A pest to ranchers, a prize to hunters, and a temperamental tank to anything that bothers it, African buffalo roam by the thousands in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cape buffalo, one of four distinct subspecies of the African buffalo, are the most common. They’re distinguished by coloring, size, and even horn shape. There’s also the forest buffalo, the West Africa savanna buffalo, and the Central Africa savanna buffalo.

When the buffalo aren’t fighting off the occasional lion, they’re eating grass—and lots of it. It forms the bulk of their diet. Like cows, buffalo chew cud to further extract nutrients.

Buffalo and bison aren’t the same animals. How the misnomer came to be is murky, but it’s thought early American settlers called bison