The five luckiest bison in California, spared from the fate that awaits many bison in a hungry world, were getting used to their new digs in San Francisco on Tuesday.

They seemed to like their historic, 7-acre spread in Golden Gate Park and were learning the lay of the land, which included not brushing up against the electrified inner fence designed to keep them from getting too cozy with their equally excited human pals.

“They’re eating and they’re drinking and they’re checking each other out,” said bison keeper Elizabeth Kitazono. “It helps that they’re all females.”

Fortunately for all concerned, the five yearlings and the five other bison who already occupy the enclosure have been spared the nuisance of having males around, a situation known to alter dynamics among mammals, regardless of species.

The new bison, the first addition to the park herd since 2012, have been lying low since catching a truck from an undisclosed Northern California commercial bison ranch last week — along with catching the biggest break that a bison can catch. They were selected for the good life in San Francisco instead of qualifying to be the raw materials of what one ranch was billing on its recipe list as “grilled bison skewers” and “savory bison oven roasted meatballs.”

Kitazono, an animal keeper at the San Francisco Zoo, said the non-breeding bison herd was “low maintenance” compared with the rhinoceroses she also looks after at the zoo. Bison care falls under the auspices of the zoo, even though the bison enclosure is located in the park.

Cleaning up after the rhinos in their zoo enclosure, the keeper said, involves plenty of shovels and wheelbarrows. Their expansive pen on Kennedy Drive isn’t regularly shoveled, a policy Kitazono found no fault with.

Now Playing:

Being vegans, the bison should fit right in with their new town.

“One flake of hay per animal per day,” Kitazono said. “About a third of a bucket of grain. They do their own thing. That’s easy.”

The new arrivals weigh about 550 pounds each, about half their anticipated adult weight. They were purchased for the city through a gift from Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband, Richard Blum. The Democratic senator is not up for re-election in California until 2024, when the bison will be full grown. Buying bison runs deep in that particular family — in 1984, Blum donated other bison in his wife’s honor, too.

Bison have been in Golden Gate Park since 1892 and, given their lifespan of about 24 years, there has been a fair amount of turnover. The original bison was named Sarah Bernhardt, and later arrivals were known as William McKinley and Grover Cleveland — presidents who hardly ever get things named for them any longer.

More recent bison were named for Shakespearean characters and Native Americans. Two of the current crop answer to Bellatrix and Buttercup. Another “B” bison — a sweet critter named Brunhilda — died last year of kidney failure.

The five new arrivals and what keepers were calling the five “old ladies” will be separated by a fence for a month. If all goes well, they will come together as one big family just in time for the 150th anniversary of Golden Gate Park on April 4.

A bison is often called a buffalo by the uninformed. Bison, native to the United States, have bigger heads and humps on their backs. Buffalo, native to Asia and Africa, have bigger horns. A bison is the critter featured on the flip side of the old coin known as a buffalo nickel, back when a nickel was good for something.

The confusion is not going away any time soon. Zoo spokeswoman Nancy Chan said the two terms were “interchangeable” even though buffalo was a “misnomer.”

Meanwhile, on its website, Golden Gate Park has diplomatically, or slyly, taken to calling the animals “buffalo paddock bison.”

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF