Bison in Romania head-butted each other during a brief tussle before a larger and older male broke up the fight and chased off one of the animals.
The scuffle between the two beasts was caught on camera by Romsilva, the national forestry administration in the Vanatori Neamt reserve in northeast Romania.
„When two bison fight, a third one breaks them up,” Romsilva said Tuesday in a post on Facebook.
It said the fight had been brief and „indecisive” and had been broken up „by a third, stronger male.”
It was unclear why the two bison locked horns. Males often fight during the rut which lasts from August to October.
There are currently 45 bison living in the park which lies on the borders of Neamt and Suceava counties, Romsilva said. Fifteen were born out of captivity.
Romsilva looks after 100 bison in three different areas of Romania.
After two centuries of absence from Romania, the bison was reintroduced to Romania from Poland in 1958,
In 2014, a large reintroduction program was launched under the oversight of WWF-Romania and Rewilding Europe.
Last summer, a group of eight bison left the reservations where they lived in Germany and Switzerland and were released into the wild in Bison Hillock, near Armenis a village in western Romania where they joined the existing herd of 57.
In November and December 2020 17 more bison were settled in Romania. They came from Romania, reserves in the UK, Sweden and Germany.
