Mind Blown: There Are No Buffalo in South Dakota

This morning I saw a story about how the calving season for bison is underway at Custer State Park. You've no doubt heard the animals in the above photo called bison and buffalo. I was wondering what the difference was. I figured there was some subtle differences like between whitetail deer and mule deer.

I went to my Google machine and landed on a Mental Floss article about that very question. As it turns out, there have never been buffalo in South Dakota, or all of North America for that matter.

Really, there are no buffalo. They are all bison.

As it turns out, explorers thought they resembled water buffalo or cape buffalo so they called them buffalo. But they are not buffalo, they are all bison. But the name stuck and so that's why we still refer to these animals as buffalo.

My mind was blown too.