sutton026

M ost of the external and morphological traits of the aurochs are well known to us thanks to numerous superb skeletal remains and also contemporaneous artworks and written sources. While the skeletal material is complete, well-preserved and numerous enough to give us a very precise picture of the aurochs’ morphology, its dimorphism in sex and also, to a certain degree, variation along time and region, artistic impressions and written accounts are sometimes not comprehensive or unambiguous enough to clear all open questions. Do not get me wrong, the picture of the aurochs we have is very precise. But there are some aspects that are questionable and still leave some room for speculation. In this post I give you overview over all those points that come to my mind. The length of the dewlap It is unquestionable that the aurochs had a dewlap of a certain size. Tropical bovines tend to have a large one (banteng, gaur, kouprey), more northern ones not so much (bison). Zebuine cattle have a lar...

W ith a major delay, I finally do my post on the horses in the Lippeaue reserve, Germany, today. I already covered them in my 2013 post , but on my trip in 2015 I gathered some more material, and the herds changed a bit as well. As it is the case in so many reserves for landscape conservation, horses and cattle share the area because they complement each other in their grazing activity and both are native species. I don't know the total number of horses in the Lippeaue, perhaps about 40 individuals but that is only a guess. The horse herd at Disselmersch consists of mostly pure Koniks, plus one Konik x Przewalski hybrid. The herd at Hellinghauser Mersch is, as far as I can see, completely mixed. They had a pure Konik stallion in the herd until at least 2013, but that one seems to be gone now. Now there are 50% Przewalski hybrids, 25% Przewalski and 75% Konik hybrids as much as a pure Przewalski mare. The 50-50 hybrids resemble a pure Przewalski rather close, except that the short ...

T he National Park Hortobagy, Hungary, is home to the largest Taurus cattle population. I did a post on this herd using information I got from from Claudia Zimmermann and István Sándor in March 2014, also with photos. Now, two years later, this post deserves a little update, so I contacted István Sándor again. I was provided with lots of photos and information, many thanks! All the photos are courtesy of István Sándor, so please do not replicate without permission. The herd numbers approximately 600 individuals today, a good part of them are calves (about 130 calves get born every year). The population is of course still heterogeneous, but they select strongly. Most frequent undesired traits are insufficient body size, horn curvature or thin horns, I was told. I'd expect colour to be variable as well.  After calving season, the bulls that are chosen for breeding are allowed to join the cows for mating (two or three bulls per season). They compete with each other for breeding rights...