American White buffalo (Bison bison)
True albino buffalo are very rare and are considered sacred by native Americans. Most White bison are not due to albinism but are often the result of hybridization (for example crossing with cattle breeds like Charolais) that produce the white coloration. Some say that bison and cattle can't breed because of nature and that beefalo is a fake because the DNA shows it's all beef!
Yes — they can breed, but only with difficulty.
American bison (Bison bison) and domestic cattle (Bos taurus) are different species but within the same biological family (Bovidae). Hybridization is possible, but the process is unreliable:
Many early attempts at crossbreeding (in the 1800s and early 1900s) produced infertile males and only occasionally fertile females. Ranchers in the late 1800s (especially Charles “Buffalo” Jones and others) created “cattalo” or “beefalo” by selective breeding — with limited success.
Modern genetic testing does confirm that most American bison alive today carry trace cattle DNA, often around 1–2%, but sometimes higher. This is the result of those early rancher experiments, not natural hybridization in the wild.
A few isolated conservation herds — such as Yellowstone and Wind Cave National Park — are considered genetically “pure.”
The “beefalo” you see marketed for meat today are intentional hybrids, usually around 3/8 bison and 5/8 cattle by breeding standard, and are genetically confirmed hybrids.5N4A5294
The American bison is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds. Their range once roughly comprised a triangle between the Great Bear Lake in Canada's far northwest, south to the Mexican states of Durango and Nuevo León, and east along the western boundary of the Appalachian Mountains.
