Animals & Plants of Wind Cave National Park
The 36 animals, plants, and fungi you can find at Wind Cave National Park, with sizes, diets, and whether you should worry. See the full park guide at Wind Cave National Park.
Wind Cave is two parks stacked on top of each other: a cave system below and mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine forest above. American bison, elk, and pronghorn graze the surface, black-tailed prairie dogs dig towns beside the road, and black-footed ferrets hunt those towns at night. Prairie rattlesnakes share the grass, and bats use the cave.
Turn this into a game: Play Wind Cave National Park Bingo →Common questions
Which Wind Cave animals demand real distance?
At Wind Cave National Park, give space to American bison, Elk, Prairie rattlesnake, Coyote, and Pronghorn. American bison: Bison look slow and calm, but they are not tame and they hurt more people in Yellowstone than any other animal. Elk: Elk look calm but they are large and wild. Prairie rattlesnake: It is the only dangerously venomous snake at Yellowstone, Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wind Cave. Coyote: Coyotes almost always run from people. Pronghorn: Not a real worry: pronghorn keep their distance from people on their own. (per NPS species pages).
What do Wind Cave animals eat?
At Wind Cave National Park, the most interesting eaters are American bison, Bald eagle, Golden eagle, and Black-footed ferret. American bison eats grasses, sedges, a few leafy plants. Bald eagle eats fish, ducks, gulls, small mammals, carrion. Golden eagle eats rabbits, hares, ground squirrels, marmots, ptarmigan. Black-footed ferret eats prairie dogs, mice, other small mammals. (per NPS species pages).
Which Wind Cave species has the strangest true fact?
The strangest true thing about Wind Cave National Park: Prairie rattlesnake: It is the only venomous reptile in Yellowstone, Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wind Cave National Parks. Black-footed ferret: Wind Cave released 49 ferrets in 2007, and the park's prairie dog towns can support 40 to 60 ferrets depending on how the prairie dog population is doing that year. (per NPS species pages).
Anything here that bites?
Venomous
- Prairie rattlesnake: It is the only dangerously venomous snake at Yellowstone, Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wind Cave.
Keep away
- American bison: Bison look slow and calm, but they are not tame and they hurt more people in Yellowstone than any other animal.
- Bobcat: Very low.
- Coyote: Coyotes almost always run from people.
- Elk: Elk look calm but they are large and wild.
- Mule deer: Mule deer look calm and tame, but they are wild animals with sharp hooves, and bucks have antlers in fall.
- Pronghorn: Not a real worry: pronghorn keep their distance from people on their own.
- White-tailed deer: White-tailed deer normally run from people.
Don't touch or eat
- American pasqueflower: Every part of this plant is poisonous to eat, and the fresh sap can blister skin.
- Great Plains toad: Not dangerous if you leave it alone.
Bites if handled
- American beaver: Beavers are shy and would rather swim off than confront anyone.
- Bald eagle: A bald eagle will not come after you.
- Black-footed ferret: You're extremely unlikely to run into one by surprise — they hunt at night, underground, and there are very few left.
- Black-tailed prairie dog: They will not bite you if you leave them alone, and the real hazard is invisible: prairie dogs can carry fleas that spread sylvatic plague, the same bacterium that causes bubonic plague in people.
- Bullsnake: Not dangerous at all — it has no venom.
- Burrowing owl: Burrowing owls are harmless to people.
- Golden eagle: A golden eagle will not come after a person.
- Great horned owl: This owl hunts small animals at night and will not come after you.
- Little brown bat: Very low risk.
- Northern flying squirrel: No real risk.
- Red-tailed hawk: None.
- Sandhill crane: A sandhill crane is big but shy and will usually walk away from people.
- Townsend's big-eared bat: Bats are not out to hurt you, and they are not 'flying mice' or blind.
- Wild turkey: A turkey will walk away from you long before you get close, and the only real trouble comes from feeding one.
Everything else on this page is harmless. What each group means.
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Mammal American beaver
Castor canadensis
North America's largest rodent, a keystone species whose dams reshape whole streams at Yellowstone, Glacier, and ten other parks along the route.
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Mammal American bison
Bison bison
The biggest land animal in North America, a shaggy grazer of the plains you can watch cross the road in Yellowstone.
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Plant American pasqueflower
Pulsatilla patens ssp. multifida
A furry, purple-blue prairie flower that beats the grass out of the ground each spring, blooming before almost anything else is green.
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Bird Bald eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
The white-headed fish hawk that is the national bird of the United States, common along the lakes of Voyageurs and the coasts of Olympic and Katmai.
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Bird Black-billed magpie
Pica hudsonia
A black-and-white corvid with a tail as long as its body, common on fences and roadsides across the northern Rockies and Great Plains.
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Mammal Black-footed ferret
Mustela nigripes
A masked, prairie-dog-hunting weasel declared extinct in 1979, brought back from a single Wyoming colony and now living wild again at Badlands and Wind Cave.
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Mammal Black-tailed prairie dog
Cynomys ludovicianus
A burrowing ground squirrel, not a dog. Its towns along Theodore Roosevelt's scenic loop mow the grass short and pull bison and pronghorn in to graze.
