How to improve the bodily morphology of "breeding-back" cattle?

I think that all of the current “breeding-back” projects and breeds are progressing very nicely. It is always exciting for me to see how well they are doing. However, one important point on the “aurochs checklist” seems nearly unreachable: a truly aurochs-like bodily morphology.

 

With this I am referring to everything concerning the body of the animal: skeletal proportions, musculature, intestinum size, athletic appearance. All “breeding-back” cattle so far do not quite fit concerning proportions and do not really have the body of a wild bovine. Why is that?

The explanation might be that this is generally the case in (taurine) cattle. Look at Sayaguesa – they are one of the best-suited breeds for “breeding-back”, yet even they have a somewhat domestic morphology. Lidia might be the only exception, at least concerning the less-derived herds (there are also some rather massive Lidia bulls), but that breed is highly problematic to handle due to their aggressiveness. And interestingly, the Lidia crosses I have seen so far are not nearly as athletic as Lidia themselves and it has not been possible yet to conserve the Lidia-morphology in the crossbreeding process.

 

In order to achieve a truly aurochs-like morphology (that is, a slender waist, a well-developed front with a large hump, a comparably small intestinum and long legs on a trunk that is only slightly longer than the shoulder is high, plus a large head), I see the following possibilities:

 

1. Using dedomestication for the cattle to re-develop the morphology of a wild bovine

 

Dedomestication has the potential to change the morphology of “breeding-back” cattle, as has been demonstrated in Heck cattle at Oostvaardersplassen. Just look at that lightly coloured bull at 0:33 here. Its morphology is very aurochs-like, perhaps one of the most aurochs-like morphologies I have seen so far in a taurine bull. Since the ancestral Heck population was way more domestic in morphology, it can be assumed that natural selection at least played a role in this change in morphology in single individuals. However, it took more than 30 years for such a morphology to appear, and only in a single individual (at least judging from what I have seen so far). That means that we would have to wait for a quite long time until “breeding-back” cattle in the wild have the morphology that makes them best-adapted for a life in the wild, namely that of the aurochs.

 

2. Crossing in a suitable breed

 

Crossing in a suitable breed might work faster. However, which breed should be used for that? Lidia do sometimes have a very wild-like body shape and musculature but not the proportions, as their legs are usually notably shorter. Some zebu breeds, such as Deoni, have a remarkably short trunk with long legs. There are Criollo cattle bred from crossing Lidia with zebu in Colombia, which mostly look like Lidia but with zebu proportions, and those cattle would be very useful for “breeding-back”. It would be nearly impossible to get them to Europe alive because of legal restrictions, but perhaps semen could be imported. But there is still the aggression issue.

Looking at European breeds, Pajuna and Camargue stick out because of their deer-like elegance, but their proportions are not always reliably aurochs-like and they are quite small breeds too. Crossing in such small breeds could revert the breeding work of the last three decades to get “breeding-back” cattle large.

 

3. Hybridization with wild bovines

 

Hybridization with wild bovines of different species is surely a polarizing issue. Some are categorically against it, others consider it the only option to get “breeding-back” cattle fit for nature. My stance has shifted from considering it a no-go to something that should be considered an option, at least in an experimental herd.

In particular, I am thinking of Java banteng and wild yaks. The former have the short trunk with a slender waist and high hump, the latter have a high hump too and both are useful for several other aspects (f.e. their body size, the colour dimorphism of the Java banteng, the horns of the wild yak). And they have the body shape of wild bovines because they are wild bovines. Small doses of hybridization followed by wise and strict selection with a large number of animals could result in something that is more aurochs-like than anything we ever imagined.

But of course I am aware of the controversy that could arise from using a different species for the breeding. However, after eight generations of backcrossing with taurine “breeding-back” cattle, the influence from those species would be – genealogically – be a mere 0,3% percent. Which would be virtually nil except for those traits that we want the cattle to preserve.

 

Which of these options do I prefer? It would be a mix of 2 and 3. Zebu have been found to share aurochs genes with the European aurochs which taurine cattle have not, so having them in the mix is legitimate (however, we do not have yet the capacities to check if the crosses actually have those aurochs alleles that would be inherited by zebu). And Java banteng and wild yak would speed up the breeding process considerably. I think using those three (Java banteng, wild yak and suitable zebu) is the only option to achieve a bovine that is actually indistinguishable from the aurochs in almost any respect. And that is the best we can have until one of the de-extinction organizations give the aurochs a try using gene editing.

 

New photos of Dominator from this summer

Sorry for my long absence on this blog during the last couple of months. It has been because I am very busy with finishing the last illustrations for my upcoming book on "breeding-back" and I am very happy the results so far. The book is currently in its finishing phase and might get published within a few months. It will be worth the wait - I am very confident that you will love it. It will contain some new studies, never before published photos of "breeding-back" cattle and a lot of (I hope) lifelike illustrations. I'm putting my heartblood in it and the process is great fun. 

For today, I have some new photos of the Taurus cattle bull Dominator for you. As many of you will know, Dominator is the breeding bull at Kleiberg, part of the Lippeaue population. He is the son of Laniel and a Sayaguesa cow. Laniel was half Sayaguesa and half Laokoon's Brother, who himself was half Sayaguesa and half Heck x Chianina. Therefore, Dominator is mostly Sayaguesa with a bit of Heck and Chianina. 

I was sent the photos by Yannick Weinand and they are courtesy of Stephan Krümpelmann, who kindly allowed me to use the photos for the blog. Here they are: 

As you can see, Dominator's horns are superb. They curve inwards and if they continue to grow they might develop a perfect primigenius spiral. The angle between snout and horns is rather narrow, but within the range found in European aurochs (see f.e. the skull fragment from Eich bei Worms, Germany).

I also like the cow on the lower photo very much. She has the beautiful name Kleopatra and is a daughter of Linnet and Kalidris, the latter is a daughter of Laokoon and Bionade. Those are very good ancestors and her appearance is great as well. She has a somewhat Lidia-like look, although she has no Lidia in her ancestry. Both her parents are crossbred themselves, which is good because it is way more difficult to get a good individual from two crossbred parents due to inheritance. 

 

Looking at these animals, I am very optimistic for the future development of the Lippeaue population and "breeding-back" in general. Big thanks to Stephan Krümpelmann for allowing me to post the photos.  You can check out his Instagram channel Auerochsen Fahrendahl to see photos of his amazing cattle.

Auerrind project update

Claus Kropp from the Auerrind project posted an update to the project today, with lots of beautiful photos of their very promising and beautiful cattle. I love seeing how the project is progressing that fast, it shows that the choice of breeds and individuals to breed with is on point.

Is Sayaguesa the ultimate "breeding-back" breed?

Sayaguesa is used in all three major “breeding-back” projects (Taurus cattle, Tauros cattle and Auerrind cattle) and the influence of the breed in the Lippeaue for example is over 50% on average. Sayaguesa is used that commonly because it simply produced qualitative results from the “breeding-back” perspective. Can we even go so far to say that it is the ultimate “breeding-back” breed? Let’s analyse this.

At first I go over the positive traits of this beautiful breed and what makes them valuable for “breeding-back”, then I have a look at the downsides of Sayaguesa and form a conclusion.

 

The useful traits of Sayaguesa are:

 

-) Sayaguesa can grow very large

 

Some Sayaguesa bulls reach 170 cm at withers height. Dona-Urraca, the Sayaguesa cow that produced a lot of great individuals in the Lippeaue, was very large as well. I stood next to her in 2013 and she must have at least 155 cm tall, probably larger. Sayaguesa is a large breed in general, only slightly smaller than the average of Chianina. Considering that many other very aurochs-like breeds, like Pajuna, Maronesa or Lidia, are on the smaller side, that is very valuable.

