Last week, we joined the world to celebrate International Museum Day under the theme Museums Uniting a Divided World.
We proudly posted our hometown island's museum with a majestic artwork of a three-ton carabao at its entrance. The water buffalo is the national mammal of the Philippines. The shockingly sad reality today is the carabao is slowly disappearing from our country's agricultural landscape.
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| BAO: the unbowed carabao at The Negros Museum |
A new exhibition at the Philippine National Museum of Natural History located in a niche at the landing on the fifth level is a family of carabaos from Nueva Ecija that was especially prepared by the museum’s taxidermists and scientists.
The country's most prominent national artists have featured the iconic carabao in their various artwork throughout our long and storied histories.
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| new carabao exhibition at the Philippine National Museum of Natural History |
Across the world, in April at the United States National Museum of Natural History’s new bronze bison statues were unveiled.
At the dedication ceremony, Dennis W. Zotigh, a member of the Kiowa, Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and Isanti Dakota groups and a cultural information assistant at the National Museum of the American Indian, performed a traditional buffalo dance song.
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| Smithsonian Institution - image by Phillip R. Lee |
The bison are iconic animals shaped North American landscapes for more than 100,000 years and anchored Indigenous lifeways for generations. Pushed to the brink of extinction in the 19th century, bison survived thanks to dedicated conservation efforts. Today, they stand strong as an enduring symbol of survival and resilience.
The relationship between Native communities and buffalo is a central theme of the National Museum of Natural History’s new exhibition “Bison: Standing Strong,” which opened on May 21.
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| “Bison: Standing Strong” exhibit |
Both great mammals in both cultures are of great significance to its peoples. wonder | wander | women relate closely to these powerful creatures as our spirit totems. Which is why it is of significant importance that we keep their presence and value alive and ensure that we remain well informed about their health and survival.
Carabaos or swamp buffaloes are large mammals of grey to dark grey color. Adult carabaos weigh from 400 to 500 kilos. They have horns that arc and curve backward, forming a large letter “C”.
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| paired carabao art deco sculptures, Bacolod City Lagoon Park |
Carabaos symbolize the Asian way of life and were introduced in the Philippines around 300 BC by Malay and Chinese settlers.
Bison have long captured the imagination of people the world over. In paintings, photographs, stories, and sculpture, this powerful animal represents wildness, resilience, and the spirit of the American West.
The historic books, images, and objects on view are drawn from the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ rich collection. Explore how people have imagined bison over time.
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| rare original $10 bill from 1901 |
From portrayals of bison by Native artists to influential publications that fueled the early conservation movement, this display invites you to explore how ideas about America’s national mammal have endured and changed over time.
In the rural areas, carabao are ay valuable component in agriculture. Their heavy build is well suited for the hard labor in the fields. They serve as “living tractors” that help farmers in plowing and harrowing muddy rice paddies and turning the hard packed soil preparing rows of planting fields.
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| Philippine Christmas stamps - #1777, #1827, #1830 |
Economically, carabaos are a major contributor to the Philippine agriculture. They also provide meat and dairy products, sustainable farming, and transportation in remote rural areas in the Philippines.
Their hide, blood, bones and horns are all usefully turned into various products - implements and tools that feed and sustain. Nothing is wasted and every part serves us well.
In some northern communities in the mountain regions of Luzon, they are part of festivals and feasts that validate the social status and prosperity. They feature in a variety of rituals of blessing or healing in many occasions or other rites of passage.
The animal's parts - head, tail, horns especially are displayed prominently as part of offerings to spirits, symbols of status and claims of achievement. Prized beasts can take around three years to train and cost as much as 80,000 pesos.
In some rural towns in the Philippine lowlands, a carabao festival is held during May to pay tribute to the patron saint of Filipino farmers, the hard-working beasts of burden and their patron saint, San Isidro.
Although they are well adapted to hot and humid weather, they are also vulnerable to thermal stress. To cool off and reduce heat, carabaos often dip in the river or wallow in the mud. They also coat their huge body with mud to protect them from both heat and insect assault.
Currently the swamp carabao (Bubalus bubalis carabanensis) and the riverine buffalo (Bubalus bubalis bubalis) are considered as subspecies of the domesticated buffalo (Bubalus bubalis linnaeus).
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| local carabao art |
In 2024, the Philippine Carabao Center along with the Institute of Biology of the College of Science of the University of the Philippines Diliman proposed to revive the 1860 species classification that recognizes the carabao or swamp buffalo as a distinct species from the riverine buffalo.
Environmental historian and Indigenous writer Rosalyn LaPier often encounters a common misconception when they collaborate with international colleagues.
“People from other parts of the world often think that Americans have all seen bison because they’re the national mammal, but many Americans still haven’t seen a bison outside of a zoo.” ~ Rosalyn LaPier, professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
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| where the buffalo roam, Yellowstone National Park |
This lack of familiarity with bison (which are commonly referred to as buffalo) would have been unimaginable to LaPier’s ancestors, whose entire existence revolved around buffalo. LaPier is a member of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana and Canada’s Métis people.
Both are Great Plains Native communities that revered buffalo and utilized the massive mammals for nearly every aspect of their daily lives including food, clothing and shelter.
“Bison: Standing Strong” inspires a new appreciation for the national mammal, whose iconic status often overshadows its ecological and cultural significance.
The exhibition features several items created by Native people, including a tool that Native women used to clean bison hides, a painted buffalo scapula that once relayed an important message on the plains and a toy buffalo fashioned in part from the animal’s woolly fur.
In recent years, Native communities across the Great Plains have attempted to fill this century-long gap by bringing herds of bison back onto their land. Returning the bison to the prairie is a long process and many herds are still carefully managed and fenced in. But the goal is for these bison to one day roam free like their ancestors, restoring patches of prairie as they graze and stomp about.
Unlike the bison, whatever freedom the Philippine carabao may have had if any at all is long lost in history. Let us hope their existence in our current times help sustain our local farmers and sustain better agriculture to preserve nature and our biodiversity. Humanity needs to be better at our stewardship.
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