sutton026

M ammoth DNA made it into the news again. Until recently, the genome of Mammuthus primigenius was not completely resolved yet, but now it is - not only of one individual, but actually two. These two individuals, both males and from Siberia, lived about 40.000 years apart from each other. The older one is from approx. 44,800 years ago, late Pleistocene, and the other one 4,300 years ago. The younger one lived on Wrangel Island, the last refuge of the Woolly Mammoth, back the time when the ancient Egyptians built their pyramids (which is a fascinating thought to me).  The study, published by Palkopoulou et al.[1] in Current Biology , revealed interesting but not surprising facts. The population of the Eurasian woolly mammoth went through a considerable bottleneck during the middle Pleistocene, which is consistent with the fact that their habitat had shrunken dramatically back this time due to the interglacial climate [2]. The same happened at the early Holocene of course, but still ...

I have been asked by several people if crossbreeding with existing, extant wild cattle is a good idea for creating a bovine that resembles the aurochs and is suited to live in Europe’s wilderness. I have been wondering that myself already, and indeed it is tempting. As so many aspects in “breeding-back”, rewilding or “de-extinction”, this question is subjective. But I am going to try to list some of the pro’s and con’s and draw my personal conclusion. The thoughts behind this idea are that domestic cattle have lost certain wild animal traits, what they undoubtedly did, and that wild bovines could bring them in, otherwise the cattle would have to redevelop them by dedomestication. And apart from that, they would be able to contribute morphological and external traits resembling the aurochs at least as good as primitive domestic cattle could, or even better. For example, Java banteng have a strong, well-marked sexual dimorphism and the tone of their coat colour is re...

T he Lippeaue, which is the centre of Taurus cattle breeding in Germany  probably has the best animals of this breed. I covered them in a lot of other posts already ( see here , for example). Now, a worker of the ABU has published some more videos of their cattle and I hope you enjoy them. This video shows a small group of cows and their offspring crossing a stream. They are just as elegant as good Limia or Pajuna, their colour is alright and also the head shape. I really like what I see. Just the horns should be better, perhaps this is going to change when the genes of the recently purchased Wörth cow will be spread through the population. The grey one is, of course, a pure Chianina. This cow is 65% Chianina and one of their largest animals - I think her size is really impressing, and also her horns - albeit small - grew well. That's a (Heck x Chianina) x Sayaguesa bull. Although its body shape could be better, he looks elegant and its size seems to be good as well. I am looking f...

H orns are probably the most wonderful body part of a bovine. Each species has characteristic horns, and so had the aurochs. An aurochs look-alike would not be complete if its horns would not resemble their wild ancestors. In order to breed cattle with authentic aurochs-like horns, one has to know what they looked like*. This is not problematic, since there are dozens of well-preserved aurochs skulls with complete or nearly complete horns. But beware that bony horn cores actually do not represent the actual size and shape of the horn because the keratinous sheath is missing. That’s why I did a lot of sketches done by tracking out the original skulls and adding the keratinous sheath. The sheath continues the spiral-like curve of the bony core and adds about 8% in diameter and 10-20% in length. Recently I did 22 reconstructions of aurochs horns based on photos of skull material that I am going to present here. * For a detailed description of what the horns of this species were li...

G eer vanne Smeed from weertnatuur.blogspot.com has allowed me to post some of his recent photos of Tauros cattle at Siendonk and Vosseven, Netherlands. I am going to share them with you and try to figure out the identity of the animals shown. All the photos shown here are copyright of G. v. Smeed and used with permission.  Luueke/Vosseven:   This photo is from Janurary and either shows a Sayaguesa ( UPDATE: There are no pure Sayaguesa in that herd. ) or a Sayaguesa x Tudanca cow. That herd was covered by a Limia bull, what means that the young cow at the left of the photo below is a (Sayaguesa x Tudanca) x Limia cow:  And has it seems, the Limia bull has now been removed and replaced by the young Maronesa bull from Keent:  That bull looks a lot better than the one from Loozerhei de. The proportions of this bull are going to change for several years, but it appears that it relationship between leg length and trunk length will be alright. If that bull is able to...

I t’s not uncommon that web or field research unearths some surprisingly aurochs-like or, in terms of dedomestication, spectacular breeds. But these news struck me the most. Hold on your horns. It seems that aurochs enthusiasts involved in some rewilding projects have, looking for primitive landraces in Poland, discovered a really remarkable population of cattle. Farmer Julius Woźniak from Łódź is the owner of a herd of about 20 cattle that show significant similarity to the aurochs: they are comparably large (bulls reach about 165cm at the shoulders, so they are about the size of Sayaguesa or a little larger), the horns are nearly completely aurochs-like just slightly thinner and rarely some deviant shapes show up, and the colour is perfectly aurochs-like – bulls are black with an eel stripe, light muzzle ring and dark, prominent forelocks. Cows are of a reddish-brown colour with darker shades just like in some Maronesa and Heck cows. Occasionally there are black cows, just lik...