Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The European bison (pl.: bison) (Bison bonasus) or the European wood bison, also known as the wisent [a] (/ ˈ v iː z ə n t / or / ˈ w iː z ə n t /), the zubr [b] (/ ˈ z uː b ə r /), or sometimes colloquially as the European buffalo, [c] is a European species of bison. It is one of two extant species of bison, alongside the American bison.
The wisent, or European bison, was originally crossed with cattle in an attempt to reinvigorate the declining wisent population.First generation hybrid males are sterile, but females may be crossed back to either a wisent or domestic bull to produce fertile males. [1]
The wisent (żubr in Polish) [1] is the European bison; hence, the żubroń is analogous to the American beefalo. The name żubroń was officially chosen from hundreds of proposals sent to the Polish weekly magazine Przekrój during a contest organised in 1969.
American bison can weigh from around 400 to 1,270 kilograms (880 to 2,800 pounds) [5] [8] and European bison can weigh from 800 to 1,000 kg (1,800 to 2,200 lb). [7] European bison tend to be taller than American bison. Bison are nomadic grazers and travel in herds. The bulls leave the herds of females at two or three years of age, and join a ...
The herd currently roam in 50 hectares of woodland, but a £1 million project to build the UK’s first ever bison bridges has started, which will increase their range to 200 hectares.
The European bison is the heaviest wild land animal in Europe, and individuals in the past may have been even larger than their modern-day descendants. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages , bison became extinct in much of Europe and Asia , surviving into the 20th century only in northern-central Europe and the northern Caucasus Mountains .
Taxidermied specimen, Museum of the Zoological Institute, Russia. In the 17th century, the Caucasian bison still populated a large area of the Western Caucasus.After that, human settlement in the mountains intensified and the range of the Caucasian wisent had become reduced to about one tenth of its original range by the end of the 19th century.
The Society for the Protection of the European Bison (SPEB) was founded in 1922 by scientists from Poland, Germany, the UK, and Sweden. [1] The charity's aims were to conserve and repopulate the European bison, or wisent, that was then on the brink of extinction.