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Mammal Bobcat
Lynx rufus
A small wildcat about twice the size of a house cat, common but rarely seen, that can bring down prey many times its own weight.
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Amphibian Boreal chorus frog
Pseudacris maculata
A finger-sized frog whose spring trill fills Rocky Mountain wetlands, and whose cells can freeze solid and still wake up.
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Fish Brook trout
Salvelinus fontinalis
A small, wormy-patterned native fish with red spots ringed in blue, the only trout that truly belongs in the cold high streams of the Smokies and Shenandoah.
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Reptile Bullsnake
Pituophis catenifer sayi
A big, harmless snake that fakes being a rattlesnake — hissing, flattening its head, and shaking its tail in dry grass — to talk its way out of trouble.
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Bird Burrowing owl
Athene cunicularia
A small owl that nests underground in old prairie-dog burrows and hunts in daylight across Western grasslands, unlike most owls.
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Bird Canada jay
Perisoreus canadensis
A fearless, fluffy gray bird that glues thousands of food scraps into tree bark with its own sticky spit and remembers nearly all of them through winter.
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Bird Clark's nutcracker
Nucifraga columbiana
A pale-gray, black-winged cousin of the crow that hides tens of thousands of pine seeds each fall and remembers where to find them again.
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Mammal Coyote
Canis latrans
The wild dog you're most likely to hear at a national park — a coyote, at home in the desert, the mountains, and the edges of towns.
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Mammal Elk
Cervus canadensis
A large deer of mountain meadows whose bulls grow branching antlers and, each fall, bugle a high whistling call across the valley.
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Bird Golden eagle
Aquila chrysaetos
A dark brown eagle with golden neck feathers that hunts rabbits and hares across open country, nesting on cliffs in Denali, Death Valley, and Great Basin.
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Bird Great horned owl
Bubo virginianus
A big night hunter with feathery "horns" and a deep hoot, found from the saguaro desert to the Everglades, hunting after dark on silent wings.
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Amphibian Great Plains toad
Anaxyrus cognatus
A warty prairie toad that rises from the ground by the thousands after summer rain to fill Great Sand Dunes with a buzzing, metallic trill.
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Bird Killdeer
Charadrius vociferus
A shorebird that lives nowhere near a shore. At Badlands we never saw one. We heard it call its own name across the campground.
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Mammal Little brown bat
Myotis lucifugus
A tiny brown flyer that hunts insects over water at dusk and sleeps in caves and barns, eating half its own weight in bugs each night.
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Bird Mountain bluebird
Sialia currucoides
A sky-blue thrush of high, open country, the only bluebird seen regularly above 5,000 feet, nesting in lava-rock crevices at Craters of the Moon.
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Mammal Mule deer
Odocoileus hemionus
A western deer named for its big mule-like ears, common along canyon rims and desert washes in Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, and Saguaro.
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Mammal Northern flying squirrel
Glaucomys sabrinus
A nocturnal glider of old-growth conifer forests that eats mostly underground fungus and, under a UV light, glows bubblegum pink.
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Plant Ponderosa pine
Pinus ponderosa
A tall western pine whose sun-warmed bark smells like butterscotch and vanilla, and which drops its low branches so ground fire can pass safely beneath it.
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Reptile Prairie rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis
A gray-green pit viper with a buzzing rattle, the only venomous reptile at several of the parks it shares with prairie dogs and badgers.
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Mammal Pronghorn
Antilocapra americana
North America's fastest land mammal, seen in Yellowstone's northern range and at Lava Beds, built to outrun a predator that went extinct 12,000 years ago.
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Plant Quaking aspen
Populus tremuloides
A white-barked mountain tree whose flat-stemmed leaves shiver in the lightest breeze, turning whole hillsides gold each fall.
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Bird Red-tailed hawk
Buteo jamaicensis
The hawk most often recorded in Yellowstone. We watched a hawk take a pika near the Roosevelt cabins and could not tell you which hawk it was.
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Bird Sandhill crane
Antigone canadensis
A tall gray wading bird with a red forehead and a bugling call, gathering by the thousands near Great Sand Dunes and standing year-round in the Everglades.
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Bird Sharp-tailed grouse
Tympanuchus phasianellus
A prairie grouse that dances on open ground at dawn, stamping its feet and inflating purple air sacs on its neck to attract a mate.
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Mammal Townsend's big-eared bat
Corynorhinus townsendii
A soft brown bat with enormous curling ears that roosts in the cool lava-tube caves of Lava Beds and hunts moths in the dark.
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Bird Western meadowlark
Sturnella neglecta
A grassland songbird with a yellow throat and a black V on its chest, the state bird of Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.
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Plant Western wheatgrass
Pascopyrum smithii
A blue-green prairie grass whose underground rhizomes weave a tough sod — the official state grass of North and South Dakota.
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Mammal White-tailed deer
Odocoileus virginianus
The most common large mammal in eastern parks, running through the woods and waving a white tail like a flag when it bolts.
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Bird Wild turkey
Meleagris gallopavo
A forest bird in a park with almost no forest. Badlands turkeys hold to the wooded draws, because a turkey needs a tree to sleep in.