Bisons of Poland - your thoughts?

Must be something cycling through those ancient forests.. Hey what with Fredrick the Great, Napoleon and Nazis having blasted through there do people find war artifacts on occasion?

Yeah, those ancient forests can be hell. Full of traps and pitfalls. Never seen any war artefacts though.

Oh, Bison ;)

Yes, mass graves are still around apparently and it is quite common to find ammunition and weapons.

In Lithuania, where I work, we're are building and they found three land mines and a trailer for carrying a cannon (but not the cannon) and shells, along with a few machine guns.

And some ass, dumped tons of earth on my plot, full of human remains, skeletons, about 15 bodies.

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I am not sure if there are Bison in Lithuania.



For you Wroclaw :)

Thanks.. Wow, morbid but interesting. Always wondered with the amount of action the Poland, the Baltics have seen. Somebody should start a thread sometime. All we find is an occasional arrow head. Anyway.. bison.

Cave paintings of Bison

c. 15,000-12,000 BC
bison length 77 in. (195 cm)
Altamira, Spain




That is the reason I have not done it and plus it would be a short pointless thread.
And I would just go on a rant about Lithuania and nobody wants that least of all me :)

I wonder how closely the Bison is related to the American Buffalo?. At one time they were damn near decimated in the American West.. They are now protected and are thriving.[

I'd hazard a guess that they might be as distantly related to eachother as the age of the Atlantic Ocean, so possibly as much as 130 million years ago (unless they were once connected across the Bering Strait), but they're still close enough to cross-breed.

So they are the same or very similar, apparently.

Are you a bovidae Osiol? Seanus is in there :)

Here we have a thousand (800 wild, 200 domestic) and there are only 3000 Bison bonasus worldwide. In 20's there used to be only ~50 of them.


~80 thousand.


I hit one when I was cycling...

I was in that list, Sean

You hit one, Greg? Were you more frightened or was it?

Oh, Bison ;)

Żubrobizony...


Hard to say... he was running away, I was standing looking probably a bit like...

Lol, yeah a big boar is no damn joke.

Super picture, Greg. A tense stand-off no doubt. I bet you are glad he faced the shock factor too.

Oh, Bison ;)

Bison Vs Elk
place your bets.

It's so weird that a buffalo would become so rare everywhere. Not just in North America, but all over the world. Three thousand is a low number.

Bison are strong and cool. That'll do me.

Oh, hmm, no need ;)

6.7 billion humans.

That was all that need to be said. Spot on, Sean

I thought this was funny given the nature of where this conversation has gone.

I love when she says "EEMMmmm..."
Ha ha ha

Bison charging



The size of that bison's head in the last shot, wow

Yeah, true, Sean, they lose their natural habitat and cannot sustain their numbers. I think Yellowstone in Wyoming might have some now. Places in the northwest are trying to bring back bears, bison, and wolves. We have a lot of deer but that's about it. Oh, and cougars, we have those, but only in remote areas. No wolves (that I know of) and very few bears. We do have a few coyotes and foxes.

Interesting about the Asian water buffalo and African Buffalo. Around here nearly everyone calls a Bison a buffalo. It's not accurate, apparently.
Here, they sell bison meat in the grocery store but it's probably a domestic cattle hybrid version of bison. I've never tried it.

I haven't met a bison on the road.
Time to get grossed out....at a local museum, might be the Science one...there's a taxidermied bison and it has a huge head and so tall. It's the closest I've ever gotten to one.

I usually have a problem when some (usually a twit) tells everyone what words mean.
For me, if we all agree to call a "chair" a "cup" then that is what it is,
Words are noises we make and we agree on their meanings, get enough people to agree and Wham! you have a "word".


Yeah, well there goes the rest.

I don't think there are any wild ones here, in my state :( If they are in the wild it's in the sparsely populated northwestern part of the state but I don't know if there's enough grass for them. The ones at the grocery store most likely come from a food lot in the northwest and they are probably a cross between the beef cattle and bison, so they are not as wild. In the wild they are protected and cannot be hunted because they are endangered.

But would they really like it? There are trans-Atlantic floral and faunal connections dating before the whole round of glaciations that characterise the quaternary. Some time before that, Europe, Greenland and North America were one land mass. The dinosaurs had already long-since vanished. Don't ask me what the weather was like because I don't know, but I imagine there was plenty of forest and steppe for prehistoric bison to roam. But this does seem like a very long time in evolutionary terms, so the ice-crossing may be an option, but a Bering Strait crossing may be a slightly better one.

The Brown Bear and Black Bear and just European and American counterparts.

Anyway, I ate some bison at my Christmas dinner at work. It might have just been beef but they called it bison.

Possibly, or possible way before that.
Evolutionists, historians and geologists have such amazing abilities to think in millions of years, I can barley manage 100 and that's rough.
I suppose we could just research what some clever clogs researched already?
(would that be to re-research hhmm.. it is late)


Do you mean to suggest a similar migration?.
I suppose it must have been.


The tukeys propaganda machine in full motion :)

explorenorth.com/library/yafeatures/bl-bison.htm - Bison in the Yukon & Alaska

"Steppe Bison arrived in North America from Asia over the Bering land bridge. Slightly larger than modern bison, and with large horns, they were replaced by the modern bison about 4,000-5,000 years ago. "

hubpages.com/tag/bison+evolution/hot - The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of the American Bison

"The American bison, Bison bison, is descended from a species of Eurasian steepe bison, Bison priscus, that crossed the land bridge into America about 300,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age."




Wait a sec???

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Age#Major_ice_ages

The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago.

If anyone is interested in this kind of thing here is an interesting link -
The Parallel Roads of Glenroy, formed when the glen got blocked by a glacier and the sides of the hills became a shoreline.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Roy

( you will need to click on the photos to enlarge )

Thanks for that.
I will never forget in school being taught about platectonics and ice ages and how we are in between them now while moving around.
My jaw dropped, incredibly fascinating stuff this strange planet we all call home.

Do you think that in 1000 years or 10,000 years, historians will look back on now, the birth if the internet and be going through these posts?

Like the people who come on here with nothing but a letter and they are trying to find family, people in the future will be searching the web for their past.

I often think they will, you know.
A bit off topic there.

Bison, yeah I plan to see them and see if I can ride them like in a rodeo.
The last thing I would ever do.

or meaningless.


białowieska is your best shot, most likely.


i don't think the buffalo here is a mix. and yes, compared to their numbers 200y ago they aren't big now but herds in the yellowstone are pretty big. buffalos can live in the woods just fine. they aren't only native to the west. they used to roam the great woods of the ohio river valley in huge numbers too.


Bison bonasus = euro bison


oh there are many wolves in america. all of great lakes have them as well as MT, WY and such.


highest bear concentration in the world is shenandoah n.p. VA. there are quite a few bears in america still. quite a few in the eastern mountains, upper great lakes and a whole bunch out west.


nope, real buffalo meat.

beef cattle and bison don't really mix politically. many buffaloes are carriers of certain diseases that are tough on cattle.


no man. no mixing, no hybrids.
buffaloes aren't really raised like cattle, more free range like.


right but can be shot by a cattle rancher.. same goes for wolves.


there are both of these in america. grizzlies are brown and 12' (4m) tall and can weigh a tonne and are only out in the rockies. black bear is half of a grizz and much less aggressive.

I was wondering about that. The bison in the national parks aren't mixes? I was watching the news and there was a story about Bison and they said the ones in Wyoming were still mixed with domestic cattle and that's where I got the idea they were trying to make them more like the Bison that existed a few centuries back.

I don't live that close to Wyoming and I've never been to the park, just see it on the news and Discovery channels.

There isn't room here for the kinds of herds that a place like Yellowstone could manage, at least I don't think there is. I picture the bison running across the great plains and those are flat. I think of Moose as more woodsy. Didn't the bison travel across the plains in large hoods during the 1800s? Especially in North & South Dakota and into Saskatchewan?

I live further south. I wonder how many bison roamed here (where I live)? Bison is the state animal but I don't think they were ever as numerous down here. I think it's the state animal for sentimental reasons.

I see bison from time to time at the zoo and in people's small pastures and grazing on ranches. I never see any in the wild around here.

I meant this particular area when I mentioned wolves and bears. We don't have a wolf population down here. We do have some black bears, I think, but not that many, few and very far between. We have giant cougars, in the wild and on display at the zoo and I was amazed at how large they are when I saw them at the zoo. I've never been that close to one but the ones the zoo had in an exhibit of native animals were giant and I thought "those things could really get ya"

lol. I definitely don't want to be pounced on by one of those. My grandma said they prey on cattle in the woods and I wondered how they could do it because I pictured something Puma sized and then I saw some and I thought "yeah one could take down a steer".

bison range of n. am.

bison out west did have the prairie but east of the miss. r. there sure wasn't much grass; just a bit to the southern end of l. michigan. there used to be huge herds in the KY, IN, IL lands and most of those were thick, thick woods and swamps. So. IN had no permanent inhabitants until 1820s. indians didn't live in those thickets. buffalo however did.

dances w/ wolves - so colorado, no?

wolves are primarily northwoods creatures. there was an attempt to introduce the red wolf to the smoky mountains in the 90s and those didn't survive.. wrong species for that world.. lol i don't think it was from there originally either.

puma, catamount, mountain lion all the same big cat. i have 0 desire to run across one in the wild. talk about not being even close to the top of the food chain. lol very, very few out east.

i think there may be more black bears in the east.. not sure.. they actually don't care for human contact. they can live way up high. i've seen signs of them over 10000 ft.

oh, back to bison, i don't think there are any wild ones outside of yellowstone... not sure of that 100% but you never hear of them otherwise. oopsy:

all the others i have seen have been in some kind of enclosures.. pretty big enclosures but still not completely free to just roam.

Hope this is not off topic but does anyone know about Żubrówka?
Polish Bison Vodka

I have seen the American (buffalo-bison) "Tatanka" on Catalina Island, California. Are all buffalo bisons : but not all bisons buffalos?

The YouTube video with the beer commercials was really fun to watch. Thanks for posting it here.

This is a very interesting thread! Lots of great information. Thanks! K.