[8] Claudius Aelianus, writing in the late 2nd or early 3rd centuries AD, also referred to the species as βόνασος, and both Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Gaius Julius Solinus used Latin: bĭson and bonāsus.

The marginalia of the King James Version gives "bison" as a gloss for the Biblical animal called the "pygarg" mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy.

[7] Randle Cotgrave's 1611 French–English dictionary notes that French: bison was already in use, and it may have influenced the adoption of the word into English, or alternatively it may have been borrowed direct from Latin.

[7] John Minsheu's 1617 lexicon, Ductor in linguas, gives a definition for Bíson (Early Modern English: "a wilde oxe, great eied, broad-faced, that will neuer be tamed").

[10][11] The Polish żubr is similar to the word for the European bison in other modern Slavic languages, such as Upper Sorbian: žubr and Russian: зубр.

The noun for the European bison in all living Slavonic tongues is thought to be derived from Proto-Slavic: *zǫbrъ ~ *izǫbrъ, which itself possibly comes from Proto-Indo-European: *ǵómbʰ- for tooth, horn or peg.

The European bison makes a variety of vocalisations depending on its mood and behaviour, but when anxious, it emits a growl-like sound, known in Polish as chruczenie ([xrutʂɛɲɛ]).

Bb1 has been found across Europe spanning from France (with a sedimentary ancient DNA record data from the lower archaeological stratigraphic sequence of El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain).

[37] The last references (Oppian, Claudius Aelianus) to the animal in the transitional Mediterranean/Continental biogeographical region in the Balkans in the area of modern borderline between Greece, North Macedonia and Bulgaria date to the 3rd century AD.

In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, at first European bison in the Białowieża Forest were legally the property of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and later belonged to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.

[45] In the early 19th century, after the partitions of the Polish Commonwealth, the Russian tsars retained old Polish-Lithuanian laws protecting the European bison herd in Białowieża.

[48] During World War I, occupying German troops killed 600 of the European bison in the Białowieża Forest for sport, meat, hides and horns.

The first chairman was Kurt Priemel, director of the Frankfurt Zoo, and among the members were experts like Hermann Pohle, Max Hilzheimer and Julius Riemer.

[50] Heck promised his powerful supporter in writing: "Since surplus bulls will soon be set, the hunting of the Wisent will be possible again in the foreseeable future".

Priemel was then banned from publishing in relation to bison breeding, and the regular bookkeeper of the International Society, Erna Mohr, was forced to hand over the official register in 1937.

[54] Over the following decades, thanks to Polish and international efforts, the Białowieża Forest regained its position as the location with the world's largest population of European bison, including those in the wild.

A 2003 study of mitochondrial DNA indicated four distinct maternal lineages in the subtribe Bovina: Y chromosome analysis associated wisent and American bison.

[61] An earlier study, using amplified fragment-length polymorphism fingerprinting, showed a close association of wisent and American bison and probably with yak.

But they agree that limited gene flow from Bos primigenius taurus could account for the affiliation between wisent and cattle nuclear genomes (in contrast to mitochondrial ones).

[43] Bison social structure has been described by specialists as a matriarchy, as it is the cows of the herd that lead it, and decide where the entire group moves to graze.

[66] Although larger and heavier than the females, the oldest and most powerful male bulls are usually satellites that hang around the edges of the herd to protect the group.

European bison feed predominantly on grasses, although they also browse on shoots and leaves; in summer, an adult male can consume 32 kg of food in a day.

[71] European bison in the Białowieża Forest in Poland have traditionally been fed hay in the winter for centuries, and large herds may gather around this diet supplement.

[83][84] Free-ranging herds are currently found in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Slovakia,[85] Latvia, Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan, Germany,[86][87] and in forest preserves in the Western Caucasus.

[88] Herds have also been introduced in Moldova (2005),[89] Spain (2010),[90] Denmark (2012),[91] the Czech Republic (2014),[92] and Portugal (2024)[60] Reintroduction of bison to a 52 square km grasslands area in the Țarcu Mountains of Romania in 2014 was found to have resulted in an additional 54,000 tons of carbon draw-down annually.

[32][83][95] The herd of 3 females, with plans to also release a male in the following months, was set free in July 2022 within a 2,500-acre (10 square km) conservation area in West Blean and Thornden Woods, near Canterbury.

[96][97][98] Unknown to the rangers, one of the females was pregnant and gave birth to a calf in October 2022, marking the first wild bison born in the UK for the first time in millennia.

[44] The north-easternmost population lives in Pleistocene Park south of Chersky in Siberia, a project to recreate the steppe ecosystem which began to be altered 10,000 years ago.

[153][152] Mikołaj Hussowczyk, a poet writing in Latin about the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the early 16th century, described the bison in a historically significant fictional work from 1523.

[5] Due to this and the fact that half of the worldwide European bison population can be found spread across these two countries,[6] the wisent is still featured prominently in the heraldry of these neighbouring states (especially in the overlapping region of Eastern Poland and Western Belarus).