sutton026

I n a previous post, I presented an aurochs reconstruction I did recently. I wrote that it matches 100% what I imagine a Holocene European aurochs to have looked like, and that there are obvious similarities to many Lidia bulls (Iberian fighting cattle). Of course there is the danger of a Pygmalion effect: I might draw my aurochs Lidia-like, because I consider Lidia aurochs-like. This cannot be ruled out completely. But I always try to follow the evidence and not to be guided by preconceptions when doing illustrations. In the post linked above, I explained why I drew the bull the way I did. Here is the illustration I am talking about: Actually, the fact that Lidia is one of the least derived cattle breeds left today did not just come to my mind because of that drawing, but was apparent to me right from the beginning when I started to become interested in the aurochs. I use to explain the looks of the aurochs to people as “much like a big, long-legged and large-horned Iberian fighting b...

T his title is surely a bit provocative – it is of course zoological consensus that the Asiatic Przewalski’s horse, Equus ferus przewalskii , is the last living genuine wild horse that is extant today after the last western wild horses disappeared. However, advocates of a number of horse breeds that they purport as living remnants of the European wild horse or at least being strongly influenced by original wild horses, sometimes put the status of the Przewalski’s horse as a genuine wild animal into question. They argue that decades of breeding in captivity and introgression from domestic horses has altered the nature of the Przewalski’s horse, and claim that the situation is comparable to what has happened to their favoured “wild” breed: an original wild population has been influenced by domestic horses and artificial selection. As a consequence, they argue that if the Przewalski’s horse still deserves status as a genuine wild horse, which is zoological consensus, then so does their br...