Year after year, certain types of national park behavior comes up no matter how many warnings the National Park Service (NPS) puts out to the public.
Given that many travel from far away to see rare types of wildlife in their natural environments, this is when common sense seems to go out the window most often.
In 2024 alone, there have been recorded incidents of park visitors not just getting dangerously near animals to snap a picture but even coming up close enough to pet them or, in one egregious instance that resulted in both hospitalization and arrest, kicking a bison who was crossing the road.
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Don't be like these Yellowstone visitors going social media viral for all the wrong reasons
Another incident that has started going viral on social media was captured at Yellowstone National Park spanning Wyoming as well as parts of Idaho and Montana.
A video posted on the TouronsOfYellowstone Instagram (META) account shows a bison as a male voice is heard getting closer while asking "can I ride you?" and saying "I just want to pet you."
"The bison just wants to chew his cud and chill in the sun," writes the account, which gained nearly 570,000 followers posting videos of bad tourist behavior at the park. "Please leave the park animals alone."
The video was upvoted nearly 4,000 times, while a few days earlier another video of a tourist being chased back toward his car after parking in the middle of the road and getting too close to bison went viral with the "another touron off his rocker" caption.
"Whatever the bison does, I'm on the bison's side," reads one of the most upvoted comments underneath the first video.
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Incidents of bison injuring visitors are quite rare — numbers from Yellowstone show an average of two annually — but often have disastrous outcomes when they do occur.
Related: More national park visitors have effed around with wildlife and found out
NPS wildlife guidance: 'If nearby shelter is not available, run away'
In June 2023, an 83-year-old woman was gored when a bison snuck up behind her on a hike through Yellowstone's Storm Point Trail and lifted her up more than a foot from the ground with its horns. A year earlier, in July 2023, a 47-year-old woman suffered significant injury to her abdomen after a bison charged toward her.
While in both incidents the bison snuck up behind the visitors before they had time to notice how close they were, the NPS recommends keeping a distance of 25 yards, or 23 meters, from any large wildlife such as bison and elk one may encounter. Home to over 6,000 buffalo, Yellowstone is among the very few places in North America where once can see direct descendants of the buffalo.
Particularly during breeding season, bison can wander through the park in search of new places to mate and creep up on unsuspecting visitors in unexpected places.
"If an elk charges or runs towards you, find shelter in your vehicle or behind a tall, sturdy barrier as quickly as possible,” the government agency warns. “If nearby shelter is not available, run away."
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