 

-) Sayaguesa have an aurochs-like morphology

 

Sayaguesa have a great morphology, with a very large hump and long legs. I have not yet seen a complete Sayaguesa skeleton, but I suspect the processus spinosi are as tall as in the aurochs in many individuals. That’s a not very common trait even among less-derived breeds.

 

-) The horn curvature is useful to very useful in many individuals

 

It is true that many Sayaguesa cows have the horn tips curving outwards, but only after a clear inwards-curve and the horns always face forwards. While the lateral horn orientation is not rarely too low in the breed, some have a perfect primigenius spiral. This is rare in most breeds, and therefore again very valuable.

 

-) They have no domestic colour dilution alleles

 

The “colour genes” of Sayaguesa must be identical to that of the aurochs, as they have no apparent domestic mutations like roan, melanism, erythrism, colour dilutions et cetera. An exception are individuals that have white spots. The dimorphism is something I regard as a different story, because it likely has a different genetic make-up rather than simple “colour genes”.

 

-) They have an elongate skull

 

Sayaguesa have a very aurochs-like skull. In the Lippeaue I once saw the skull of a Sayaguesa cow and it looked virtually identical to that of the Sassenberg cow. The skull is elongate, the snout straight or slightly concave and the orbital bosses well-developed (in the cows, the difference between wild and domestic are more recognizable in the bulls in this trait).

 

Now let’s look at the downsides:

 

-) The sexual dichromatism is almost completely absent

 

Sayaguesa cows are basically bull-coloured with a brownish tint, or very dark brown. That means that the sexual dichromatism is almost completely absent or very reduced. Some Alistana-Sanabresa-influenced Sayaguesa cows have the “right” colour in being reddish brown, but bulls from the same herds may have a saddle.

 

-) The horns are not very large

 

Most Spanish breeds do not have large or huge horns, and Sayaguesa is no exception. While the horns would probably fit Holocene aurochs specimen such as the Himmelev or Prejlerup aurochs in volume, they certainly need more size to match aurochs that had not been influenced by human influences such as hunting and hybridization with cattle.

 

So we see that Sayaguesa has way more positive than negative traits in terms of usefulness for “breeding-back”, and its positive traits are often are very valuable because they are rare among aurochs-like breeds. There are some more negative traits such as a long dewlap or the enlarged intestinum, but including them here would not be useful as these traits also apply to 90% of taurine breeds or more.

My conclusion therefore is: Yes, I think Sayaguesa is currently the most useful breed to be used in “breeding-back” that is not the result of a “breeding-back” project itself. And all current projects rely on this breed to a large extent, which is very positive. The results also speak for themselves – Sayaguesa is a great breed for “breeding-back”.

 

And because it is always fun to dream about more breeding projects, here my idea for a Sayaguesa-project that tries to breed out the few negative traits of Sayaguesa and at the same time keeping the number of new undesired traits as low as possible:

 

First two to four generations: ((Sayaguesa x Watussi) F2 x Sayaguesa) F2

 

Sayaguesa x Maronesa F2

 

Sayaguesa x Lidia F2

 

Sayaguesa x Chianina F2

 

Sixth generation:

 

(Sayaguesa-Watussi crosses x Sayaguesa-Maronesa crosses) x F2

 

(Sayaguesa-Lidia crosses x Sayaguesa-Chianina crosses) x F2

 

Eights generation:

 

Both lineages combined and an F2 from that.

 

What is your favourite "breeding-back" project/breed/lineage/herd?

I have several posts in preparation at the moment, but for today, I want to ask my readers a question. Which one is your favourite "breeding-back" project, or breed, lineage or herd, and why? 

I personally can't decide because there is so much wonderful potential in all of the herds, each time in a different way. 

Let me know what your favourites are in the comments!

