't have, have to flee.

• 38:42Alie Ward?

  And now, how, do you, do you work also with indigenous groups and anthropologists and other archaeologists to learn more about the relation between hunter-gatherers in what's now North America and, and a prominent food source, which is bison? Does that figure in a lot to your work?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, most, most of the work that we do is either on public lands or funded by, by public dollars. And we do consult with tribes. In Yellowstone, typically, we, we consult with the Shoshone Bannock on the Fort Hall Reservation, and also the Eastern Shoshone that are over on the Wind River Reservation. And they're kept apprised of our work and are certainly able to come and visit and, and comment on it. And, and we try and do, do more and more of that, that consultation process. When I was working up in Yellowstone, I, I worked a lot with an elder known, who's, uh, who's since passed away, Heman Wise,

• 39:46Speaker 01

  and he gave us a lot of information about, about the Shoshone and their life ways. And so that was, that was a pretty interesting and a nice relationship.

• 39:56Alie Ward?

  Ken told me that he's been helping out using his archaeological techniques to understand the events and the landscape of the 1863 Bear River massacre that killed possibly hundreds of members of the Shoshone tribe in a place that's now South Idaho, near a town called Preston. And there's a small memorial there now, but the tribe is trying to raise funds for an interpretive center to memorialize what had happened on that site.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Working at the Bear River Massacre site is incredibly emotional just because it was a horrible event in no way, shape, or form could ever be justified. And seeing people that are two generations removed from the survivors of that and them telling their story, yeah, it's hard not to be emotional. You wouldn't be a human if you're not. So, yeah, that does get to be pretty emotional. My wife Molly and I also worked on the Sand Creek massacre site and were sitting with a lot of descendants of the Sand Creek massacre and talking with them and seeing how close that is to them still. I mean, you know,

• 41:07Speaker 01

  they get very emotional and it's, you know, it's not my history.

• 41:15Alie Ward?

  And how do Indigenous communities keep that history alive? The Intertribal Buffalo Council, ITBC, is this collection of 69 tribes from 19 different states, and they work on programs to return buffalo to tribal lands. But hyper locally, in their own community, Boyd and Lila themselves donated one of their own prized buffalo. I know that in terms of giving back to the community, like you guys donated a buffalo a year or so ago to one of the Browning schools to kind of learn how the buffalo is used in traditional food and other things. What was that like? What prompted that?

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Oh, it was an Indian Studies class at the high school. They wanted to get a hands-on experience and show everybody what, how they originally butchered buffalo, what all the parts they took.

• 42:09Alie Ward?

  Also, you may be too embarrassed to ask, is it Indian or Native American? And there are several opinions on words like Indian versus Indigenous versus Native versus First Nations. And different people have different preferences depending on the era and the region. This deserves its own whole episode, and that is in the works. So if you are Native, thank you for any emotional Labor that you have spent educating others. And I highly recommend podcasts like All My Relations. So good. And following Indigenous folks from all over the world on social media. We all have so much listening and so much learning to do. And that's okay. Learning is exciting. Now, back to Dan.

• 42:51Alie Ward?

  I asked about the heritage of the bison and the introduced cattle. What's happening there? What is a wild bison versus what is a bison that has now domesticated bovine DNA? And do people care? What, where are we at with that?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  I was at a meeting in Bozeman, Montana a few years ago. National Academy of Sciences was doing a review on brucellosis. And they had the Chair of the Intertribal Bison Cooperative give a talk. And one of the things he said that struck me was that, you know, from his point of view, it doesn't really make much of a difference if this bison has got, you know, if it's 80% bison and 20%, you know, Hareford or 5%, you know, like it's a bison. You know, from his point of view, this is a bison. And, and I think he was speaking too, from sort of the cultural point of view,

• 43:46Speaker 02

  because there's a lot of, you know, mixing among human populations. And, you know, Native Americans have to deal with this in terms of blood quantum to prove, you know, that they belong to a certain tribe and a certain reservation and so forth. And, and there's a lot of controversy around that. And he was sort of referring to that in the context of what percent of bison do you need in order to be a bison? And I think he was saying, you know what? That's kind of nonsense.

• 44:15Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  It's all a bunch of hogwash. What is a bison is in some ways in the eye of the beholder, I think. And I think that's how I'd answer that question.

• 44:24Alie Ward?

  Okay, so what about raising bison? I've looked it up and it turns out that bison babies are cute to the point that it is enraging. They are like shaggy muppets. It's infuriating. My heart hurts. I want to hug them. Any idea where we're at in terms of bison as a?

• 44:42Alie Ward?

  Livestock commodity, like where is that industry going?

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Ask Ted Turner. That's what he does. Yeah. Go to, you can go to Ted's Grill and order yourself up a bison steak. I mean, he's, he's, and this is, this is not a secret. He, that's part of what he's been doing for a number of years. He's been growing bison on a number of his properties and using that bison and selling it in his restaurants. Ted's Grill, I think is what it's called.

• 45:07Alie Ward?

  Do you eat bison?

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 45:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah. You're not like, oh, sorry.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  No, bison are, are, are super tasty.

• 45:15Alie Ward?

  Oh, bison. But are raising them better for the planet than cows? Some ecologists argue yes, because their poops and their hooves have evolved along with the plains. And unlike Nambipamba cows, bison typically don't need winter shelter, which saves on energy costs. And bison meat also tends to be leaner meat. Boyd and Lila supply a few local restaurants and sell steaks to private buyers, but said not all bison burgers are created equal. And some commercial ones you might find in chain restaurants might be made from older animals and might be higher in fat. I asked how they were in general to raise, though. How is it different from raising cows?

