A bison was gruesomely boiled to death in a Yellowstone National Park hot spring last week — as tourists watched in horror.
The buffalo met its ghastly end when it apparently stumbled into the scalding water at Midway Geyser Basin near Old Faithful, according to the park service.
“There were two bison [standing] there,” said Louise Howard, who witnessed the bison’s death during her first-ever visit to Yellowstone, to CBS News.
“I thought it was a great photo opportunity.”
But the shutter-worthy sight quickly turned tragic when one of the bison stepped into a small part of the basin, then tried hopping out.
Within a matter of seconds, the beast began teetering at the edge of the Grand Prismatic Spring — the largest hot spring in the entire park — and then fell in.
“As hard as it tried, it couldn’t get out,” said Howard, who snapped pictures of the bison’s final moments.
Fortunately, the poor animal met its end “fairly quickly,” according to Michael Poland, the scientist-in-charge at Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
The animal was thrashing around so intensely that it moved into an even hotter area of the Grand Prismatic, thus dying faster.
Poland dispelled rumors that the water was acidic and that that’s what killed the animal, instead pointing to its intensely high temperatures.
The Grand Prismatic reaches temperatures of 192 degrees.
The boiling point at Yellowstone is about 200 degrees because of its high altitude.
“This bison carcass is basically sitting in a pool of nearly boiling water, and … that boiling water will eat away at the organic material, the tissues, and eventually there will just be some bone,” Poland explained.
It’s not uncommon for animals at Yellowstone to succumb to the park’s hot springs.
The park’s Lower Geyser — which reaches similar 197-degree temperatures — is informally known as Skeleton Pool because of the numerous animal carcasses that have been discovered at the site.
Animals such as bison typically walk along the edges of hot springs, but their weight can cause the thin crust around the pool to crack.
The bison’s tragic end came in the midst of Yellowstone’s busy tourist season, with Old Faithful among the favorite spots for visitors.
Two tourists were also gored by buffalo in separate incidents in the park in as many months, the most recent occurring near Old Faithful.
Both attacks occurred because the men came too close to the seemingly docile, but extremely dangerous animals. The men escaped with minor injuries.
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