Mammals of Yellowstone National Park
The 24 mammals you can find at Yellowstone National Park, like the American badger — sizes, diets, and whether you should worry.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.