Animals & Plants of Yellowstone National Park
The 77 animals, plants, and fungi you can find at Yellowstone National Park, with sizes, diets, and whether you should worry. See the full park guide at Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone is a high volcanic plateau where bison graze meadows they have used for millennia and gray wolves and grizzly bears sit at the top of the food chain. Elk migrate through by the thousands, pronghorn cross the sage flats, and mule deer hold the timber. In the water, native Yellowstone cutthroat trout share the lake with non-native lake trout that crews net by the hundred thousand every year.
Turn this into a game: Play Yellowstone National Park Bingo →Common questions
Which Yellowstone animals demand real distance?
At Yellowstone National Park, give space to Grizzly bear, American bison, Moose, American black bear, and Mountain lion. Grizzly bear: A grizzly is one of the few animals you must give real room. American bison: Bison look slow and calm, but they are not tame and they hurt more people in Yellowstone than any other animal. Moose: A moose looks slow and gentle, but it is one of the most dangerous animals to crowd. American black bear: Black bears are usually shy and would rather leave than meet you. Mountain lion: Confrontations are very rare — even in Yellowstone, with a healthy population, few have ever been documented. (per NPS species pages).
What do the top predators of Yellowstone eat?
At Yellowstone National Park, the most interesting eaters are Grizzly bear, Gray wolf, American bison, and Moose. Grizzly bear eats berries, pine nuts, roots, insects, elk calves, trout. Gray wolf eats elk, deer, moose, caribou, beaver, snowshoe hare. American bison eats grasses, sedges, a few leafy plants. Moose eats willow, aspen leaves, twigs, water plants, pond weeds. (per NPS species pages).
Which Yellowstone species has the strangest true fact?
The strangest true thing about Yellowstone National Park: Mountain lion: Wolves and grizzly bears in Yellowstone regularly push cougars off their own kills, displacing them from about 6% of elk carcasses. Gray wolf: Wolves were gone from Yellowstone for about 70 years. In 1995 the park brought them back, and today between about 83 and 123 wolves live there. (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 badger: Badgers would rather dig away than fight and avoid people entirely.
- American bison: Bison look slow and calm, but they are not tame and they hurt more people in Yellowstone than any other animal.
- American black bear: Black bears are usually shy and would rather leave than meet you.
- Bighorn sheep: Bighorn sheep are shy and would rather climb away than come near you.
- Bobcat: Very low.
- Canada lynx: None realistically — it is rare, shy, and avoids people almost entirely.
- Coyote: Coyotes almost always run from people.
- Elk: Elk look calm but they are large and wild.
- Gray wolf: Wild wolves almost never bother people.
- Grizzly bear: A grizzly is one of the few animals you must give real room.
- Moose: A moose looks slow and gentle, but it is one of the most dangerous animals to crowd.
- Mountain goat: A mountain goat looks calm but is a large wild animal with sharp horns, so keep your distance, at least 50 yards, and never get between a goat and its kid.
- Mountain lion: Confrontations are very rare — even in Yellowstone, with a healthy population, few have ever been documented.
- 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.
- North American porcupine: A porcupine cannot throw or shoot its quills, but they detach the instant something touches them, and the barbed tips work deeper into skin over time.
- Plains spadefoot: Not dangerous.
- Western toad: Harmless to touch, but the two glands behind its eyes ooze a thick white poison meant to deter predators, so wash hands after handling and don't touch your eyes or mouth first.
Bites if handled
- American beaver: Beavers are shy and would rather swim off than confront anyone.
- American pika: Pikas are harmless.
- Bald eagle: A bald eagle will not come after you.
- 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.
- Golden-mantled ground squirrel: None.
- 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.
- Osprey: None.
- Peregrine falcon: None to worry about.
- Red-tailed hawk: None.
- Sagebrush lizard: This lizard has no venom, and its main defense is running.
- Sandhill crane: A sandhill crane is big but shy and will usually walk away from people.
- Snowshoe hare: None.
- Trumpeter swan: Trumpeter swans are not a danger, but give a nesting pair room.
- Turkey vulture: None directly — it eats only dead animals and avoids people.
- Western terrestrial garter snake: Essentially harmless.
- Yellow-bellied marmot: Marmots are not dangerous, but they are wild and can bite if you corner or try to grab one.
Everything else on this page is harmless. What each group means.