• 45:55Speaker 03

  They're a lot smarter.

• 45:58Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  They're independent. They're wildlife.

• 46:02Alie Ward?

  Do they kind of communicate with each other more than cows do? Are they more social or less social? What do they eat?

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Oh, way more social. Yeah. They run around, they run around in one little pack.

• 46:15Alie Ward?

  What kind of noises do buffalo make?

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Grunts.

• 46:19Alie Ward?

  They grunt?

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Kind of like sheep.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  Kind of like pigs.

• 46:24Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 46:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Kind of like pigs. That's kind of what they sound like.

• 46:34Alie Ward?

  P.S. Thank you, YouTuber Jim Doss, who posted this nine second video of a male bison sticking his tongue out like it was a fraternity burping contest and just letting the grunts rip. Why, when, when do they have occasion to grunt? Do they do it when they're happy or when they're pissed off or what?

• 46:51Speaker 04

  When they're communicating with each other and.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Mostly when they're in a little bunch there.

• 46:58Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, they talk to each other that way.

• 47:01Alie Ward?

  Do they have any favorite treats? Are they like, yes, it's apple season? Or is it just like they eat grunting? That's it.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  They love crab apples. Crab apples. Absolutely love them.

• 47:14Alie Ward?

  Do they grunt to each other like, yo, come and get these, man?

• 47:19Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 47:20Alie Ward?

  Buffalo going batshit on crab apples is such a joy to imagine. I would like to be their friends. And I asked Dan if bison are social, mostly because I would like to know if they will be my friends.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  So they're extremely social, bison are. They, you know, they, they, they aggregate together and they'll help each other. They're not like elk, which sort of flee in every direction and sort of every man for himself. Generally, bison are, you know, are very cooperative in how they defend themselves. But when there's deep snow, that defense breaks down and it becomes every man for himself. We're a woman.

• 47:57Alie Ward?

  Side note, of course, or non-binary bison, I'm sure they're out there. I was recently reading American Indian Thought, which is an Ann Waters anthology of Native writers. And I came across this passage by Alice Kehoe, which happens to relate to the Blackfeet Confederacy. Alice writes, "What really matters to a Blackfeet is autonomy. If a person competently engages in work or behavior ordinarily the domain of people of the other sex or another species, onlookers assume the person has been blessed." Anyway, back to bison. We need more, I think, right? Let's ask an expert. And where are we going in the future in terms of bison conservation and growing the numbers? What do you, what do you see kind of coming up around the bend?

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Well, in my experience in the Greater Yellowstone, I would say we're running up against limits. Just in the, you know, 20, 25 years that I've been working up there. Areas that used to be rangeland have houses on them now. So it isn't just an issue of livestock grazing on the borders of the park. You know, it's pavement, it's houses, it's fences, it's people, swing sets, that kind of stuff. It's encroaching and there doesn't really seem to be any end of that. And so bison and I think wildlife in particular are increasingly hemmed in

• 49:30Speaker 02

  in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. On the other hand, you've got initiatives like out in eastern Montana, the American Prairie Foundation, where they're cobbling together private lands, you know, buying up lands from willing sellers. These lands are adjacent to public lands and they're trying to recreate the kind of short grass prairie that we had at the time of, you know, European conquests basically out there. So taking cornfields and alfalfa fields and converting those back into prairie, which is not an easy thing to do, by the way. I also think a big part of the future of bison is on Native American reservations.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  So increasingly you see tribes building up their herds on their lands under their management. And I think that's a big part of the bison story going forward as well.

• 50:24Alie Ward?

  Boyd and Lila echo that. Is there anything like population wise of the plains buffalo that y'all would like to see happen as people who have land and have livestock? Would you like to see the population rise again to closer to what it used to be like? How do you guys feel about like, how many buffalo should there be on the plains?

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Not 100 million. They would overrun Nebraska and Kansas, Missouri. And there wouldn't be any cornfields. There wouldn't be any wheat fields. You know, there's. They have a place, but it's proportionately.

• 51:08Alie Ward?

  Okay, I know futurology was last week, but I asked Dan about what might be in store for our buffalo friends. What is the aim? What's the goal in terms of numbers of bison? What can the continent support, given what we've maybe done to the land in terms of agriculture?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Well, it's completely in our hands. We, our hands being sort of, you know, American society. If we want more bison, we can have more bison. There are ways of doing that. Likewise with other wildlife. The question is whether or not we're willing to make the choices and the trade offs in order to do that. So, for example, in Northern Yellowstone, very few bison are permitted outside the park because they interfere with agriculture. Not only just conflicts in terms of, you know, raiding hayfields and busting down fences, but, you know, they also carry diseases. Both elk and bison carry brucellosis.

• 52:08Alie Ward?

  Okay, side note, brucellosis is caused by bacteria, and in humans, it's most commonly picked up by eating unpasteurized milk or soft, squishy cheeses, like a goat cheese. But who is Bruce? And why did someone name a disease after him? Well, it turns out, it's named after David Bruce, an Australian-born microbiologist who worked on investigating the disease right around the time, I guess, folks were running around North America, killing all the bison. Also, David Bruce did not have brucellosis, but he did perish and fall from life's supple grasp just four days after his wife, at her memorial service. He died at her memorial service, which is either really sweet or incredibly obnoxious.

• 52:53Alie Ward?

