Wisent Day - August 11

There used to be a webpage documenting Wisent Day, but when trying to access it today the link wouldn't work. These big lugs have been fighting off extinction for quite a while now, and I'd hate to have them lose their big day.

Wisents are the European cousins of our American Bison, and though they're clearly related they do have differences. On average Wisents are a little taller and thinner than American Bison, a little less shaggy and with longer tails and horns. And they prefer woods over prairies as places to live/forage.

As you might expect, American Bison and Wisents can interbreed, though this doesn't happen in the wild since they live on separate continents.

The Wisent were extinct in the wild in Europe, though fortunately there were still a few in captivity. Those few were used to reestablish a wild population in parts of Europe.

ThomasLendt, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons


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