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Photo credits and licences

Every photograph on this site was taken by someone who then chose to let other people use it. This page names all of them, links to their pages, links to the licence each photograph carries, and links to the original file on Wikimedia Commons so you can check any of it yourself. Credits also sit beside each photograph where it appears, never only here.

How we use these photographs

Two of the images are in the public domain, released by United States federal agencies whose work is not under copyright. No attribution is legally required for those, and we credit the photographer and the agency anyway. The rest carry Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences, which do require attribution, so each one names its photographer beside the photograph and again below.

Share-alike licences also govern derivative works. That is why we publish these as photographs rather than cutting them up into labelled comparison graphics: a cropped and annotated version arguably inherits the licence. The labelled anatomy diagram is drawn by us instead, which keeps the photographers' work intact and leaves the diagram free for anyone to reuse.

No image on this site is machine-generated. On a page whose whole job is telling two animals apart, an invented animal would be a factual error, and image models get horn curvature, hump placement and beard shape wrong. Every photograph here was licence-checked against the Wikimedia Commons file record and looked at by eye before it was used.

The photographs

Three American bison bulls standing in deep snow, the centre animal side-on showing a high shoulder hump, a beard hanging from the chin and short horns curving upward.
American bisonRound Prairie, Yellowstone National Park, 20 January 2006. Public domain, so no credit is required. We give it because someone still took the photograph.Photo: Jim Peaco, US National Park Service · Public domain, credited anyway · Wikimedia Commons
An American bison bull side-on in deep snow, showing the high muscular shoulder hump, the beard hanging from the chin, a short horn curving upward and the head carried low.
American bisonRound Prairie, Yellowstone National Park, 20 January 2006. Public domain, so no credit is required. We give it because someone still took the photograph.Photo: Jim Peaco, US National Park Service · Public domain, credited anyway · Wikimedia Commons
An American bison bull rolling on its back in prairie grass with its legs in the air, loose tufts of moulting fur lifting away from its coat.
American bisonShort-grass prairie, US Fish and Wildlife Service Mountain-Prairie region. Public domain, so no credit is required. We give it because someone still took the photograph.Photo: Rich Keen / DPRA, USFWS Mountain-Prairie · Public domain, credited anyway · Wikimedia Commons
Head of a mature cape buffalo bull in profile, showing the heavy shield of fused bone across the forehead and horns that sweep down and out before curving sharply up.
Cape buffaloH1-1 road east of Pretoriuskop, Kruger National Park, South Africa, December 2016. Published under CC BY-SA 2.0, which asks for the credit shown below.Photo: Bernard DUPONT · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A cape buffalo bull standing side-on in long grass, its back running level from shoulder to rump with no hump, its coat sparse and slate black.
Cape buffaloMahonie Loop, north of Punda Maria, Kruger National Park, South Africa. Published under CC BY-SA 2.0, which asks for the credit shown below.Photo: Bernard DUPONT · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A European bison standing side-on in snow, longer in the leg than an American bison, with a smaller head carried higher and a sloping rather than towering shoulder.
European bison, or wisentWisentgehege Springe game park, near Springe, Hanover, Germany, January 2013. Published under CC BY-SA 3.0, which asks for the credit shown below.Photo: Michael Gäbler · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A domestic water buffalo bull standing under a shelter, dark grey and near hairless, with short backswept horns, a level back and no shoulder hump.
Water buffaloNear Mehsana, Gujarat, India, September 2014. The photographer asks reusers to display this line: “© Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons”.Photo: © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Two water buffalo up to their necks in a pond at sunset with their heads raised, showing wide ridged horns sweeping back in a flat crescent.
Water buffaloDon Det, Si Phan Don, Laos, May 2018. Published under CC BY-SA 4.0, which asks for the credit shown below.Photo: Basile Morin · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A yak lying on the ground with a shaggy grey-white coat, long horns curving forward and out, and a rounded mound of fur over the shoulders.
YakTierpark Hellabrunn, Munich, Germany, September 2019. Published under CC BY-SA 3.0, which asks for the credit shown below.Photo: Rufus46 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Summary table

AnimalPhotographerLicenceSource file
American bison
Bison bison		Jim Peaco
US National Park Service		Public domainCommons file page
American bison
Bison bison		Jim Peaco
US National Park Service		Public domainCommons file page
American bison
Bison bison		Rich Keen / DPRA
USFWS Mountain-Prairie		Public domainCommons file page
Cape buffalo
Syncerus caffer		Bernard DUPONTCC BY-SA 2.0Commons file page
Cape buffalo
Syncerus caffer		Bernard DUPONTCC BY-SA 2.0Commons file page
European bison, or wisent
Bison bonasus		Michael GäblerCC BY-SA 3.0Commons file page
Water buffalo
Bubalus bubalis		Yann ForgetCC BY-SA 4.0Commons file page
Water buffalo
Bubalus bubalis		Basile MorinCC BY-SA 4.0Commons file page
Yak
Bos grunniens		Rufus46CC BY-SA 3.0Commons file page

Our own work

The side-by-side anatomy diagram on the identification guide and the range sketches on the range maps page were drawn for this site. No licence is attached to them. If they are useful to you, take them and link back.

Corrections

If you took one of these photographs and want the credit worded differently, or want it taken down, write to questions@bisonvsbuffalo.com and we will fix it. The same address works for anything else on the site that looks wrong; the etymology page carries a correction a reader sent us.

Updated 2026-06-09. Reviewed June 2026.