Bison Trivia
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48 free Bison trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bison went from sixty million animals to a few hundred in a single century, and the survivors now roam national parks, tribal lands and ranches across three countries. These bison trivia questions cover the American buffalo's size and speed, its behavior, the bottleneck and recovery, the cattle-gene problem, the European wisent, and the animal's place on coins, flags and state seals. Every answer is sourced, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US president helped found the American Bison Society in 1905 to save the species from extinction?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt. He first went west in 1883 to shoot a bison, then turned conservationist and co-founded the society that sent captive-bred animals back to the Plains by rail.
Q 02Which president signed the law making the bison the US national mammal?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama. The 2016 National Bison Legacy Act put an animal the country had once hunted to near extinction beside the bald eagle as an official national symbol.
Q 03Despite the nickname 'American buffalo', true buffalo are native only to which two continents?
Africa and Asia
Africa and Asia. The Cape buffalo and the water buffalo are only distant relatives of the American animal, whose 'buffalo' label dates from early European explorers and has stuck ever since.
Q 04Which Asian animal, also called the Indian bison, is the largest of all wild cattle?
Gaur
Gaur. A big bull stands six feet at the shoulder and is so powerful that, apart from humans, tigers are about the only predator to tackle an adult.
Q 05A bison's massive shoulder hump is mostly muscle that powers which winter habit?
Sweeping snow aside with its head
Sweeping snow aside with its head. The hump's muscles hang from long spines on the backbone, so a bison swings its head like a snowplow where elk and deer must paw with their feet.
Q 06Plains peoples pounded dried bison meat with melted fat, and sometimes berries, to make which long-lasting food?
Pemmican
Pemmican. Sewn into bison-hide bags, it fed the canoe crews of the fur trade, and an 1814 ban on taking it out of the Red River colony set the colony against the Métis.
Q 07Buffalo Bill Cody earned his nickname shooting bison to feed crews building what?
Railroad
A railroad. Hired to keep the track gangs in meat, Cody is said to have killed more than 4,000 bison in about a year and a half, then turned that fame into his Wild West show.
Q 08Nuclear DNA suggests that which animals are the closest living relatives of bison?
Yaks
Yaks. Tradition gives bison a genus of their own, but the DNA places them inside Bos, the genus of domestic cattle, with the shaggy Himalayan ox as their nearest kin.
Q 09Bison's ancestors first reached North America by crossing what?
The Bering land bridge
The Bering land bridge. Once across, bison spread over the continent and quickly evolved new forms, among them a long-horned giant bigger than any bison alive today.
Q 10At an Alberta World Heritage site, how did Plains hunters kill bison for nearly 6,000 years?
Drove them over a cliff
Drove them over a cliff. At Head-Smashed-In, runners using decoy tricks steered herds between lines of stone cairns to the edge, and the butchered bones at its foot lie more than ten metres deep.
Q 11What is a cross between American bison and domestic cattle called?
Beefalo
Beefalo. Ranchers who saved the last herds in the 1880s tried the cross in hope of a hardier animal, found no hybrid vigor and gave up; the National Bison Association now bars its members from crossbreeding.
Q 12The Sioux regard the birth of a calf of which color as a sacred event?
White
White. Such a calf is seen as a sign of White Buffalo Calf Woman, the holy figure who brought the people their sacred pipe and seven rites and promised to return in that form.
Q 13Which university's football team is led onto the field by Ralphie, a live bison?
Colorado
Colorado. Every Ralphie has been a female, chosen because cows are smaller and calmer than bulls, and it still takes five student handlers on ropes to steer her round the field.
Q 21In which months do bison mate?
August and September
August and September, though the rut can start in July. A dominant bull 'tends' a cow, shadowing her for days and bellowing back at any rival until she is ready to mate.
Q 22Apart from grizzly bears, which is the only large predator that kills adult bison?
Wolves
Wolves. A herd defends itself by facing its attackers as a group, so packs pick out calves and weakened animals, and a chased calf may bolt to the nearest bull or into a river.
Q 23Which state's official song, 'Home on the Range', longs for a land of roaming buffalo?
Kansas
Kansas. A homesteading doctor, Brewster Higley, wrote the words there in the early 1870s, and they were traced back to him only after a 1934 lawsuit over who owned the hit song.
Q 14Live bison kept on the National Mall in the 1880s helped lead to the founding of which Washington institution?
The National Zoo
The National Zoo. Smithsonian taxidermist William Hornaday went west in 1886 to collect bison for display, was shocked at how few survived, and came home to show living ones and campaign for a zoo.
Q 15In 2017 Parks Canada returned bison to which Rocky Mountain park, more than a century after they vanished there?
Banff
Banff. A small herd brought from Elk Island spent its first year and a half in a fenced backcountry pasture before being turned loose to roam the park.
Q 16When a bison raises its tail straight up, what may the animal be about to do?
Charge at a threat
Charge at a threat. A tail that hangs and swishes usually means a calm bison; a raised one, like pawing the ground or bobbing the head, is a warning to back away at once.
Q 17Which media mogul built the world's largest private bison herd and co-founded a restaurant chain to sell the meat?
Ted Turner
Ted Turner. His ranches came to hold tens of thousands of bison, and the grill chain he launched in 2002 was meant to help the species by giving ranchers a market for its meat.
Q 18What is the shallow depression a bison rolls in called?
A wallow
A wallow. Bulls also roll in them during the rut to leave their scent and show off their strength, and the bare hollows hold rainwater on the flat prairie.
Q 19Bison often rub their horns and bodies against trees, a behavior thought to be linked to what?
Repelling insects
Repelling insects. Bison also scrub against rocks to shake off biting pests, and cowbirds once trailed the great herds to snap up the bugs they stirred.
Q 20What color is a newborn bison calf?
Reddish-brown
Reddish-brown. The colour earns calves the nickname 'red dogs'; after two or three months the coat darkens and the hump and horns begin to grow.
Q 24Which zoo bred bison and sent 15 of them west by rail in 1907 to restock the Oklahoma plains?
Bronx Zoo
Bronx Zoo. The fifteen animals it shipped founded the Wichita Mountains herd, which still roams the Oklahoma refuge more than a century later.
Q 25Around 1900, who guarded America's last wild bison herd from poachers?
US Army
The US Army. Its cavalry ran the park where the herd sheltered long before there were park rangers, and in 1902 it brought in 21 ranch-raised bison in case the wild ones died out.
Q 26Which US national park has had bison continuously since prehistoric times?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone. Hunters emptied the rest of the country, but a few dozen wild bison held on in its remote valleys, and thousands of their descendants roam the park today.
Q 27The bison herd that cattleman Charles Goodnight saved from the hide hunters is now the official herd of which state?
Texas
Texas. His wife, Mary Ann, urged him to rescue some of the animals as the slaughter reached the Panhandle, and their descendants now roam Caprock Canyons State Park.
Q 28Custer State Park, known for its fall bison roundup, lies in which state's Black Hills?
South Dakota
South Dakota. Each September riders drive the herd into corrals to be tested, branded and sorted, and surplus animals are sold so the range can support the rest.
Q 29Antelope Island, home to one of America's oldest public bison herds, lies in which lake?
Great Salt Lake
Great Salt Lake. The first bison were shipped out by boat in 1893, when the species was nearly gone, and riders still round up their descendants each fall to keep the herd within what the island can feed.
Q 30Elk Island National Park, whose bison have restocked herds across North America, lies just east of which Canadian city?
Edmonton
Edmonton. Because its fenced herds are free of the cattle diseases carried by many wild bison, the park has supplied animals to reintroductions for decades.