I have a Facebook page now

I did not post much here recently (mostly because I am busy finishing my book on "breeding-back"), but I have a lot of posts in preparation. Meanwhile, you can take a look at my new facebook page "Daniel Foidl Paleoart and Breeding-back". I post most of my recent (and also older) artworks there, mostly dinosaur-related but I will also upload aurochs-related artworks and maybe also other content to the page. I'm looking forward to see you there, thanks!

Let's appreciate Heck cattle for a moment

Heck cattle usually receives a lot of negative PR, so I felt motivated to write a blog post on what is positive about this breed in “breeding-back”. So let’s take the “the glass is half-full” approach today and appreciate what is useful about this breed in the endeavour of ecologically replacing the aurochs.

 

-) The very dense, insulating and efficient winter coat

 

Heck cattle are very well-suited for the climate of Central and Northern Europe and grow a very dense, shaggy and insulating winter coat. This is not exclusive to Heck cattle, but this trait makes them very useful for an ecologic replacement of the extinct aurochs.

 

-) Some herds have a virtually perfectly aurochs-like colour

 

Herds such as the Hellabrunn herd in Munich, or the Neanderthal lineage, is virtually or completely devoid of mutated colour alleles and also has a well-marked colour dimorphism (with exceptions). Among aurochs-like breeds in general, only Maronesa and the old lineage of Corsicana have a colour that is always identical to that of the aurochs. Pajuna and a number of other breeds might be as good as the good Heck herds in this respect.

 

-) Descending from robust and hardy breeds, they are well-suited for their ecological job

 

This is not exclusive to Heck cattle, obviously, but they are robust and hardy and thrive well in Central and Northern Europe, and they probably would do so in Southern Europe as well. This makes it one of many breeds that are useful for restoring the ecological function of Bos primigenius/taurus in the wild.

 

-) Some lineages have very large horns of a useful curvature

 

Most aurochs-like breeds lack an aurochs-like horn volume. This is also true of many Heck cattle, but there is a growing number of Heck cattle that have a truly impressive horn volume. There is the Neanderthal lineage, the Bayerischer Wald lineage and of course those of the Steinberg/Wörth lineage. There are also single individuals in other herds that have a monstrous horn volume. The fact that there are Heck cattle with very large and thick horns is great for “breeding-back”, because you get the same benefit as from crossing-in Watussi without the indicine influence on morphology and winter coat.

Also, the curvature of the horns of those Heck cattle lineages is usually more useful than in Watussi or Texas Longhorn (the latter would have to be imported, which would be even more effortful).

 

-) Heck cattle are easily available

 

While most less-derived breeds are endangered, the most aurochs-like lineages even highly endangered, Heck cattle are comparably numerous and widespread among European countries.

 

-) Their behaviour is mostly unproblematic

 

Despite what is claimed in tabloids based on a single incident, Heck cattle are mostly easy to handle. They are not overly nervous or aggressive even when being confined, with a few exceptions, and are nowhere nearly as problematic in behaviour as Spanish fighting cattle for example. Again, this is not exclusive to Heck cattle but it is good that they are mostly easy to handle.

 

So all in all I think that Heck cattle is a useful breed for “breeding-back”, single individuals or herds even very useful. But of course the breed also has some deficiencies, like any breed, that would need to be fixed if the breed aims to be a perfect morphological copy of the aurochs. Many breeders like the specific Heck cattle phenotype and I can understand that; I think that crossing in some good Maronesa would complement Heck cattle very well in terms of horn shape without altering their typical morphology/appearance too much. As for much larger, more elegant animals, we have Taurus cattle due to the crossing with Chianina and Sayaguesa. What is also positive is that Heck and Taurus are not closed gene pools but there is continuous gene flow from Taurus into Heck, so that the breed is slowly but steadily getting larger and more aurochs-like.

Event at the Neanderthal museum, Germany, with Darren Naish and me

I was invited by Tobias Möser from the Sequoia Verlag in Germany to hold a presentation on the "breeding-back" of the aurochs at an event at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany on October 12th this year. The main presentation will be held by Darren Naish, from the famous blog Tetrapod Zoology.

 

Details and tickets are available here: Sequoia Verlag

I own an aurochs horn now: what it tells us

Recently I purchased an aurochs horn from most likely or at least the 15^th century. It is not only the only one in private hands known, but also the largest aurochs horn sheath known and beautifully preserved. It is from a private collection and was inherited by Daniel Vanackere who gave me the opportunity to purchase it. His family owned the horn for centuries in Rotterdam. Very, very big thanks to Daniel Vanackere to give me the opportunity to acquire the horn! 

 

Here it is:

It measures 134 cm at the outer bow, 13,5 cm at the anteroposterior diametre, 11 cm in dorsoventral diametre and 41 cm in circumference at the base. The beauty of this horn is that it is almost completely unmodified, just one or two centimetres at the base seem to have been cut off and there is an attachment for what might have been a belt that was attached onto the horn in the 15^th century. Most putative aurochs horn sheaths that we see are sanded down and polished, and the tip is often cut off (see here for example). My horn is completely the way it was on the living bull, except for a slight discolouration on the surface as it is 500 years old. But one can still recognize where the blackish tip starts and where the yellowish part of the horn was. 

 

I think it is highly likely that it is from a pure, mature male aurochs. I think so because of the curvature (yes, the tip curves outwards but read on), the dorsoventrally compressed horn base (a trait very expressed in Pleistocene aurochs, less so in Holocene aurochs and not in most domestic cattle), the size, the thick base and the very slim tip (a contrast less expressed in domestic cattle) and the keel on the ventral side of the horn (a keel on the horn is a very ancient trait in aurochs, most common in the Indian aurochs and some zebu). 

Concerning the curvature, we should consider that of most aurochs horns only the bony cores are preserved while sheaths that definitely are from pure aurochs are very rare. I wanted to know what the bony core of the horn would have looked like and so I made a “cast” of partly plaster, wire and tissue paper, and this is the result: 

As we can see, the bony core has a perfect aurochs shape and with 70 cm it also fits in dimensions. It is just that the horn tip does not follow the curvature of the bony core, but makes a turn and curves outwards-forwards. I have been puzzling about that. I assumed that maybe there was much more variability in the shape of the horn sheath than the bony cores suggest. My first thought to that assumption was: but the depictions of aurochs all show inwards-curving horns. But then thought further and it came to my mind that there are actually quite a few aurochs depictions with lyre-shaped horns. For example, this one from a chalcography from 1596, showing an aurochs hunt in Bavaria: 

Scan from Walter Frisch's Der Auerochs, original photo by Museum Karlsruhe

Or the famous depiction in Siegismund von Herberstein’s book showing his aurochs taxidermy:

It is usually assumed that the horns in this depiction were simply invented by the artist and that they were lacking in the taxidermy. However, it shows the wavy surface of my horn and the shape is compatible as well. 

 

And then there would be the depiction of the African aurochs in Beierkuhnlein 2015 [1]. 

 

In the past, I did not put much emphasis on the depicted lyre-shape of the horns, assuming that the artists did not pay much attention to the actual horn shape or that they invented the horns, or did not see life aurochs in real et cetera. But looking at my horn, I see that differently now. I have no idea how common such an outwards-curving tip in the aurochs was, it could have been 1%, 10%, 80% of bulls, everything is possible. 

 

How does the horn fit with other preserved aurochs horn sheaths? First of all, it is its incredible size that sticks out. Medieval aurochs horns usually are not nearly as large as those of earlier ages, particularly the Pleistocene. But this one is. Also, late aurochs had a quite round horn base, much more like domestic cattle than earlier aurochs. But mine has a dorsoventrally compressed horn base, as a Pleistocene aurochs would. Also it has the keel on the ventral side which I haven’t seen in any other putative aurochs horn sheath yet. So morphologically, my horn fits much older aurochs better than other aurochs horn sheaths from the medieval times onwards. How can that be interpreted? I see several possibilities: a) the sample size (some dozens of sheaths) is too small to correctly determine the variability of very late aurochs horns, b) my horn is much older than the 15^th century c) the other putative aurochs horn sheaths are from aurochs that were hybrids with domestic cattle and my horn is one of the very few, or perhaps the only one, preserved that is from an aurochs free or almost free of domestic influence. 