  But I hope to heaven that the funeral director just gave that poor family an impromptu BOGO buy one get one discount. Okay, back to brucellosis.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  And if a domestic cow contracts this disease, they're at risk of spontaneous abortion. There's a massive economic cost to having livestock infected with bison because it means that you can't move your livestock out of state, meaning that you can't sell them across the state lines because other states don't want to get infected with brucellosis. And so it's a major economic issue to having these species that carry that disease to range far and wide. And so, you know, all, you know, all these decisions about life management, these are all social decisions. You know, these aren't necessarily biological processes exclusively.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  They're very much social and cultural processes. And, and, you know, a lot, a lot of these decisions get made in, you know, public meetings, in various different situations with different agencies, state, local, federal. And so when you say, well, how many bison could we have? Well, it really sort of depends on sort of the social economic, you know, carrying capacity. You know, how much are people willing to tolerate? We could have bison in Cache Valley if, you know, all the farmers that are grazing cows or growing corn decided they wanted to raise bison. I mean, that's possible. You have private landowners in the plains states, elsewhere in the Rockies that are, that are doing just that.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  They are raising bison for profit. They're trying to make money off of it. You know, so, so there is a model for doing that, but are those, you know, are those livestock? Are they wild bison? And, and those are social decisions. And, and so that, those need to be, those are the kinds of conversations we need to have, knowing that upfront, that these are sort of, you know, Cultural discussions that we're having, socioeconomic discussions and not so much biology.

• 55:01Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  So what we really need to be talking to is a sociologist and economist.

• 55:04Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  And a psychologist too, probably.

• 55:08Alie Ward?

  Sociologists, I have not done an episode on you yet, but I will. And economists, I am so sorry, but you are not econologists. Hey, all those in favor of some spinoff shows, maybe an Ologies Network, you could tweet at me. Okay, but first, let's bust some more myths. What about any myths or any flim flam that you would debunk that you see people having a misconception?

• 55:30Speaker 02

  There's so much flim flam.

• 55:30Alie Ward?

  I know. Debunk it. You got the stage here.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  About bison specifically?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that I would just sort of echo Ken's point that they're not farm animals. And so if you're going to Yellowstone in the summer to see bison, don't underestimate how quick they can be to, you know, kick you, pounce on you, stomp on you, hurt you. I will cut you. Keep your distance. Are there myths about bison? Here's a big myth.

• 56:03Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  And that is that they are a major source of brucellosis. That's a massive myth that needs to be debunked, that is, has a direct bearing on their conservation outlook and how people, how people perceive them, how the livestock industry perceives them. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been any instance of bison infecting livestock, cows outside of Yellowstone. And then all those transmissions have involved elk that have been infected with brucellosis. So bison get a bad rap. So there's still a lot of, I would say, sort of bias culturally against bison in the livestock community.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Their, you know, bison are looked at as competitors and threats.

• 56:52Alie Ward?

  Boyd and Lila echoed that and they said that it's a big limiting factor in growing bison numbers via ranching.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  They're, they're never going to populate like beef.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Cause there's too many myths out there. For one thing is brucellosis is a big scare and it has nothing to do with the meat. But like even people here.

• 57:16Speaker 04

  On this reservation, don't eat buffalo because they're afraid of this brucellosis stuff.

• 57:21Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 57:22Speaker 04

  Really.

• 57:23Alie Ward?

  So that's a big, that's some flim flam right there.

• 57:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, it really is. And our, our food program has buffalo meat. They have buffalo meat that they ration out. And but they have, they have trouble getting people to take it.

• 57:38Alie Ward?

  Really? That's kind of, that's surprising. Given that buffalo is such a part of Blackfeet history, is it ever weird to you that it's difficult to get over the myths?

• 57:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, because they, they've spread these rumors. I don't, you know, I don't know for how many, a hundred years, whatever. You know, and so it's, it's, uh, it's kind of frustrating that these.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  The natives won't even really try, try it.

• 58:13Alie Ward?

  And, uh, is there, is there anything, any kind of causes or any charities that are helping Bison or helping people maybe relate to Bison or helping like Boyd, how you guys donated a buffalo to, to a school? Anything like that that is doing good stuff that you guys would want to shout out or have like a donation go to at all?

• 58:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, the, they do have several buffalo coalitions. One in North Dakota and one in South Dakota and, and then one, several Indian tribes are all in. They put buffalo in different places. When if, uh, if somebody in New Mexico wants buffalo,

• 59:01Speaker 04

  they can get buffalo from the tribal coalition. So they, I mean, there's, there's lots of opportunities in Buffalo.

• 59:08Alie Ward?

  Okay, quick aside, I found one, and this week's donation goes to the Intertribal Buffalo Council, whose mission is to restore bison on tribal lands for cultural and spiritual enhancement and preservation. So, the ITBC coordinates education and training programs, and the transfer of surplus buffalo from national parks to tribal lands, and works with their partners, including National Bison Association, the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and more. So you can find out more about them at itbcbuffalonation.org. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, so you may hear about them now. How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked

• 59:53Alie Ward?

  about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's

• 1:00:38Alie Ward?

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• 1:01:22Alie Ward?

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• 1:01:26Alie Ward?

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• 1:02:11Alie Ward?

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• 1:03:00Alie Ward?

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• 1:03:30Alie Ward?

  Okay, so Ken, if you remember, gave us the history of bison and we haven't heard from him in a bit. So let's ask him stuff. Can I ask you some questions from listeners?

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 1:03:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah, they might be, they might be stupid. You okay with that?

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:46Alie Ward?

  We may have gone over a little bit of this too, but um, John Worcester wants to know how many bison were around during their peak population period. Do you think 30 million or?

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, yeah, I think 30 million is a good, a good number.

• 1:03:58Alie Ward?

  And how long ago was that?

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  1860s, they were probably at their peak, 1850s, 1860s.

• 1:04:05Alie Ward?

