Google Me This!

​​Have you ever been out somewhere, and something caught your eye? You wanted to know more about it, but how? Sunday I ate lunch at Texas Roadhouse. I looked up and found something looking down at me. I thought it was a buffalo.

​My husband thought it was either a buffalo or bison, but he wasn’t sure which. Now I was curious. Same animal, or different? There wasn’t a computer in sight, but, I had my phone so I asked it, “What’s the difference between buffalo and bison? I couldn’t believe the answer!

The animal we all know from the Wild Wild West isn’t a buffalo  – it’s a bison! Real buffaloes come from Asia and Africa. So what’s the difference? Read the paragraph below. Then test your knowledge. 

First look at the head. There are 2 clues. Bison have huge heads. Buffalo have smaller ones. Bison have beards. Buffalo don’t. I read that bison are the cool cows! LOL! I thought that was funny!
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Second bison have huge humps for their shoulders. They can use them as snowplows. I could use one this winter – LOL again! Now, can you tell which is which?

                                    #1 and #2                                Which is Which?                          Buffalo or Bison?    

#1 is a bison. See the beard, big head, and shoulder hump? It’s a dead give-away! #2 is a buffalo from Asia. See its small head? It’s missing a beard and a hump! A dead give-away! Did you know Asian buffalo have horns that span 6 feet. This one sure looks that wide! 

                                      #3 and #4                                   Which is Which?                         Buffalo or Bison

#3 is a buffalo. It’s from Kenya, in Africa. Its horns are much smaller than an Asian buffalo, but it’s head is small, and there’s no beard or hump. #4 are American bison. All 3 have big heads, beards, and shoulder humps.
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So how did this happen? How did bison get turned into buffalo?

The mix-up started when the first Europeans came over, before Jamestown and the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Think of the explorers in the 1500’s from  countries like Spain, Portugal, England, and France.

Those explorers had been to Asia and Africa. They’d seen buffalo there, and they thought they saw them in America too. Now looking  at them side by side, it’s easy to see the difference, but those explorers couldn’t.  And that’s how buffalo and bison got misnamed.
Google Source: https://www.livescience.com/32115-bison-vs-buffalo-whats-the-difference.html 

Google Me That!

​​Same day, same lunch, I was telling my husband about a movie I’d seen called The Fifth Quarter. The 2011 movie was based on a miraculous college football season from 2006, but I couldn’t remember the name of the college. Guess what – I googled it!
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5th_Quarter
The team – The Wake Forest Deacons. The movie is about what happens when a family loses their 15 year old son in a car accident. They turn a tradgedy into a miracle for the team, for organ donors, and for families who lose their teenagers in car accidents.

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