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Mammal American badger
Taxidea taxus
A short, wide-bodied digger with a white-striped face, common on the grasslands of Yellowstone and Badlands, that can vanish underground in minutes.
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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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Mammal American black bear
Ursus americanus
The bear you're most likely to meet east of the Rockies, a strong tree-climber that eats mostly plants and comes in black, brown, or cinnamon.
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Bird American dipper
Cinclus mexicanus
A stream-gray songbird that walks along the bottom of cold mountain creeks to hunt, the only songbird in North America that does.
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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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Mammal American pika
Ochotona princeps
A small round cousin of the rabbit that lives in mountain rock piles at Rocky Mountain, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades, and never sleeps through winter.
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Bird American white pelican
Pelecanus erythrorhynchos
A huge white bird with an orange throat pouch that fishes in groups and nests on tiny islands in Yellowstone Lake and other high-country waters.
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Fish Arctic grayling
Thymallus arcticus
A native trout relative with a tall, sail-like dorsal fin, gone from Yellowstone's rivers for 80 years and only now being put back.
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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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Amphibian Barred tiger salamander
Ambystoma mavortium
A stout, yellow-barred salamander that spends most of the year underground and gathers in prairie ponds to breed, living around Great Sand Dunes and Badlands.
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Plant Big sagebrush
Artemisia tridentata
The silver-leaved, sharp-smelling evergreen shrub of the high desert West, and the main food of the greater sage-grouse nearly all year.
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Mammal Bighorn sheep
Ovis canadensis
A wild sheep of cliffs and canyons, where rams carry heavy curled horns and both sexes cross steep rock other animals can't.
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Plant Black huckleberry
Vaccinium membranaceum
The dark purple berry that feeds Glacier's bears and half the pancakes in Montana, growing on open and burned slopes all over the park.
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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 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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Mammal Canada lynx
Lynx canadensis
A rare, snow-adapted wild cat with tufted ears and huge furry paws, living in high conifer forest at Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton.
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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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Plant Colorado blue columbine
Aquilegia coerulea
Colorado's blue-and-white state flower, its long spurs full of nectar that only a hawkmoth's tongue can reach.
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Amphibian Columbia spotted frog
Rana luteiventris
A spotted frog with a pale mustache stripe that stays active under the ice of Yellowstone and Grand Teton ponds through winter.
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Bird Common loon
Gavia immer
The black-and-white diving bird whose call carries across Glacier's lakes; one in five of Montana's nesting loons is inside this park.
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Bird Common raven
Corvus corax
A big, glossy-black problem-solver that rolls and tumbles over the cliffs of Grand Canyon, Arches, and the desert parks, watching for its next meal.
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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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Plant Douglas-fir
Pseudotsuga menziesii
One of the tallest trees on Earth, not actually a true fir, whose cones carry little three-pointed flaps a Native story calls the tails and legs of hiding mice.
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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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Plant Engelmann spruce
Picea engelmannii
A high-elevation spruce with scaly bark and sharp, squarish needles, whose Colorado stands have lost more than a million acres to a beetle since 1996.
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Plant Fireweed
Chamerion angustifolium
A tall pink-purple wildflower that is often the first color to return to a burned mountainside.
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Plant Glacier lily
Erythronium grandiflorum
A nodding yellow spring flower whose bulb is such important grizzly bear food that the bear's digging can grow bigger flowers the following year.
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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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Mammal Golden-mantled ground squirrel
Callospermophilus lateralis
A chipmunk-lookalike ground squirrel with a reddish-gold head and shoulders and no face stripes, common on rocks and trailsides from Glacier to Mesa Verde.
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Mammal Gray wolf
Canis lupus
The biggest wild dog in North America, a pack hunter you might hear howling at dawn in Yellowstone, Denali, or Isle Royale.
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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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Mammal Grizzly bear
Ursus arctos horribilis
A big brown bear of the northern Rockies and Alaska, marked by a hump of muscle over its shoulders and long digging claws.
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Bird Harlequin duck
Histrionicus histrionicus
A slate-blue and chestnut sea duck that breeds by diving and bracing in fast mountain whitewater instead of calm water.
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Plant Indian paintbrush
Castilleja miniata
A scarlet mountain wildflower that steals water and food from its neighbors' roots, and whose bright color comes from leaves, not petals.
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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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Fish Lake trout
Salvelinus namaycush
A large, deep-water char with a forked tail, native at Glacier but an invasive species anglers must kill on sight in Yellowstone and Grand Teton lakes.