  30 million. Me and Dingman says, for a very long time, I thought the American bison was extinct, that the good old boys back in the railroad days had hunted them to extinction. Fast forward to me being today years old and I still don't know what the story is. So they are not extinct. This is the same species from the 1800s. It's not a hybrid species or a, um, let's see, a bunch of people, I'm going to read their names as fast as I can. Anna Thompson, Allison Turi, Lacey J. Schuer, Sidney Brown, Kelly Brockington, Jessica Bailey, Ashra Alhakhtar, all kind of want to know, and Sebastian Osterbrink, all want to know, how related are American bison and European bison?

• 1:04:50Alie Ward?

  Like, what is their, essentially, their, their closest? I know you're like, where are they in terms of the musk ox and, uh, and water buffalo? I guess, I didn't realize it was a European bison.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah, bison, um, it's bison bonassis is the European bison. A little bit smaller, mostly, seems like it was adapted to woodlands.

• 1:05:11Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Probably not nearly as prevalent, but. Probably just as good to eat. They're, they show up in the archaeological record. So they're all, they're all bovines.

• 1:05:23Alie Ward?

  Okay. Okay. So side note, an ungulate is an animal that has hooves and a bovine is a type of ungulate that includes cattle and African buffalo and yaks and water buffalo and bison. And the bison, like cows, are also ruminants, which means it chews its food and then kind of gags it back in its mouth and enjoys an encore meal of it. And I dare you to try that during the salad course at your next business dinner. Just do it. So gross. So baller. A bunch of people had questions about their fur. Stephanie Roertes, Bonnie Fairbanks, Jen Athanas. They want to know, oh, Colette Ayers. They want to know, why do they have so much hair and fur? And what makes the hair so good at insulating them?

• 1:06:09Alie Ward?

  And was that, was that helpful during colder periods?

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have really thick, dense fur that they, that they grow throughout the year. Plus they're fat. Yeah, it's, they're, they're, they're well adapted to cold temperatures. That, you know, it's, gets 20, 30 below in Yellowstone and, and up, up into Canada. And these animals are out there. And it's, and what really I think is, is really amazing to see is in the middle of the winter, they have snow on their backs and the snow is not melting because of the insulation. So they're not losing a lot of heat that way. So they're well insulated and well adapted to that really extreme environments. And they, you know, they live in, in environments that go from minus 30 to over a hundred degrees.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  So they're incredibly well adapted to North American extremes.

• 1:07:03Alie Ward?

  And they can handle the hundred degree weather because again, the insulation?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  I think they, well, they, they lose a lot of their fur. Look at the difference between a bison in the winter and a bison in the summer. They're They don't have a lot of fur left on them in the summertime.

• 1:07:17Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow. It just sheds off and

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Alie Ward?

  Just bye bye. I wonder if there's any application for that. Just go around collecting bison fur.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can go up there and look for it.

• 1:07:26Alie Ward?

  So all that fur protects them from the elements. And I asked Boyd and Lila about it, having seen it firsthand half the year, where it can get to negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, just super side note, just this past week, my dad, which is your grandpa, just told us a story about growing up in Montana, walking to school a mile and a half each way in snowy, negative 70 degree weather. And Pop, I am so sorry, I live in LA and I use a space heater when it dips below 70. I just do not possess the Montana vigor of the bison. How do they do in the snow? Like, how cold does it get up in Browning?

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  Snow doesn't bother them at all.

• 1:08:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  No, cold, cold doesn't bother them either. They're kind of the opposite of cows.

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  Buffalo looks into the wind, into the storm, and the cow turns her back to the storm.

• 1:08:22Speaker 04

  They really do. I mean, they're totally different in storms, so.

• 1:08:27Alie Ward?

  And then what does their fur feel like? Because I've gotten a chance to sleep and and obviously like feel your buffalo hide because we have one. But how would you describe their their hide and their fur?

• 1:08:41Speaker 04

  Kind of woolly. They have a nice fur, but they're more woolly than it's not just hair. It's more of a cross between hair and wool.

• 1:08:51Alie Ward?

  Do you remember that story when we were up at the homestead and you guys had the teepee up? And it was me and my parents sleeping in it. So we're sleeping in the teepee and the the plains winds are flapping, the smoke flaps, and you can see the stars, you know, through the top of the teepee. And my parents are sleeping and they're, you know, to keep warm, they're sleeping on one of your buffalo hides. And then we go to sleep and about five minutes later, I just hear my dad say to my mom, "Oh, I thought I was petting your hair, but he was a buffalo."

• 1:09:24Alie Ward?

  Because my mom and I have such curly hair. My dad mistook the buffalo hide for my mom's curly hair.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Well, if he ever gets lonesome, now you know what to do. A piece of buffalo.

• 1:09:39Alie Ward?

  But every time I have to go flat iron my hair, I always think, it's a lot like a buffalo.

• 1:09:47Alie Ward?

  Man, if I want a haircut, though, I can't roll around like a bison until it just falls off. Well, it's pretty damaged, actually, so I probably couldn't.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  That's why they roll around and, yeah.

• 1:09:56Alie Ward?

  And that's why they pull off is just wallowing.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Alie Ward?

  That makes sense because someone asked why they wallow and I thought they just meant like in disposition that they were kind of emo. So I thought they just seemed like an Eeyore and I was like, that's rude. But okay, so wallowing is an actual verb that relates to behavior. That makes sense. Some people asked, Melissa Houston and Mike Melchior asked about the roaming and why they roam. Also, Mike Melchior wanted to know how do buffalo manage their cellphone bills with all the roaming charges?

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:10:31Alie Ward?

  I don't think that's a serious question.

• 1:10:35Alie Ward?

  But yeah, why, why did they roam? Why were they on the move so much? And did the plains make that easy because it wasn't mountainous?