I tend to favour explanation c. The sample size is not that small, I have seen at least 20 sheaths so far. And all of them are rather small by aurochs standards, except for my horn. Explanation b would require that the horn somehow survived that well preserved a very long time, which makes it unlikely that it was found in turf, permafrost or soil as it would now be discoloured which it is not. The only scenario I can think of is that the horn has been in human hands since, for example, the Roman times and got passed on by generation to generation. But I don’t know if that scenario is plausible. 

But there is considerable reason to assume that many very late aurochs populations were actually hybrids with domestic cattle. Hybridization in both directions between cattle and aurochs has been found on the Iberian Peninsula [2]. A study examined 7 putative aurochs horn sheaths genetically, and it was found that 3 of them have domestic cattle mitochondria, including the horn of the last bull from Jaktorow from 1620 (which is only 46 cm long and very weakly curved, with the base and the tip being almost equally thick) [3]. That the other ones have the P haplotype does not rule out introgression from cattle as some cattle have that haplotype and it does not tell us anything about the nuclear genome. 

 

I assume the horn belonged to a bull because of the thick horn base and the size of the sheath. It could be that it was an old mature bull, since horns continue to grow until death and the tip is very long (it makes up 48% of the length of the horn). Old bulls are solitary and do not fight for mating rights anymore, so they could effort to have that long and thin horn tips. I estimate the bull was 15 to 20 years old at time of death. I would like to know the story of that bull, and the precise locality where it died.  

This is what the set of horns might have looked like on the living animal: 

This of course makes me wonder how large the bull was. I tried to calculate the withers height of the bull using photos of two very large-horned specimens, the Etival and the Sassenberg bull. I calculated the relative size of the horn diametre at the base to the withers height and multiplicated it with the diametre of my horn. The result was 190 cm. Considering that I used skeletons as a reference that would have been surrounded by soft tissue in the living animal, the bull might have been between 195 and 200 cm tall at the withers in life. 

 

 

I am sure some of you will be familiar with the curvature of the horn. Many Maronesa cows, some Sayaguesa cows and also many Tudanca (in this breed also the bulls) have a horn curvature that is very similar to that one. I used to think that these outwards-forwards curving horn tips are a domestic mutation, but my horn changed my perspective on that. It seems possible that this is part of the variation of the aurochs, and has been preserved in breeds such as Maronesa and Tudanca. 

 

I think this underlines the preciousness of Maronesa. It is the only breed still in existence that I know of that has a colour that 100% matches that of the European aurochs, with a well-marked sexual dichromatism. It is also one of the very few breeds that has strongly inwards-curving horns and it seems that the corkscrew-like curvature seen in many cows is part of the natural variability of the aurochs. A Maronesa-Tudanca lineage could maybe reproduce the curvature of my horn precisely. 

 

Literature 

 

[1] Beierkuhnlein, 2015: Bos primigenius in ancient Egyptian art. 

[2] Günther et al.: The genomic legacy of Human management and sex-biased aurochs hybridization in Iberian cattle. 2023 (preprint). 

[3] Bro-Jorgensen et al., 2018: Ancient DANN analysis of Scandinavian medieval drinking horns and the horn of the last aurochs bull. 

