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Annotated Bison Research Paper

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When you hear about an animal that stands up to six and a half feet tall and weigh 2,200 pounds; with horns, two feet long curving up for fighting and able to run 40 miles per hour. You automatically think a beast or monster, which you’re not that far off. Being the largest land animal in North America, bison have often been called beasts and as an above, they deserve that title. 5,000 years ago bison roamed, around 2,000 years ago, they reached their maximum range. When Europeans arrived in North America, around 50 million bison roamed the continent. The bison has gone through a bottleneck, but genetically hasn’t declined much. The bison were once considered the keystone specie of North America. The taxonomic classification of the Bison …show more content…

Gestation for females is 285 days, although since they live in a herd, many cows wait for others to give birth so it will be at the same time. The calves can stand and walk ten minutes after birth. Once one of the numerous mammals of all time, by the late 1800s bison as we knew they were nearly extinct. We began setting up preserves for them to live safely. We also bred bison in captivity for their meat. Their life span has gone up since being in captivity; from 10 years in the wilderness to around 20 in resorts. In the late 1900s farmers bred their “meat” bison with their cattle, hoping to produce better meat. The problem? When you breed bison and cattle, you get infertile hybrids. Therefore, leading to an impact on the bison population. In 1973, 14 bison were released at the 125,000 acre Marine Corps Camp Pendleton in southern California. Today, about 120 of their descendants still roam those hills. Cattle genes are found in more than half the bison population. Being in captivity and reproducing with cattle has made their gene pool be eradicated. YellowStone is one of the reserves where bison still roam free. It is one of the very few herds that don’t contain cattle

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