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Well, they're, they're moving to find food. So they're, they're constantly looking for good nutritious grasses to eat. So that's why they're constantly on the move.

• 1:10:53Speaker 06

  Get in loser, we're going shopping.

• 1:10:55Alie Ward?

  So they've already eaten that patch and now they're just keep going.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:59Alie Ward?

  Oh God, I kind of like really big furry locusts, but cuter.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Alie Ward?

  That makes some sense.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Very big locust.

• 1:11:06Alie Ward?

  Huge locust. Let's see.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  More cuddly than locusts, though, I think.

• 1:11:11Alie Ward?

  I think they're more cuddly. I think they would probably beg to differ if they're like, no, we're not, don't touch me. Okay, so side note, the excellent science writer Ed Yong published a piece in The Atlantic a few months back titled, What America Lost When It Lost the Bison? And it was about bison surfing a green wave of new shoots and grasses to eat. And researchers recently discovered that the bison's grazing changes the landscape. And Yong writes, "In areas where bison graze, plants contain 50 to 90% more nutrients by the end of the summer. This not only provides extra nourishment for other grazers, but prolongs the growing season of the plants themselves." Yong continues, "When we lose animals, we also lose everything those animals do.

• 1:11:53Alie Ward?

  When bison are exterminated, springtime changes in ways we still don't fully understand." Ed Yong, so good. Okay, other things you don't understand? Butts, as always. Mackenzie Miller wants to know, why, oh, why are their rears so small? It doesn't make any sense visually. Please rescue me evolutionary logic. Why do they have such small butts?

• 1:12:17Alie Ward?

  That's a good question.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  I.

• 1:12:20Alie Ward?

  I guess it's all in the hump.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  I, I guess, I mean, that's where their, their power comes from.

• 1:12:26Alie Ward?

  He explains that by having a big chest up front, the bison is able to act like a wedge through the snow, pushing aside these frozen drifts so that they can forage at these grasses below the snow. And they invested all of their muscular material toward their head and their shoulder muscles. So business in the front, they're like, why are you even bothering with my butt? Look, look at my hump. This is where I get my stuff done. Okay, so that makes some sense. Um, Azrael King wants to know, how did buffalo become a term for so many things? Like, are buffalo mean? What's their temperament like? Do they have friends? This is a lot of questions that I'm not sorry, they say.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  I don't know. They, they've, they're certainly prevalent in our lexicon. And, and I think maybe that goes back to their, just because they're such an iconic species.

• 1:13:17Alie Ward?

  A lot of people have this question. Raymond J. Doidge, Laura Kunitz, and Heather Denzmore all wanted to know, are bison related to woolly mammoths?

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Not in the least.

• 1:13:27Alie Ward?

  Really? Other than they're mammals? The bison, by the way, as of 2016, is the official mammal of the United States. So their hair has nothing, nothing to do with it?

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:13:39Alie Ward?

  Okay. Laura Merriman wants to know, in Theodore Roosevelt National Park bathrooms, there's a sign that says, bison can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and run up to 30 miles per hour, which is three times faster than you. Is that true? And what do you do if you upset a danger cow?

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Alie Ward?

  Hide behind a rock.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, this thing is not to get them mad.

• 1:14:03Alie Ward?

  Don't get them mad. Charlotte Grzerowicz wants to know, I heard somewhere that bison can jump six feet in the arrows. Is true?

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  I don't think so. We did see a bison when we were working up along Yellowstone Lake. And this, I think, attests to the quality of their eyesight. As we had an excavation unit opened up and we were eating lunch and a little bit removed from them, probably about 20 yards away from our excavation unit. And this lone bull came walking up and got right to the edge of our hole and saw it. And he kind of wheeled up like, whoa.

• 1:14:40Alie Ward?

  Oh, no.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, that was pretty freaky.

• 1:14:46Alie Ward?

  Can you imagine if a bull tumbled into your hole?

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't, yeah, that's all we could think. I was like, okay, who's gonna get that one out?

• 1:14:52Alie Ward?

  Oh, no. Have you ever had a scary encounter with a bison?

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, again, working along Yellowstone Lake with geologist Ken Pierce. We're, because we were trying to understand how the archaeological record is related to lake level changes. So we were walking along the cut bank and collecting samples and Ken doing his thing of describing soils and everything. And we came up around this little wash that we were able to climb up. And there was a bison sitting right there and he's like, just like.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  And then we jumped back down and he went on his merry way. But that was, that was kind of freaky.

• 1:15:31Alie Ward?

  I'm surprised that they startle. I mean, I guess they're probably not.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot, yeah, I think their eyesight is not great. And, you know, all of a sudden, you see this funny white guy with a hat on. It's like, what would you do coming up out of the?

• 1:15:48Alie Ward?

  I might gore you, but that's just me.

• 1:15:52Alie Ward?

  Evan Jude wants to know, how similar are bison to domesticated bovine? Can a bison produce offspring with a cow the way a horse can with a donkey?

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  That was a big thing that was going on in the 19th century, the late 1890s and into the teens. They were, they were trying to breed cows and bison. I don't think they were, I think the biggest problem was is they were using male or bull bison and cow cattle. And a lot of times the, the.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  The babies, the fetuses were too big and were killing the cow. You know, there's, there's beefalos out there.

• 1:16:31Alie Ward?

  So yeah, you wouldn't breed like a Yorkie mom with a Great Dane dad. Also, I feel you should know that some cattle bison hybrids are called beefalo or cattlelo. And I think personally, Agent Cattlelo sounds like a really good TV spy name. P.S. Neither one of them have a favorite buffalo movie. I tried, I asked.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  I have a buffalo joke, though.

