Things I changed my mind on since I started this blog

I have been running this blog since 2013 now, which is 13 years. After exactly one and a half decades of collecting info on the aurochs and wild horses (I started getting into this topic in  2011), my conceptions of what I consider the most likely scenario based on the available evidence on a number of topics shifted. With this post, I want to give an overview over where my opinions or assumptions changed in the last 13 years, especially as some very old blog posts show outdated assumptions of mine. I try to put disclaimers on every blogpost that I consider outdated and link to an up-to-date article, but with my 550+ blogposts, it takes a while. So, here is a comprehensive list:

 

-       The neck muscles in aurochs bulls

 

Taurine domestic bulls all can have two kinds of neck musculature: either a so-called “crest”, where the neck forms a bulge that is separate from the shoulder hump (if present) or a neck that is still very muscular but with a smoother transition to the shoulder hump. Prime examples for these different bull necks are Lidia and Sayaguesa. The former has the first described neck shape, the latter one the latter. The length of the dorsal spine seems to play no role in this, it seems to depend on the development of the musculature. This begs the question: what kind of neck shape did the aurochs have?

 

Looking at extant wild bovines, we see both kinds of necks, but dependent on the species. Gaur have a neck crest, Banteng have a less developed neck musculature. Wisent have a neck crest, while American bison have the neck merging with the shoulder hump. So phylogenetic bracketing is not useful to resolve this question. So I reasoned until a few years ago that the hormonal changes from aurochs to domestic meant that aurochs had more testosterone, and the M. trapezius is particularly testosterone-dependent (partly). So I figured that the neck crest is more likely for the aurochs. I no longer uphold this reasoning. First of all, there is no direct evidence that aurochs bulls had higher testosterone than domestic bulls, however likely it may be. Also, the testosterone level is not the only factor influencing the amount of the muscle tissue, it is also the number of androgen receptors to which the testosterone binds that plays a role. Hence an aurochs bull could have had a much higher testosterone level than a domestic bull with a crest and still have no crest. So this reasoning was not suitable to determine if aurochs bulls had a “Lidia neck” or “Sayaguesa neck”.

Also, cave paintings and other contemporaneous artistic depictions of aurochs bulls are unambiguous in this respect: they all, and I mean all, show a “Sayaguesa neck”. Hence, I was wrong on the assumption that aurochs bulls must have had a neck crest.

 

-       The mane of European wild horses

 

I no longer believe that European wild horses had a falling mane like domestic horses. I used to think that because of the claim that the Equus caballus lambei carcass has a falling mane, but that one has never been properly described. And even if it had a falling mane, it would not be possible to implicate a falling mane in European wild horses by phylogenetic bracketing, as lambei is more distantly related to those than is the Przewalski’s horse. Also, a Equus caballus lenensis horse carcass has a very short mane of only 15cm, which was probably standing. Furthermore, Iberian wild horses are even more distantly related to domestic horses than Przewalski’s, therefore their mane was very likely standing. And, not to forget, all cave paintings show horses with an upright mane. Domestication also caused a hanging mane in some donkey breeds, so we can be rather sure to assume that the falling mane is an artefact of domestication in horses too and that European wild horses had a standing mane.

 

-       Hybridization with wild bovines in “breeding-back”

 

When I started the blog, I was opposed to the idea of hybridization with existing wild bovines for “breeding-back”. I thought that this would introduce many undesired traits not only to morphology, which is the lesser problem because it is easily “visible”, but also concerning behaviour and ecology, which are rather tricky to select against. However, nowadays I think that if the doses are small enough and if the hybridization is carried out with a meticulous selection scheme, introducing suitable species can be very beneficial to “breeding-back”, and if done in an experimental population with its own herd book, there is no way this can do harm. The species I am considering are (Java) banteng, wild yak and nowadays also wisent.

