Animals aren’t fleeing Yellowstone National Park in droves; the claims are baseless

TikTok users say scientists "can’t explain" why animals are fleeing Yellowstone National Park. It’s true they can’t explain it — because it’s not happening. 

Yellowstone National Park, mostly located in Wyoming, is home to hundreds of species of birds, fish and mammals such as bison, elks, grizzly bears and mountain lions. But these animals are not on the run, as TikTok users have said. 

A July 16 TikTok video says it shows multiple animals fleeing Yellowstone National Park.

"Now elk are leaving Yellowstone National Park in droves thousands and thousands of them they’re following the grizzly bears and the mountain lions that started leaving last week and it is baffling the scientific community. They can’t explain why all these animals like creature critters are fleeing Yellowstone National Park," the video’s narrator says before adding that "all of the elk are headed in the direction of Salt Lake City, Utah."

Other TikTok users posted similar videos, including in Spanish, claiming that Yellowstone’s supervolcano, known as the Yellowstone Caldera, might be about to erupt and the animals are sensing it. 

But a Yellowstone National Park spokesperson told PolitiFact the claim isn’t accurate.

"We are aware of the reports and videos circulating on social media and can say that wildlife is not leaving Yellowstone National Park in large numbers," Linda Veress, a Yellowstone National Park spokesperson, wrote via email. "There is no scientific evidence that wildlife can sense impending earthquakes and volcanic eruptions."

Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles, a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory for the U.S. Geological Survey’s website, also dismissed the claim and said that similar rumors have circulated in the past. 

For example, in 2014, a Yellowstone nonprofit organization employee posted a video of bison running along a road. The video was reposted saying the bison were running away from the park because of a possible volcanic eruption caused by an earthquake. That earthquake occurred two weeks after the original video was taken. Yellowstone National Park made a video debunking that claim.

Benjamin Van Doren, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign assistant professor who researches migratory animals, told PolitiFact on Aug. 6 that large mammal movement around the landscape is normal. 

"Large mammals like elk, bison, mountain lions, and bears move around the landscape in search of food resources, which change through the year, especially in the colder months," Van Doren said. "I am not aware of any evidence that these animals are currently moving in or out of Yellowstone in any unusual way."

Van Doren also told PolitiFact that although there are anecdotal reports of animals possibly sensing seismic activity, there’s no scientific evidence that animals can accurately predict seismic activity.

Where did the claim originate?

The earliest mention of the claim that we found was July 9, by a TikTok user who describes himself on his profile as an "animal expert" and "everything expert."  

The first video he posted was of mountain lions supposedly migrating from Yellowstone to Salt Lake City, Utah. But the clip he included isn't from Yellowstone. The video was taken in May by photographer Fernando Agustin at the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile’s Patagonia region. 

The same TikTok user posted another video July 13, saying Yellowstone’s grizzly bears were next on the move. But we found the original video had been posted Jan. 16 by a different TikTok user. The video was taken at a South Dakota tourist attraction known as Bear Country U.S.A, where people can drive through and see black bears and other animals in their natural habitats. 

After that, the TikTok user who had been repeatedly sharing videos and claims about Yellowstone posted two more TikToks, one July 14 of elk supposedly leaving Yellowstone National Park by the "thousands," and another July 15 of a bison "mass exodus." The TikTok user’s narration was copied on other videos sharing the claim. 

One of the clips in the July 14 post was taken in December 2024 in Estes Park in Colorado. And according to National Park News, a news site about national parks, the bison stampede shown in that July 15 post was taken at Yellowstone by a wildlife expert with Yellowstone Safari company, but the animals weren’t leaving the park.

The National Park Service also addressed the bogus claim in a humorous July 26 Facebook post.

"You may have seen videos or ‘herd’ online that the bison population in Yellowstone was leaving. That is false," wrote the National Park Service. "In conclusion, as Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘don’t believe everything you see on tiktok.’ Something like that."

The post also explained that bison congregate in herds and migrate between different areas of Yellowstone throughout the year, but they weren't exiting the park.

What do we know about the Yellowstone volcano?

Within the past 2 million years, some volcanic eruptions have occurred in the Yellowstone area, three of them super eruptions, which is a volcano capable of an eruption of more than 240 cubic miles of magma.

Scientists of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a consortium of nine state and federal agencies, monitor the areas throughout the region to detect sudden or strong earthquake activity, ground shifts and volcanic gasses that would indicate increasing volcanic activity.

The last Aug. 1 update on the USGS shows the volcano and says conditions are normal. NPS says that Yellowstone’s volcano could erupt over the next thousands to millions of years, but that it’s unlikely in the next few hundred years.

Our ruling

A TikTok post says elk, grizzly bears, bison and mountain lions are fleeing Yellowstone National Park to Salt Lake City.

A Yellowstone National Park spokesperson said the claim is inaccurate, and scientists from the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory said the same in a column. 

PolitiFact also found that the footage of animals supposedly fleeing was from other situations or taken out of context.

We rate this claim False.