Tuesday, 31 May 2022

Two zebus with traits of the Indian aurochs

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A t first glance, zebus seem to be rather different from the aurochs. But there are certain traits found in many zebus that are very reminis...
Monday, 23 May 2022

Bos primigenius trochoceros?

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T he species of the aurochs,  Bos   primigenius , has many synonyms – last time I counted it was 8, counting only those that are based on wi...
2 comments:
Thursday, 19 May 2022

Genome editing for "breeding-back" the aurochs

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T raditional “breeding-back” takes a long time until satisfying results are achieved, also because cattle are a comparably slow-reproducing ...
3 comments:
Wednesday, 11 May 2022

The Vig bull and its horns

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T he Vig bull is one of the two almost complete aurochs skeletons from Zealand, Denmark. It's from the early Holocene and shows several ...
5 comments:
Friday, 29 April 2022

Video of a great Lidia bull

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R epeatedly I wrote on my blog that I consider the Spanish fighting bull (Lidia) the most aurochs-like or least-derived taurine cattle breed...
7 comments:
Monday, 11 April 2022

Bos primigenius or Bos taurus?

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T here is some confusion about which name is the proper scientific name for the aurochs, Bos primigenius or Bos taurus . In this post, I ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, 16 March 2022

The horns of the African aurochs and its evolutionary implications

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I did a post on the African aurochs,  Bos primigenius mauretanicus , a few years ago. The African aurochs is said to be morphologically ve...
Friday, 4 March 2022

Differences between the Quagga Project zebras and the quagga

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T he Quagga Project likes to call their zebras “Rau quagga”, after the founder of the project Reinhold Rau. That is why I made the post Plea...
7 comments:
Tuesday, 22 February 2022

A possible skull of Bos primigenius siciliae

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A while ago I did a post on the aurochs and insular dwarfism . On Sicily, the Sicilian dwarf aurochs, Bos primigenius siciliae , was found ...
1 comment:
Monday, 14 February 2022

Another study debunks the Konik myth

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U nfortunately, many still believe in the Konik myth . According to the narrative, the Konik allegedly descends from the last wild horses of...
13 comments:
Friday, 11 February 2022

The last aurochs were from Bulgaria, 18th century (!)

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T he year 1627 is commonly provided as the extinction date of the aurochs, when the last cow of the Jaktorow population died in Poland. A ho...
Tuesday, 1 February 2022

How the Heck brothers could have done their work better

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I n a post from 2015, I evaluated the “breeding-back” experiments executed by Heinz and Lutz Heck. I came to the conclusion that they made ...
Monday, 24 January 2022

The skull of a Lidia bull

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W e have no living specimen of aurochs to study and compare with aurochs-like cattle, and we tend to compare the living animal in flesh with...
8 comments:
Sunday, 16 January 2022

Does the "Augsburg aurochs" really show an aurochs?

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T he “Augsburg aurochs” made by Charles Hamilton Smith in 1826 is one of the most famous depictions of an aurochs. It is based on an oil pai...
5 comments:
Monday, 10 January 2022

The MAOA gene found to play a role in the aggressive behaviour of Lidia cattle

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T he monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA gene) produces the enzyme monoamine oxidase A, which has an important function in the endocrinological m...
5 comments:
Tuesday, 4 January 2022

Rare aurochs-like traits and the breeds that have them

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S ome aurochs traits are easy to achieve in “breeding-back”, others are not. For example, it is really easy to breed for a basic aurochs-lik...
2 comments:
Wednesday, 29 December 2021

Were European wild horses black or black dun?

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C oat colour is the only aspect of the life appearance of the Holocene European wild horse that can be determined with a high degree of cert...
18 comments:
Saturday, 25 December 2021

Taxonomy: how to classify domestic animals?

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B ack in the time of Linnaeus when modern taxonomy was started in 1758, some domestic animals were classified as the members of the species ...