A nine-year-old required medical treatment after being charged by a Bison in the Yellowstone National Park this week. The unnamed girl, reported to be from Odessa, Florida, was part of a group of about 50 tourists that surrounded the adult male Bison on Monday 22 July 2019. The Bison apparently put up with the tourists for about 20 minutes before losing its temper and charging, with the girl being caught after adults managed to get out of the way.
Two images taken from a video clip of a Bison charging a nine-year-old girl the Yellowstone National Park this week. Yellowstone National Park.
Bison are large animals, the American Biron can reach 1.8 m in length and weigh around 900 kg, and have notoriously unpredictable tempers, often appearing placid and indifferent to their surroundings, and then charging without warning. They can reach speeds of 35 km per hour, and both sexes have horns, which can make unexpected charging highly dangerous.
North America is thought to have been home to about 50 million Bison at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number that fell to less than a thousand individuals by the middle of the twentieth century due to overhunting, not just for the purpose of food, but as part of a conscious effort to change the landscape from one amenable to traditional, Native American, lifestyles to a landscape suitable to European-style farming. However since the mid-twentieth century conservation efforts and breeding programs have reversed this decline, with the population now measured in the hundreds of thousands, including around 5000 in the Yellowstone National Park.
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