Hello everyone, welcome back to relax with animal facts. I am Steph Wolf and today I am going to be

learning with you about our furry, scaly or possibly even slimy friends. And in today's case, it is going to be a hairy friend of

ours because we are covering the oh so wonderful bison. This is a very special listener episode

dedicated to Rowan and Tina who wrote in and requested this mighty creature.

For all of the resources and how to write into the show, those things will be in the

description and at the end of the episode. And if you want exclusive podcast episodes, you can

go to the Relax with Animal Facts Patreon page that is also in the

description. Now, as we are preparing to go see some mighty bison, I ask only two things from you.

One is to make sure that your shoelaces are double-knotted for our trip, and the other is to play the part of

jello. If you are carrying any tension in your head, neck, legs, whatever it be, we don't really

need all of that where we are going. So do your best to relax and let your mind journey with me into the plains where we are going to get

up close and personal with the bison. So as we are walking and stepping over the tawny, blondish grass, the first thing that you may notice about this creature is that they are big.

The bison is infamous in a sense because they are number one in terms of size in North America.

They are North America's largest mammal. And though we use the word buffalo interchangeably with bison,

it is important to know that they are distinct from one another. So while our

semantic usage of the term buffalo and bison might refer to the same things in our heads,

biologically that is not the case. So the bison is either of two different species of ox-like grazing mammals that comprise

the genus bison. If you've listened to some of the previous podcasts in which we've covered

creatures like the Highland cow, you might be able to guess the family. They are part of the Bovide family.

These two species are the American bison and the European bison. Today we are beholding

the American bison, which is also known as the Plains Buffalo, but we could have gone to perhaps somewhere like Switzerland

to look at the European bison. So when we refer to the American bison as the Buffalo or Plains

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