American bison in the context of "Georgia (U.S. state)"

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⭐ Core Definition: American bison

The American bison (Bison bison; pl.: bison), commonly known as the American buffalo, or simply buffalo (not to be confused with true buffalo), is a species of bison that is endemic (or native) to North America. It is one of two extant species of bison, along with the European bison. Its historical range circa 9000 BC is referred to as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland spanning from Alaska south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Seaboard (nearly to the Atlantic tidewater in some areas), as far north as New York, south to Georgia, and according to some sources, further south to northern Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750.

Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described: the plains bison (B. b. bison), smaller and with a more rounded hump; and the wood bison (B. b. athabascae), the larger of the two and having a taller, square hump. Furthermore, the plains bison has been suggested to consist of a northern plains (B. b. montanae) and a southern plains (B. b. bison) subspecies, bringing the total to three. However, this is generally not supported. The wood bison is one of the largest wild species of extant bovid in the world, surpassed only by the Asian gaur. Among extant land animals in North America, the bison is the heaviest and the longest, and the second tallest after the moose.

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American bison in the context of Sociality

Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups (for which, the desire or inclination is known as gregariousness) and form cooperative societies.

Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures. For example, when a mother wasp stays near her larvae in the nest, parasites are less likely to eat the larvae. Biologists suspect that pressures from parasites and other predators selected this behavior in wasps of the family Vespidae.

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American bison in the context of Missouri River

The Missouri River is a river in the Central and Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana, then flows east and south for 2,341 miles (3,767 km) before entering the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, Missouri. The river drains semi-arid watershed of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 km), which includes parts of ten U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Although a tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri River is slightly longer and carries a comparable volume of water, though a fellow tributary (Ohio River) carries more water. When combined with the lower Mississippi River, it forms the world's fourth-longest river system.

For over 12,000 years, people have depended on the Missouri River and its tributaries as a source of sustenance and transportation. More than ten major groups of Native Americans populated the watershed, with most leading a nomadic lifestyle and dependent on enormous bison herds that roamed through the Great Plains. The first Europeans encountered the river in the late seventeenth century, and the region passed through Spanish and French hands before becoming part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase.

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American bison in the context of Plains Indians

Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains are the Native American tribes and First Nations peoples who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains) of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.

The Plains tribes are usually divided into two broad classifications which overlap to some degree. The first group became a fully nomadic horse culture during the 18th and 19th centuries, following the vast herds of American bison, although some tribes occasionally engaged in agriculture. These include the Arapaho, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Lakota, Lipan, Plains Apache (or Kiowa Apache), Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwe, Sarsi, Nakoda (Stoney), and Tonkawa. The second group were sedentary and semi-sedentary, and, in addition to hunting bison, they lived in villages, raised crops, and actively traded with other tribes. These include the Arikara, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kaw (or Kansa), Kitsai, Mandan, Missouria, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Pawnee, Ponca, Quapaw, Wichita, and the Santee Dakota, Yanktonai and Yankton Dakota.

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American bison in the context of Ranch

A ranch (from Spanish: rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of farm. These terms are most often applied to livestock-raising operations in Mexico, the Western United States and Western Canada, though there are ranches in other areas. People who own or operate a ranch are called ranchers, cattlemen, or stockgrowers. Ranching is also a method used to raise less common livestock such as horses, elk, American bison, ostrich, emu, and alpaca.

Ranches generally consist of large areas, but may be of nearly any size. In the western United States, many ranches are a combination of privately owned land supplemented by grazing leases on land under the control of the federal Bureau of Land Management or the United States Forest Service. If the ranch includes arable or irrigated land, the ranch may also engage in a limited amount of farming, raising crops for feeding the animals, such as hay and feed grains.

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American bison in the context of Bronx Zoo

The Bronx Zoo (also historically the Bronx Zoological Park and the Bronx Zoological Gardens) is a zoo within Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. It is one of the largest zoos in the United States by area and the largest metropolitan zoo, comprising 265 acres (107 ha) of park lands and naturalistic habitats separated by the Bronx River. The zoo has 2.1 million average yearly visitors as of 2009. The zoo's original buildings, known as Astor Court, were designed as a series of Beaux-Arts pavilions grouped around the large circular sea lion pool. The Rainey Memorial Gates were designed by sculptor Paul Manship in 1934 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

The zoo opened on November 8, 1899, featuring 843 animals in 22 exhibits. Its first director was William Temple Hornaday, who served for 30 years. From its inception the zoo has played a vital role in animal conservation. In 1905, the American Bison Society was created in an attempt to save the American bison, which had been depleted from tens-of-millions of animals to only a few hundred, from extinction. Two years later they were successfully reintroduced into the wild. In 2007, the zoo successfully reintroduced three Chinese alligators into the wild. The breeding was a milestone in the zoo's 10-year effort to reintroduce the species to the Yangtze River in China.

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American bison in the context of Pack (canine)

A pack is a social group of conspecific canines. The number of members in a pack and their social behavior varies from species to species. Social structure is very important in a pack. Canine packs are led by a breeding pair.

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American bison in the context of Moose

The moose (pl.: 'moose'; used in North America) or elk (pl.: 'elk' or 'elks'; used in Eurasia) (Alces alces) is the world's tallest, largest and heaviest extant species of deer and the only species in the genus Alces. It is also the tallest, and the second-largest, land animal in North America, falling short only to the American bison in body mass. Most adult male moose have broad, palmate ("open-hand shaped") antlers; other members of the deer family have pointed antlers with a dendritic ("twig-like") configuration. Moose inhabit the circumpolar boreal forests or temperate broadleaf and mixed forests of the Northern Hemisphere, thriving in cooler, temperate areas as well as subarctic climates.

Hunting shaped the relationship between moose and humans, both in Eurasia and North America. Prior to the early modern period (around 1600–1700), moose were one of many valuable sources of sustenance for certain North American Indians. Hunting and habitat loss have reduced the moose's range; this fragmentation has led to sightings of "urban moose" in some areas. The moose has been reintroduced to some of its former habitats. Currently, the greatest populations occur in Canada. Additionally, substantial numbers are found in Alaska, the northern states of the contiguous United States, Fennoscandia, the Baltic states, the Caucasus region, Poland, Eastern Europe, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

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American bison in the context of Bubalina

Bubalina is a subtribe of Bovini (wild cattle) that includes the various species of true buffalo. Species include the African buffalo, the anoas, and the wild water buffalo (including the domesticated variant water buffalo). Buffaloes can be found naturally in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, and domestic and feral populations have been introduced to Europe, the Americas, and Australia. In addition to the living species, bubalinans have an extensive fossil record where remains have been found in much of Afro-Eurasia.

American bison are commonly referred to as "buffalo" but are not members of Bubalina.

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