Incredible Footage Shows A Sea Of Bison Taking Over a Snowy Yellowstone Road

Sometimes all you can do is stop and take in the beauty of nature in motion.

We’re currently in the peak of winter in Yellowstone National Park. During this time of the year, the national park experiences brutally cold temperatures with average lows right around 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Obviously, that usually translates into any precipitation that hits the area being snow.

Meaning that all the animals that call Yellowstone home (and aren’t hibernating0 have to really tough out the winter season.

It’s a good thing bison are built for the cold, because they generally have to withstand a lot of it. They’re actually some of the toughest animals on the planet, and have thrived in the cold climate of the American West for thousands of years. Much of that survival success is due to their thick coats, which creates and retains an incomparable amount of heat.

A bison’s wooly coats plays a critical role in keeping them warm (and alive) through the winter. Scientifically speaking, their fur creates such a strong layer of insulation that the snow that lands on their outer coat will not melt from the heat the bison’s skin gives off. If that doesn’t make much sense to you, just know that bison have quite possibly the best personal heating system in the entire animal kingdom.

So don’t worry or feel bad for this herd of bison traversing through Yellowstone National Park. They are doing just fine, and this remarkable footage of them taking over a snow-covered road in the national park was captured by Andrea Baratte – a wildlife guide and photographer based out of Bozeman, Montana.

Baratte was there to film a couple hundred bison making their way through Yellowstone as snow drifted down to what’s already a winter wonderland. And if you are wondering why these beasts chose to walk on the road as opposed to the unbeaten wilderness, there’s actually a very simple explanation for that.

Why barrel through the snow and create your own route when there’s a wide open one ready to be taken advantage of? “Make your own path” would obviously be better for an inspirational poster, but “use the road that’s open” works too, and that’s what these snow-covered bison decided to do. They are just trying to conserve energy while still getting to wherever they are going.

Pretty cool, eh? And though all this video really shows is a large group of bison walking down the road (it’s a rather simple task, I know), the herd making the trek with the beautiful wintry Yellowstone landscape behind it is as majestic as it gets. Andrea Baratte had this to say when he posted the footage to his “Montana Wild” social media account:

“Hundreds of Bison walking down the road in Yellowstone. One of the most incredible bison encounters I’ve had in my guiding career. A herd of roughly 250–400 bison came down the hillside and walked right past us. That paired with the snowfall was a true Yellowstone winter moment. Days like this are why I love coming to Yellowstone almost every single day.”

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