Bison Herd Rumbles Through The Lamar Valley Of Yellowstone National Park In Stunning Video

Get ready to witness a true, rumbling herd of bison.

While stoplights and stop signs traditionally signal drivers to stay or go in most situations, the roads of Yellowstone National Park are trafficked in another way: Bison herds. That’s right. Big ol’ bison – and the calves that also make up the herd – often unintentionally enforce traffic patterns.

To be fully transparent, I’d love to get caught up in a bison-induced traffic jam.

If there was a place to go to see North America’s largest land animal, it would be Yellowstone. Somewhere around 5,000 bison call Yellowstone National Park home, and with most of them traveling in herds, encountering a large group on the move like this isn’t out of the ordinary. And to see them stampeding like this is something that would make a trip to the national park very much worth it.

Especially with the herd being made up of both adults and calves. Most of the time with animals (and with humans), there’s a process of growing up, where you have to be guided around and taken care of for a lot of your younger years. You have to spend time learning the ropes, how things work, and what to do and not to do. In this video out of Yellowstone, the calves that are trotting along with the rest of the group are learning that they are the apparent “King of the Road” inside the national park.

In case you were wondering, parents of animals in the wild usually raise them until they are able to survive on their own, and then they let them go out into the world and figure things out for themselves. The parenting process for bison generally lasts about six months, and it’s at that point that a bison mother will start to wean off her young and move them to grazing (female calves can sometimes take a little bit longer to become independent).

It appears that the bison calves in this clip were just a touch younger than that six month cutoff. That being said, newly born bison can typically stand and walk within 10 to 30 minutes after being born into the world, so I could be off with my estimation. The whole walking and running thing isn’t hard for them to adapt to… but the young ones in this video do seem to have the herd jog pace down pat.

And there’s just something majestic about watching a bison herd run down from the peaks and into the Lamar Valley, as the person who posted the clip for the rest of us to enjoy pointed out:

“Lamar Valley in Yellowstone has really shown off this morning! A herd of Bison and their babies crossing in front of your car is not anything I will probably ever see again. This place is stunning.”

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A post shared by Stacey Thrower Hall (@ihall3)

That’s living and breathing art, if you ask me.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out one of my favorite comments that was added to the reply section below the post. Evidently, one Instagram user was very happy to stumble across this video of bison and their calves trotting through Yellowstone and holding up traffic. Here’s how they voiced their satisfaction with the clip:

“Lots of funny stuff, stupid stuff and pretty girls on Instagram and that’s all good… but this reel is outstanding!”

Take THAT Instagram influencers. Bison reels are here to stay, and social media users are clamoring for more of them. Personally, I’m all for seeing some more clips from Yellowstone National Park on my “For You” page.The post Bison Herd Rumbles Through The Lamar Valley Of Yellowstone National Park In Stunning Video first appeared on Whiskey Riff.