Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
Time to welcome back some old friends?
Many of our largest native British species have become extinct over the centuries. PETER FROST asks if it’s time to bring some of them back
The European bison [Dmitriy Guryanov/ Creative Commons]

TODAY’S pub quiz question is what is Europe’s biggest land mammal? Give yourself a point if you went for the European bison or the European wood bison (Bison bonasus). Just half a point if you gave it one of its colloquial names such as the wisent, or the zubr. 

This huge buffalo-like species can weigh up three-quarters of a ton. It isn’t the same species you see in cowboy films. 

That one is the American bison (Bison bison). These are more usually known as buffalo. Actually buffalo and bison are two different types of animals.

A boar piglet, or ‘humbug’
The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
The crowd at Manchester Punk Festival 2024
Culture / 11 April 2025
11 April 2025
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
Free supplement / 8 March 2025
8 March 2025
Read Sisters, the journal of the National Assembly Of Women, below.
Anselm Kiefer, Wer jetzt kein Haus hat (Whoever has no House
Exhibition Review / 14 February 2025
14 February 2025
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
GUILTY PARTIES: Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669), Syndics of t
Book Review / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
CAROLINE FOWLER explains how the slave trade helped establish the ‘golden age’ of Dutch painting and where to find its hidden traces