Yellowstone bison attacks jumped in 2015. Here's why

Monday, March 28, 2016, 12:50 PM - The friendly folks at the U.S. Centres for Disease Control would like to remind you: Stop taking close-up pictures with the bison at Yellowstone National Park.

According to the CDC, five people were injured in 2015 in the park by bison, which are the largest land-dwelling mammals in the Americas and are particularly dangerous during mating season. 

The number doesn't sound like a lot, but it's slightly more than all the injuries combined in the five years before 2015 (2010-2014), when the average was about 0.8 per year.

The injury spike is a bit of a step back to the 1980s, when 33 people were injured during 1983-1985. Park staff stepped up with an education campaign and new regulations to keep people from going within 23 m of bison in the park, and the results spoke for themselves (until 2015, anyway).

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Of the people who were injured: Four were tourists, one was an employee. Three were tossed into the air by bison, two were gored. Four had to be hospitalized, three needed helicopter transport, though no deaths were reported.

In the 2015 attacks, the CDC seems quite certain that cell phone cameras played a role, and noted that three of the injured people were taking photos from a way-too-close distance of 1-2 m from the bison. Two had their backs turned, and at least one was apparently taking a selfie.

Foolish tourists getting too close to take pictures isn't new, but the difference is that people have been getting closer to the bison in recent years. Before 2000, the CDC says 10 of 35 bison attacks involved photography, but the photographer was at least 10 m away in majority of those cases. 

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"The popularity of smart phone photography with its limited zoom capacity and social media sharing of selfies might explain why visitors disregard park regulations and approach wildlife more closely than when traditional camera technology was used," the CDC said in a report released this month. "Educating visitors about wildlife behavior and the need to maintain distances of 75–300 ft (23–91 m) from wildlife for safety of persons and wildlife is critical."

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SOURCE: CDC