Showing posts with label Bison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bison. Show all posts

Friday, May 6, 2011

The Mythical American Buffalo and a Pocketful of Misnomers

The Bison
Look at the face on that thing! man!
The bison is one strange looking critter.
www.livingwilderness.com/wildlife/bison-standing.html
"The Mythical American Buffalo a Pocketful of Misnomers" Now that is tough, try to say that ten times really quick!

Mythical creatures such as the Unicorn, the Dragon and the American Buffalo appear in books, art, songs and even in our religions but have any of them ever really existed?

It may be possible that the unicorn and the dragon once roamed the realm of reality. Perhaps they were all killed out to extinction by mankind long ago. Perhaps they were around so many centuries ago that only distorted memories remain of what they were.

The American Buffalo is a much newer creature. It is also one of the strangest mythical creature cases I know of. Although it does not exist it's existence is common knowledge, at least in the U.S. Sound crazy? Show a photo of a bison to someone, ask them, "What is this here critter?" few will say bison but many will say buffalo.

I was talking to a guy about coins and collecting and he mentioned that he had a bunch of Buffalo Nickels. He got them out and was showing them to me. I mentioned that it was funny how that even though it was common knowledge that the animal was not a buffalo we still called it a Buffalo Nickel. Long story short he disagreed and held that it was in fact a buffalo and I didn't know what I was talking about. OK. I just dropped it. No point in arguing about it. I know what I know but I don't need to preach it. Call it a koala bear nickel if you like.