 

 

 

Awesome photos of awesome Tauros cattle

I am always excited when I see new photos of Tauros cattle, because I have not yet had the opportunity to visit any of the herds of the project. Bert van Beek has lots of great photos of very interesting Tauros cattle on his Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/bertvanbeekphotography/

 

Have a look at the photos, I like the cattle very much. One cow seems to be a Maronesa x Maremmana, the cow with the huge lyre-shaped but forwards-facing horns. Another one seems to be Sayaguesa x Maronesa and has a perfect horn curvature. I think an (F2 Maronesa x Sayaguesa) x (F2 Maronesa x Maremmana) would have great potential, especially an F2 from that combination. I think some of the photos show Manolo Uno, the Maremmana x Pajuna bull that was born at the start of the project, but it could also be a bull of the same combination. One bull has a really large hump, a characteristic that quite a few Tauros bulls have. 

 

It would be extremely awesome if all of the current projects would one day cooperate in some sort by exchanging individuals once all of them have reached a similar level of quality as an aurochs substitute. 

Two of my aurochs sculptures are for sale

I have to create more space in my sculpture room because I keep on having new ideas, therefore some of my aurochs sculptures are available for sale now. 

Both of them are made from air-drying modeling clay and painted with acrylics. 

Sculpture of the Sassenberg bull 

- 32,2 cm withers height, 55 cm long, 21 cm horn span 

- Body morphology based on the Store-damme skeleton, skull and horns based on the Sassenberg bull

Sculpture of an Indian aurochs bull 

- 28 cm withers height, 49 cm long, 25 cm horn span 

- Body morphology based on the Store-damme skeleton, skull and horns based on the cranium at the Geological Survey of India 

If you are interested in one of the sculptures or both, feel free to contact me at daniel.foidl@itmed.at 

What the aurochs really looked like (new reconstruction)

Last week, I finished my latest aurochs model. Just like the previous one, its postcranial morphology is based on the Store-damme skeleton, the head on the Sassenberg bull and the London skull; the horns on the Vig bull this time. This is the result: 

I think this time I accomplished it to provide a plausible, life-like picture of what a living aurochs bull most likely looked like. I am very happy with the result. It is 33 cm at the withers tall, therefore 1:6 scale for a 200 cm aurochs. 

I also started a new model, a male African aurochs, based on osteological material and what Egyptian artworks suggest what its colour was like. I promise you that it will be quite surprising. 

Magnificent young Auerrind bulls

Recently, Felix Hohmeyer posted photos of young bulls from the Auerrind herd near Bielefeld on Facebook: 

© Felix Hohmeyer

© Felix Hohmeyer

The upper one is a son of Apollo (Maremmana x Watussi) and a Sayaguesa cow, the bottom one is the (Sayaguesa x Grey) x (Sayaguesa x Watussi). I have to say I am very happy with those bulls, they look great. They were born in 2022, so they are still young, but their morphology, colour and horns look very promising. The cow in the background of the bottom photo seems to be part Chianina, I would say the ideal mating partner for those bulls. I think the Auerrind project is progressing extremely well and I am very much looking forward to seeing those animals fully grown and their future offspring. 

I am writing a book on "breeding-back"

During the last 3 years, I have been writing a book on “breeding-back” and everything related to it. Basically compiling all the knowledge and literature I have been gathering on this blog over the last 10 years. The bulk of the work covers the aurochs, but also of course the wild horse and the quagga is covered as well. 

 

In this book you will find everything I covered on this blog in a structured and comprehensive manner, and also of course new information. It will feature: 

-       An overview over the impact of large herbivores on the landscape 

-       A precise description of what we know about the aurochs 

-       How domestication changed the wild bovine

-       A history and evaluation of and ideas for “breeding-back” the aurochs in as much detail as possible 

-       A precise description of what we know about the wild horses of Europe 

-       A compilation of historical evidence of the horses historically called “tarpan” 

-       A critical evaluation of the stories revolving the Konik pony, Exmoor pony and Sorraia 

-       Ideas for a “breeding-back” project focusing on horses 

-       The quagga and “breeding-back”

-       My dedomestication hypothesis

-       Thoughts on the potential de-extinction of recently vanished megafauna 

-       qualitative photos and artworks, some of which I have not published so far 

 

I hope to publish it within next year (2024).