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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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Plant Lodgepole pine
Pinus contorta var. latifolia
The thin-barked pine covering 80% of Yellowstone's forest, some of whose cones only open in the heat of a fire.
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Mammal Moose
Alces alces
The largest deer in the world, a long-legged giant you might see wading in ponds at Grand Teton, Isle Royale, Denali, or Rocky Mountain.
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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 Mountain goat
Oreamnos americanus
A white, shaggy climber with black horns that lives on the steepest crags and pumice fields high on Mount Rainier, where almost nothing else can walk.
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Mammal Mountain lion
Puma concolor
A tan, solitary big cat found from Glacier to Mesa Verde, called cougar, puma, or panther by region, and rarely seen at all.
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Invertebrate Mountain pine beetle
Dendroctonus ponderosae
A beetle about the size of a grain of rice that tunnels under pine bark and can turn a mountainside red at Yellowstone, Glacier, and Rocky Mountain.
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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 North American porcupine
Erethizon dorsatum
A slow, quill-covered rodent that climbs into the treetops at Theodore Roosevelt to eat twigs, and North America's second-largest rodent after the beaver.
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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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Bird Osprey
Pandion haliaetus
A fish-hunting hawk that dives feet-first into open water and flies off with its catch turned head-forward like a torpedo.
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Bird Peregrine falcon
Falco peregrinus
The fastest animal alive, a crow-sized falcon that folds its wings and stoops on other birds in midair, and a species that nearly vanished before recovering.
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Amphibian Plains spadefoot
Spea bombifrons
A cat-eyed toad that digs backward into sand with a spade on each hind foot and spends nearly all year hidden underground.
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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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Reptile Sagebrush lizard
Sceloporus graciosus
A small, slender, high-country lizard, the fence lizard's cousin, whose males flash blue belly and throat patches in a push-up display.
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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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Mammal Snowshoe hare
Lepus americanus
A forest hare whose coat flips from brown to white on a clock set by daylight, not by snow, and whose oversized feet work like actual snowshoes.
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Bird Steller's jay
Cyanocitta stelleri
A deep-blue mountain jay with a black crest and a loud voice, the campground bird that will eye your sandwich at Yosemite, Sequoia, and Crater Lake.
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Plant Subalpine fir
Abies lasiocarpa
A narrow, spire-shaped high-mountain fir with smooth gray bark and flat, soft needles, moving in wherever fire has stayed away long enough.
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Bird Trumpeter swan
Cygnus buccinator
North America's largest waterfowl, a white swan with a trumpeting call, found on rivers and lakes from Yellowstone to the Dakota prairies.
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Bird Turkey vulture
Cathartes aura
A large, dark soaring bird with a bare red head, circling on thermals over open country, using one of the sharpest noses of any bird.
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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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Reptile Western terrestrial garter snake
Thamnophis elegans
A slim, striped snake found from stream banks to talus slopes across ten of these parks, and the most commonly seen reptile in several of them.
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Amphibian Western toad
Anaxyrus boreas
A stout, warty toad that walks instead of hopping, with poison glands behind each eye, ranging from lowland ponds to mountain lakes across the Cascades.
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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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Fish Westslope cutthroat trout
Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi
Montana's state fish, a headwater trout with a red jaw slash, restored to Yellowstone and Glacier streams after nonnative stocking nearly wiped it out.
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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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Plant Whitebark pine
Pinus albicaulis
The twisted pine at Glacier's treeline that feeds grizzlies and Clark's nutcrackers, holds the snowpack in place, and is dying faster than it grows.
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Mammal Yellow-bellied marmot
Marmota flaviventris
A chubby, whistling ground squirrel that suns itself on high-country rocks at Rocky Mountain and Yosemite, and sleeps away most of the year.
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Invertebrate Yellowstone brine fly
Ephydra bruesi
A small fly that lives in Yellowstone's hot runoff channels, walking on water close to the boiling point that would kill almost anything else.
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Fish Yellowstone cutthroat trout
Oncorhynchus clarkii bouvieri
A native trout with a red-orange slash under its jaw, the fish that fed the whole web of life around Yellowstone Lake for thousands of years.
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Plant Yellowstone sand verbena
Abronia ammophila
A white-flowered relative of desert sand verbenas found nowhere on Earth except a few beaches on Yellowstone Lake.