Stampede

The animal behavior of stampeding was observed by cattle ranchers and cowboys in the American Wild West. Large herds of cattle would be managed across wide-open plains, with no fences to contain them. In these unbounded spaces, cattle were able to run freely, and sometimes the whole herd would take off in the same direction unexpectedly. Cowboys developed techniques to deal with this situation and calm the cattle, to stop the stampede and regain control of their herd. The term "stampede" came from the Mexican Spanish term estampida ('an uproar'). Cattle herds tended to be nervous, and any unusual occurrence, particularly a sudden or unexpected noise, could scare the cattle and kick off a stampede. Things such as a gunshot, a lightning strike, a clap of thunder, someone jumping off a horse, a horse shaking itself, or even a tumbleweed being blown into the herd have been known to cause stampedes. Animals who stampede, especially cattle, are less likely to do so after having eaten and watered, and if they are spread out in smaller groups to digest. Sometimes humans purposefully induce stampedes, such as some Native Americans who were reported to provoke American bison herds to stampede off a buffalo jump, harvesting the animals after they are killed or incapacitated by the fall. == Human stampedes and crushes ==

A human stampede, in the sense of a mass of people running in panic, can occur in large or dense crowds of people, typically when a large group of people all try to get away from a perceived danger. Human stampedes are rare, and the term "stampede" is often misapplied to phenomena such as crowd collapses and crushes, which are responsible for the majority of fatalities in crowd-related disasters. However, there has been little research conducted into what happens during a human stampede, or what exactly causes them to start. While media and popular culture depictions tend to exaggerate dangers associated with stampedes, and popular news reports of such instances often mention "panic", actual instances of mass panic are rare, and panic itself is rarely the cause of fatalities in such events. ==See also==