Bison Returns

Location: Exhibition complex / 0 Level / Exhibition hall # 1

On September 17th the Darwin Museum will open a large exhibition "Bison Returns" about the fate of the heaviest land animal in Europe, its almost complete disappearance and restoration. It is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the European bison's return to nature. The exhibition presents unique exhibits valuable from scientifical and historical points of view, paleontological finds, archival photographs and works of animalistic art from the collections of the State Darwin Museum.

The bison is the largest of the animals living in Europe, and the last European representative of wild bulls. The animal is huge. Sometimes the weight of a bison reaches a ton, the height at the withers is 220 cm and the body length is more than 2.5 m. A dense physique is displayed with powerful neck and strong legs, a thick curly hair that forms a real mane on the chest, a massive head with formidable horns, a wise look - everything gives out the real lord of the forest in the appearance of a bison.

The European bison is one of the surviving representatives of the megafauna of the Ice Age, whose ancestor, which is the steppe bison, was the same age as mammoths and woolly rhinoceros. Even 10,000 years ago the European bison inhabited vast territories from the Pyrenees to Western Siberia, including the Caucasus and the Scandinavian Peninsula. Bison successfully survived climate change, the expansion of our Cro-Magnon ancestors, but they have fallen victim to the greed and cruelty of modern people. Uncontrolled hunting and destruction of habitats led to the fact that in 1927 the last "lord of the forest" from the wild was killed in the Caucasus. Scientists managed to restore the species from 12 animals that lived in captivity and save bison from complete extinction. Now there are about 7 thousand of these animals in the world (mainly in Belarus, Poland and Russia), but the European bison are still in danger because of closely related crossing and the lack of pastures, poachers.

At the exhibition "Bison Returns" you will learn the history of the origin, extermination and restoration of the European bison and get acquainted with the bison nurseries in Russia, see the works of outstanding Russian artists who were inspired by the bison to create genuine masterpieces of the animalist. These are paintings, graphic and sculptural works by V.A. Vatagin, K.K. Flerov, B.Y. Vorobyov, V.A. Belyshev, V.V. Trofimov, D.V. Gorlov, V.A. Duvidov, G.E. Nikolsky, V.V. Simonov, G.N. Glikman, N.I. Atyunin, A.V. Marz.

Among the interesting exhibits of the exhibition in display there are: the European bison, which was caught in 1903 by the last Emperor Nicholas II during a hunt in Belovezhskaya Pushcha; horn sheaths of extinct the Carpathian and the Caucasian wisent; the skull and the hair of the steppe bison, which is the ancient ancestor of the bison; the book of the outstanding encyclopedist of the Renaissance Konrad Gessner "History of Animals" (Historia animalium, 1551) with one of the first scientific images of the bison. Each visitor of the exhibition will be able to watch documentaries from different years about the work to restore the European bison population and participate in the educational program. The bison will also become the main character of the World Animal Day celebration, which will be held at the Darwin Museum on October 8th.

Bison in the Bryansk forest. Photo: I.P. Shpilyonok

One of the first images of a bison. K. Gessner, History of Animals, 1551. From the funds of the State Darwin Museum

K.K. Flerov. Late Pleistocene bison. Cardboard, oil. 1971-1979 From the funds of the State Darwin Museum

Stuffed bison caught by Emperor Nicholas II in 1903 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. From the funds of the State Darwin Museum

The first free herd of the European bison in Belovezhskaya Pushcha 25 years after the bison disappeared from nature. Photo: H. Heimpel, 1959

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