You can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd

don't drop your chewing gum in a chicken coop either

But you can be happy if youve a mind to.

dys, I thought you were an egghead. Don't you know that should be "you can't rollerskate in a BISON herd.

Seriously, glad that only the car was hurt.

I've been mooved to reply.

"Buffalo" is a common name for any number of animals in the genera Bos, Bubolus, or Bison. All bison are buffalos but not all buffalos are bison.

My mama always told me you cain't go fishin in a baseball pool.

Thanks for that info, farmerman. Is that why they call all the bulls bossy? The bull that almost attacked me and my two kids was Rollo.

My word, McTag. Just found out the Brits may ban "happy hour".

When I was livin up in Cow Hampshire, a motorcyclist hit a moose crossing the road at night less than a mile from my house. Motorcycle was a total loss. Man was taken by ambulance to the Monadnock Hospital in Peterborough. The moose was knocked down, got up, looked at the mess, figuratively scratched its head and continued on to the woods on t'other side of the road. Was in all the papers. Moral: man-made metal machines ain't no match for Ma Nature's big beasts.

The way I heard it (herd it?), buffalo are found only in Africa, India and the orient, and bison are found in NA.

Actually its one of those naming things, the bison is a very distant relation of the buffalo. They're called 'American' in the same way that most creatures were named after something back in Britain or Europe with the appelation 'American'.

The closest you would get to the bison is the Gaur of S/E Asia. Check out the pics on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_bison , then just imagine the same animal covered in fur. These are big mothers too.

Bison also live in Eastern Europe today , and once lived all over Europe and Asia along with other Bison and Bubolus and Bos species . Bison are direct close genetic relatives of the GAur (which is the Asian Buffalo). So the distinction , in cladistic terms, begins to fade and the only distinction that really makes sense to us is the "buffalo cheeses' that are made from a subspecies from Italy. (Nobody makes cheese from bison milk, they are just too stupid to not kill you by their sheer mass).
I can be convinced on the sepparation of the term but, like rabbit and "hare" the actual distinctions are few and relatively unimportant. Like the word "camel" includes Llama, Bactrian, Dromedary, Guanaco, Vicuna,Alpaca etc , its asort of "family" name that cladistics nuts like to lump together rather than split apart.

In biology, we are now in an age of "lumping" rather than "splitting". Splitting into distinst and smaller subdivisions is acvtually kind of Creationist , when actually, we now can see the genetic similarities of lots of animal;s and plants

Ok, Gaur! Sheesh... spot the typos in the post above....

Yes. They're all of the variety 'cattle' (or 'kettle' if you were in NZ). However, even allowing for genetic similarity there's a world of difference between dealing with a domesticated cow like a Friesian, that are positively skittish around humans


"Hello. I am a cow. Nice weather we're having isn't it.
Those great boots you are wearing, what are they made from?"


or dealing with its non-domesticated wild cousin:

This is what the mung-bean, peace-loving, hippy Gaurs can do...

I've seen a gaur in Karnataka, India. It was dark outside. Although we stopped to take a look, using the headlights, I did not get out of the vehicle.

Now, last year I had to travel to Port Macquarie on the NSW coast. Its a goodish drive from Sydney, but as they have widened and extended the freeway bits, the trip was just dull. One the way back, I was going the limit (and maybe a little extra) when I spotted something large in the median area of the split road. It was a cow, not a buffalo You have to go a damn long way north and west bef0re you see feral buffalo.

Still, this freaked me out a lot. The damn thing was grazing right in between 6 lanes of traffic. If she took it into her head to make a break for it, someone would collide at 110kmh with a lot of hamburger. I hit the anchors and drove past way slow - got a look from Bessie there; 'What's your problem?'. Wonder what ended up happening. Did the police lead her away for 'questioning'? Did the owner notice her missing? Did someone just basically shove her in the back of a truck and fill the freezer with free cow?



And I saw a chicken on the road just north of Hexham. Nearly stopped to catch it. Gustav pays well for stray farm animals.