• 1:16:53Alie Ward?

  I'll hear it.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  Hey, what did, uh, what does the mom of buffalo say to their kids as they go off to school?

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  Bison.

• 1:17:02Alie Ward?

  That's great. How did I not see that?

• 1:17:06Alie Ward?

  How did I not see that coming? I'm like a bison. I have very poor eyesight when it comes to wonderful jokes. I have finally been out-datted. And also, that's a great note to leave on. So now, let's get to the questions that you asked. Wildlife ecologist Dan, who I always want to call Ken, but Ken is the archaeologist. This is Dan. Okay, let's talk to wildlife ecologist Dan. Can I ask you some Patreon questions?

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Please.

• 1:17:29Alie Ward?

  Some listener questions? Okay. Victoria Demarest, Kathleen Fast, Ivory Deeter want to know what's up with birds? And bison? And also, why are they just hanging out? Just kicking it, sitting on their humps and picking at their wounds? What's going on with the birds?

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Uh, they're eating parasites.

• 1:17:49Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, ticks, flies, things like that. You see this with magpies will sort of perch on a bison and, you know, do a little foraging.

• 1:17:58Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:59Alie Ward?

  They're bros, though, they're friends?

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:03Alie Ward?

  That's not very convincing.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Uh, however, if the bison is, is sick and if it does have a wound, um, it can attract a lot of scavengers. And it, it, it turns into sort of more of a harassment type of an issue.

• 1:18:18Alie Ward?

  Gross.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, but generally speaking, you know, it's, um, it's not a big deal for bison to have a magpie on them.

• 1:18:28Alie Ward?

  Kristen Smith wants to know, do bison really only have one lung? Or was that just a myth made up by white people who couldn't fathom how Native Americans were able to kill an animal so big without a gun?

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a really interesting question. I did not know of that myth. And so I really can't comment on, you know, whether it was a good one or a bad one, other than obviously it's not true. They do have two lungs.

• 1:18:50Alie Ward?

  Okay. P.S. This myth started because while bison have two lungs, they share one lung cavity with no division between the lungs. So now you know that little trivia nugget. And all you will talk about will be buffalo. This is a question I got from two pastologists. Jennifer Booth, an ariologist, she's a Mars expert, also Julie Lesnick, who studies eating bugs, sustainable protein. They both asked, can you please dissect this sentence? Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo? Do you have any idea what they're talking about?

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  No, I'm afraid not.

• 1:19:28Alie Ward?

  This was also asked by Graham Tattersall. In your experience, do buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo? And I have no idea what they're talking about. But I have a feeling that there's something, some kind of grammatical loophole where that is a sentence.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sort of queasy just thinking about it.

• 1:19:46Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Alie Ward?

  Right. I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna, I'll unpack it.

• 1:19:52Alie Ward?

  Let's see. I know, I was like, I was like, is this, are, how are two ologists both on the same hallucinogen submitting questions? Of course, I looked this up. And in this case, it's indeed a grammatically correct English language sentence with buffalo meaning of Buffalo, New York, another buffalo meaning bison, and another buffalo meaning the verb to buffalo or to bully. So according to my friend, Workerpedia, buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is translated to mean the buffalo from buffalo who are buffaloed by buffalo from buffalo, buffalo other buffalo from buffalo.

• 1:20:34Speaker 04

  God, I need to nap.

• 1:20:35Alie Ward?

  So a lot of people asked this question, and I will put them all on an aside. Possibly Hungry patrons, Teresa DeZazo, and Leal Stefkova, plus a bounty of first time question askers, Brittany K., Milo Cuesta, Holly Bood, Daniella Buchanan, Michelle Grandin, and Samantha Kenny specifically, all asked. Why do we eat bison burgers? Are there enough bison for that? And if they're threatened to low numbers, how can they be used as a food product?

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  Oh, well, they're commercial herds.

• 1:21:05Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, they live on big ranches out in places like South Dakota, elsewhere. Yeah, so these are not what I would call conservation herds like Yellowstone, or Wind Cave, or the Henry Mountains, or National Bison Range. Those wild conservation herds are not, you know, they're not turned into burgers at restaurants. Now, they're hunted, you know, right? So Yellowstone bison are hunted, but there's a tribal hunt every fall that occurs on the northern end of the park. And then the Henry Mountains herd is hunted. The Utah Division Wildlife oversees that hunt.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  But these aren't animals that are, you know, being shipped to processing plants.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  These are, that's more like a regulated hunt.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Can I interject?

• 1:21:57Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Interesting about bison is even though they were down to a couple dozen at the turn of the last century, they've never been on the endangered species list.

• 1:22:07Alie Ward?

  Why is that?

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  That's a good question.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  I don't know, but they have never been nominated as an endangered species. Even today, no one has taken that task on.

• 1:22:18Alie Ward?

  That seems, is that a political choice? It couldn't be that big an oversight. I'll look into that. That's.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  There's probably some interesting history there.

• 1:22:27Alie Ward?

  Yeah, that's bananas. I'll look into that. That's nuts. So from what I can gather, the population was so regally boned by European settlers that bison were just considered ecologically extinct. And while there may only be a few thousand in wild herds, ranching has now grown bison's numbers to several hundred thousand in the US, so they're considered near threatened, which is the lowest level of concern. It offers pretty much a, he'll be fine kiddo, level of protection. Bridget Fitzgerald, Queen Bee Ceramics, and Carla Hickenlooper said.

• 1:23:02Alie Ward?

  Queen Bee Ceramics asked, "I just found out that Yellowstone bison population is managed by calling the bison herd every winter. Reading about this makes my heart hurt, as I didn't realize that bison were not a protected species. So what's your take on the inter-agency bison management plan?" What are they doing right? What's going on with it?