Why I think purity makes no sense in "breeding-back"

Readers of my blog will know that I am not afraid of proposing mixing “breeding-back” cattle with less-derived zebu breeds and even different species such as the wild yak and the banteng. Some might object that this would undermine the “purity” of those cattle as domesticated Bos primigenius primigenius. This is, however, not a concern to me, for a number of reasons that I want to outline with this post. 

1. Hybridization/introgression is common in evolution 

With our increase in genetic knowledge, we have more and more cases of closely related species that experienced more or less intense introgression from each other through hybridization. I have the impression that introgression was found everywhere it was looked for, including our own genus Homo. So we can assume hybridization is a quite common factor in the evolution of species. Bovines are no exception to this, including the aurochs, where hybridization between bison and aurochs has been found in both directions (albeit the gene flow was comparably small), and I would not be surprised at all if gene flow was also detected between aurochs and banteng and between wild yak and aurochs.

2. Domestic cattle are already highly mixed between the different lineages of Bos primigenius 

The initial domestication events, as far as current knowledge goes there were two of them, concerned B. p. primigenius and B. p. namadicus. However, the resulting domestic lineages did not remain pure domestic descendants of those respective two subspecies, as there not only was introgression between them, from taurine to indicine and vice versa, but also introgression from other aurochs subspecies. The mitochondrial haplotype R was likely inherited from the African aurochs, and recently Hereford has been found to have traces of introgression from B. p. suxianensisfrom Mongolia. This introgression was probably not limited to this one breed, it just was detected there. Therefore, taurine cattle are a mix of all four mainland aurochs subspecies, and zebus possibly too, as they experienced gene flow from taurine cattle, especially in recent decades. Therefore, the remaining aurochs alleles from the four mainland subspecies are not found in four distinct domesticated lines, but are most likely all over the place in taurine and indicine cattle. 

3. Zebus share alleles with the European aurochs that taurine cattle do not have 

When the full genome of a Neolithic aurochs bull from Britain was resolved by Orlando 2015, it was found that zebus actually share some alleles with the European aurochs that taurine cattle do not have. Less-derived zebus also are more aurochs-like on some aspects than most taurine cattle, such as the trunk length and leg length, udder size and overall slenderness. Whether there is a connection between those alleles shared with the European aurochs and these phenotypic traits has not yet been investigated, those alleles could be responsible for any biological aspect of the organism. Therefore, if one wants to come as close as possible to the European aurochs, including less-derived zebus into the breeding would be wise, even if it sounds counterintuitive at first because they descend from a different aurochs subspecies. 

4. Some wild bovines might share alleles with the aurochs that domestic cattle do not have 

Just as zebus share alleles with the European aurochs that taurine cattle do not have, it is possible that living wild bovines might have some wildtype alleles found in the aurochs that cattle have lost. This might particularly be true of alleles for morphological traits that are likely homologous, such as the primigenius spiral (found in the wild yak) or a well-marked sexual dichromatism (found in the Java banteng). Thus, including these wild bovines into the breeding might be very beneficial to “breeding-back”. Species purity in the “breeding-back” results is not really a concern to me as long as the introgression is limited to genes for desired key traits, because taurine cattle are not “pure” European aurochs anyway but rather a composite of an unknown portion of mutated alleles and remaining wildtype alleles. The same goes for zebus in respect to the Indian aurochs. 

 

Thus, I would not be afraid of mixing lineages in “breeding-back”. Taurine cattle are already highly mixed, and they lack some traits and alleles that can only be effectively reintroduced by mixing lineages and selecting wisely. Note that I am not opting for rampant crossbreeding and hybridization, but rather to use small doses of introgression accompanied by targeted selection in order to keep the desired traits from each lineage and eliminate distinctive traits of the other lineage. This goes for morphological as much as behavioural, ecological and – to the degree that it is detectable – genetic traits. This way, aurochs-like bovines that blow our minds could be achieved, while that is very difficult using taurine cattle only.