WASHINGTON — The queen of the Plains has a gooey tongue that feels coarse and muscular when she grabs a biscuit from your fingers.
She has spindly legs beneath her 500-pound bulk that belie her ability to run faster than a horse. She also can swim and use her head as a snowplow. And she has an efficient, four-part stomach for thorough digestion.
The female American bison, newly arrived at the Smithsonian National Zoo, also has the dark face, beard and short horns that have made her a symbol of the vastness, and at one time the folly, of the country.
A giant panda with a popsicle she is not.
On Saturday, as part of its yearlong 125th anniversary celebration, the zoo plans to debut its two new female bison — the first the zoo has had on exhibit in more than a decade and the animal on which the zoo was founded in the 1880s.