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  Well, they're dealing with a difficult problem in terms of increasing numbers of bison and not necessarily increasing amounts of area in which to have bison. And so they're forced to come up with a plan to keep numbers at a level that, you know, in which they have enough habitat for them. Because if bison aren't allowed to roam unhindered outside the park, then you're gonna need fewer bison. But I think what listeners also have to be

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  really clear about is that wildlife being culled in Yellowstone is not a new phenomenon, a new thing. And of course, bison now aren't being culled inside the park. There's a sort of broader misconception that wildlife in Yellowstone are free from human interference. And that is not the case. You're moving across the park boundary and you're dealing with human beings. And that often means having to dodge a bullet. And that's been a part of life as a large mammal, large non-human mammal in Yellowstone, you know, really since

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Europeans arrived.

• 1:24:46Alie Ward?

  Which, of course, is shitty. Now, what is shitty about archaeologist Ken's job? What's the hardest thing about your job? Or what is something that you dislike about your job? Something about your job that sucks, that you're like, "I wish this didn't happen."

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Lack of funding.

• 1:25:03Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  That's the biggest thing.

• 1:25:05Alie Ward?

  Grants.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Trying to find funds.

• 1:25:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  And spending an inordinate amount of time begging for money to do research.

• 1:25:14Alie Ward?

  Do you have to present a case why this is important to ecology? Why this is, what is, is your angle more ecological or anthropological?

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Uh, it's both. It depends on what we're, we're looking for. Um, the, my dissertation researching, continued research, um, on, is bison ecology. So it's, yeah, it's understanding the ecology of bison and yeah, it's, it's tough.

• 1:25:39Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  And we don't need a lot of money. We work really cheaply and get a lot out of the money we, we do get.

• 1:25:47Alie Ward?

  How much does a field season cost? I asked this of a dinosaur, of a paleontologist. He could fund a field season for less than a used Toyota.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:57Alie Ward?

  What?

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:58Alie Ward?

  I was like, you could have the cheapest wedding or you could find a dinosaur?

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:26:04Alie Ward?

  So are we, so you have to petition and petition, petition for funding that other people might spend on like a rafting trip?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:26:15Alie Ward?

  A very nice bicycle or something?

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, very nice bicycle, I guess.

• 1:26:19Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  A lot of samples.

• 1:26:21Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Analyzed, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's kind of crazy. Um, and what's equally annoying is that it takes as much time to write a grant for $1,500 as it does for $150,000.

• 1:26:36Alie Ward?

  So that's a lot of time you could be spending looking at things.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Politicians complain about they're always having to raise money to get reelected. Well, so do we.

• 1:26:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  And I think we do a better job with the money that we get.

• 1:26:50Alie Ward?

  Bison for president. And let's talk crap with Yellowstone Dan. And what's the shittiest thing about your job? It sucks.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:26:58Alie Ward?

  Does it get cold?

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:27:01Alie Ward?

  Do you get snow in your pants? Something must suck.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  I, I think that, and I think this is not an uncommon complaint. I think a lot of people have this problem with their jobs. It's just the volume of work that we're all expected to do in a very short period of time. And trying to do it all as well as you want to do it.

• 1:27:19Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  That's tough.

• 1:27:20Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:27:22Alie Ward?

  What's the best thing about bison? Best thing about your job?

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  The best thing about my job is that for the most part, I get to set my own agenda in terms of the questions that I ask, the people that I seek out as collaborators. These are all decisions that I get to make. And what was the other part of your question?

• 1:27:45Alie Ward?

  Just what you like about your job or about bison.

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  Oh, about bison. I like bison because they're so tough. Bison are really interesting because you know, you'll see them out in the landscape and they'll sort of lull you into this sort of false sense of knowing what they're all about because, oh, there they are. There's a herd of bison and that's the same herd of bison that was there last year and the year before that and the year before that. All of a sudden, the following year, they're gone. You don't know why they're gone. Where did they go? Why did they leave? And so I think bison are, they can be surprising in a very unpredictable way, right? I mean, a lot, you know, that seems kind of silly to say, but they can catch you off guard.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  And so that's what makes them interesting subjects of study, I suppose.

• 1:28:36Alie Ward?

  And a last question I always ask is what do you love most about your job? What do you love about bison?

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  What I love about my job, I think what's great about archaeology is that we get to do a lot of things. I mean, we get to be in the field, we get to collect data, we get to get dirty, we get to get rained on. And then we get to come back and sit in front of computers and try and make sense of all that stuff. So it uses a lot of different parts of your brain and your body. And some of the best people, my best friends I've met doing this work, my wife I met doing this work.

• 1:29:14Alie Ward?

  Is she a bisonologist?

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  She's not a bisonologist, but she's an archaeologist and we work, we do a lot of work together.

• 1:29:20Alie Ward?

  How'd you guys meet?

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  She was working with me.

• 1:29:23Alie Ward?

  Yeah? Did you guys work alongside each other for a while before you're like, oh no, there's a smoldering attraction happening?

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Well,

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have to, it's a different time period.

• 1:29:34Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  It's actually her boss.

• 1:29:36Alie Ward?

  Whoa, but it seemed like it worked out.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Alie Ward?

  How long have you guys?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  She has yet to file any suits against me.

• 1:29:44Alie Ward?

  How long have you been married?

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Oh, God. What are we now? Seventeen years?

• 1:29:50Alie Ward?

  Seventeen years, so it's working out.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, got four kids.

• 1:29:53Alie Ward?

  Oh, you don't wear a ring, though?

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Uh, broke.

• 1:29:56Alie Ward?

