OTL there were only about 300 bison in 1900, down from about 60,000,000 in 1800. What if the species had been completely wiped out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting
OTL there were only about 300 bison in 1900, down from about 60,000,000 in 1800. What if the species had been completely wiped out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting
Wow thats quite a bottleneck. With only an ancestral population of 300 the genetic diversity of the current population of Bison probably has pretty limited genetic diversity so who knows, they could all be wiped out by a disease in the future. Btw did they crossbreed the decadents with European bison to mitigate this?
OTL there were only about 300 bison in 1900, down from about 60,000,000 in 1800. What if the species had been completely wiped out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting
Side Note: I wonder if the 60,000,000 bison reached such great numbers due to the population crash of the Native Americans?
Side Note: I wonder if the 60,000,000 bison reached such great numbers due to the population crash of the Native Americans?
Wow thats quite a bottleneck. With only an ancestral population of 300 the genetic diversity of the current population of Bison probably has pretty limited genetic diversity so who knows, they could all be wiped out by a disease in the future. Btw did they crossbreed the decadents with European bison to mitigate this?
There are AmericanxEuropean crosses but they only live free in the Caucasus IIRC. The European bison has it worse than the American anyway. All current 4000 European bison descend from 22 animals in the 1920s.