  Oh, no. How did it break?

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  My fingers got fat.

• 1:30:01Alie Ward?

  Oh, boy. Well, that's one way to do it. You're just storing up for the winter.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:07Alie Ward?

  You're just storing up for the winter.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  I've been doing that for way too long.

• 1:30:11Alie Ward?

  So, great people, wonderful people.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  Yes, wonderful people.

• 1:30:14Alie Ward?

  It never gets old.

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  It never gets old, no. It never does.

• 1:30:18Alie Ward?

  Thank you so much for talking to me about bison, bison, bison.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  And thanks to your listeners for great questions.

• 1:30:25Alie Ward?

  They care about bison.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  They do, yeah, that's nice to hear.

• 1:30:28Alie Ward?

  Everyone loves a bison, everyone, including my cousin Boyd and Lila. What is your favorite thing about a buffalo? Is there anything that's just like charmed its way into your heart?

• 1:30:42Speaker 04

  Oh, they're really playful.

• 1:30:43Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 1:30:45Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, like, uh, you can watch them chase each other around over there and run and jump and play.

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  And then if a car stops to watch them, they all stop and watch the car.

• 1:31:00Speaker 04

  Oh, they're posing for the picture.

• 1:31:05Alie Ward?

  They're models, they're total goofballs, and then they act cool when people are looking.

• 1:31:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, they do.

• 1:31:11Alie Ward?

  So cute. I want to come visit when I come in, um, in summer for the reunion. Can I come visit?

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  Oh, you're more than welcome. We have an extra bed at the house.

• 1:31:22Alie Ward?

  Yay. One more very important question. Do buffalos accept hugs, or is that a bad idea?

• 1:31:28Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:31:29Speaker 03

  Bad idea.

• 1:31:30Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:31:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Alie Ward?

  Alright, fine. I'll cross that off my list then. I won't hug a buffalo.

• 1:31:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, you don't wanna try.

• 1:31:39Speaker 04

  Well, you can when you come up, you can hug one.

• 1:31:41Alie Ward?

  Okay. I'll make sure my health insurance policy is up to date before.

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  But when you come up, we'll take you out to a guy's place that's out by the border that has white buffalo.

• 1:31:52Alie Ward?

  What? There's white buffalo?

• 1:31:54Speaker 04

  Some of them are born white and some of them are born brown and then turn white.

• 1:31:59Alie Ward?

  Wow. Oh, that's nuts. I want to look that up. I don't even know that existed.

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  White buffalo is, yeah, that's.

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  He's big medicine to the Blackfoot tribe.

• 1:32:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:09Speaker 03

  He's really big medicine to all the tribes.

• 1:32:12Alie Ward?

  What does that mean, big medicine?

• 1:32:16Speaker 04

  It's like the top of the medicine.

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  It's just.

• 1:32:21Speaker 04

  So he's like a.

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  God.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:25Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow. Gosh, I bet that's gotta be such a sight to see, especially in the snow.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're pretty cool.

• 1:32:33Alie Ward?

  Oh, my gosh. Oh, this makes me want to look at pictures of buffalo all day now. I just want to go online and look at pictures of buffalo. Let me go do that. Well, have a good rest of your Sunday, you guys.

• 1:32:42Speaker 04

  Yep, you too.

• 1:32:43Alie Ward?

  Okay. Bye. Love you guys.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  Love you.

• 1:32:47Alie Ward?

  Bye. Bye, Sin. Love you too, but I will not hug you out of respect of your big ass horns. So if you loved all of these folks, head to alieward.com/ologies/bisonology to find out more about them and some links to the organizations we talked about and to the sponsors of the show. Those links are also always in the show notes. And you can please be our friend on Instagram and Twitter. We're at Ologies. I'm at @Alieward with one L on both. And you can subscribe and rate and leave a review for me to read, possibly on the podcast, on Apple Podcasts or iTunes. Ologies t-shirts and hats and totes and sweatshirts and socks are available at ologiesmerch.com. Thank you, Shannon Feltes and Bonnie Dutch of The Comedy Podcast, You Are That, for managing that. Thank you, Erin Talbert, for adminning the Ologies Facebook group.

• 1:33:35Alie Ward?

  Leaped episodes and transcripts are up at alieward.com/ologies-extras. There's a link in the show notes. And thank you. Thank you Emily White and all the Ologies transcribers in the Facebook group for your amazing hard work. The theme music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. And special thanks to Harthrob Jarrett Sleeper for staying up way too late helping me string this beastly, beastly episode out. And Mom, I'm so sorry that I told the buffalo story, but I'm very proud to share your curly headed genes. And thank you, as always, every week to the rare gentle creature, Stephen Ray Morris, and his buffalo mustache for bearing with tight deadlines and multiple files and editing

• 1:34:18Alie Ward?

  all our pieces together to get it to your ears on time. And if you last until the end of the episode each week, you hear a secret. This week's secret is a sweet one. Our award family reunions every few years in Montana are what made me love science so much. And I'm so lucky to have gotten to sit on a dock in the summer and watch these bats at dusk and see these big, huge osprey nests and get to sleep in a family teepee and hear stories. For the longest time, I thought that when you just get older, you start talking weird. And then I learned later that it was just my aunt's Montana accents. And we'd sometimes call my grandpa on the phone and we'd ask what he was up to. And he'd say, "Oh, you know, just watching the wind blow."

• 1:35:00Alie Ward?

  And the older I get, the more the hobby seems like tight as hell. Okay. Bye-bye. Pachydermatology, homology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, geodology, geophology, seriology, seismology.

• 1:35:26Alie Ward?

  Don't touch it.

• 1:35:27Speaker 06

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