 

-       Certainty with which we know the aurochs’ life appearance

 

I used to think that the life appearance of the aurochs is well-resolved. We have living descendants and close relatives for extant phylogenetic bracketing, we have historical texts describing the animal that match with ancient art. However, nowadays I think it is not that easy. For example, if domestic cattle display a certain peculiar trait that is not found in wild bovines, it cannot easily be assumed it is an artefact of domestication. An example would be the somewhat sloping backs of many domestic cattle. Wild bovines tend not to have that (except in certain positions when they stretch their hindlimbs, so that the back is sloping), and some domestics have it pronounced extremely. I saw no functional benefit to this trait and thus I assumed that aurochs had a strictly horizontal lumbar spine, as do extant wild bovines. However, almost all ancient art shows aurochs with sloping backs. The skeletons do not help us in determining which posture is that of the aurochs, since this would mainly depend on the length of the ligaments and muscles in questions. Thus, we don’t know but I am inclined to think they had a somewhat sloping back. But we cannot be sure. Another point is blond or red hair between the horns; many wildtype-coloured bulls have them, historic texts never describe them and one belt made of the skin between the horns of an aurochs with the fur still attached was black. However, this is not a large sample size at all. And we do not have that much historic texts speaking of the forelocks, actually only three (Schneeberger, von Herberstein and Swiecicky). This can barely account for a possible variation spectrum, if there was one. We don’t know. The same goes for a lightly-coloured saddle in European bulls. Evidence only points against such a trait in males, but I recently reported that there is one cave painting that might be interpreted showing a bull with a light trunk. These are just examples; although the life appearance and morphology of the aurochs is comparably well-resolved, it is not completely resolved. I’d say somewhere between 80 and 90%.

 

-       Bulkiness of the aurochs

 

This could actually be included in the upper point but I mention it separately because this does not necessarily only depend on species-specific aspects. The bulk of a bovine depends a lot on how well it is fed and therefore also the seasons (this is even mentioned in Schneeberger’s text on the aurochs), but also the age – bulls in particular, even in wild bovines, can grow extremely hefty with age. I often used young Lidia bulls as orientation for my bull reconstructions, mostly because I always feared making my aurochs too bulky would make them look “domestic”. But Lidia bulls are, when allowed to get fully developed, actually very massive. Von Herberstein’s illustration of his stuffed specimen shows a very massive animal that looks basically like a sausage. And this is compatible with a number of cave paintings and engravings, such as the one from Grotta del Romito or Dordogne. So I underestimated the bulk of fully grown aurochs bulls in the past, mainly because I did not want to fall in the pitfall of many artists reconstructing the aurochs of making it look like a domestic bull with aurochs horns and colour. So I fell in another pitfall.

 

-       My aurochs reconstructions

 

Nowadays I think some of my earlier reconstructions of the aurochs are inaccurate in some respects, mainly because I exaggerated the morphology unintentionally when I tried to appreciate the fact that it was a wild bovine and not a domestic one. I am still trying to figure out some anatomical details, it is a learning process and also open to a lot of interpretation.

 

-       The reliability of cave paintings

 

I never dismissed cave paintings as a source completely, especially for colour. But for morphological aspects, I considered them to be too stylized or imprecise to be used as a strict guideline. This may still be correct as a whole but I think if all cave paintings, in their imprecision and stylization, show a certain anatomical trait independently, it should be taken seriously. For example, it seems the dewlap of the aurochs was shaped differently from that of domestic cattle and more similar to that of banteng and steers. Also, only few cave paintings support the super-athletic morphology of my reconstructions that were based on young Lidia bulls, they all, or many, show rather bulky animals. Also, many of them show rather longish bulls, which makes me wonder how much the intervertebral discs of the spine added to the trunk length of the skeleton in the living animal, which ties to the point of uncertainty about the morphology of the animal.

 

-       Zebu hump in the Indian aurochs

 

I was completely unsure on whether a zebu hump was already present in Indian aurochs or not, tending to reject the idea based on the literature I found that claim no function for the hump has been determined yet. It seems though, as several breeders of indicine breeds have told me, that the fat deposit that surrounds the hypertrophied M. rhomboideus that forms the hump gets much fatter during summer and decreases almost to nil during winter. This is actually a common strategy in ruminants to deal with the seasons: to acquire a surplus during summer when food is abundant and living on the fat storage during winter. That’s why free-ranging cattle often look very skinny during winter but “recover” just fine. Now, India does not have winter in the sense of snowfall, but its vegetation is heavily monsoon-dependent and goes through a severe dry phase every year. And concentrating the fat storage in one spot instead of dispersing it around the whole body would actually be efficient in a hot climate from a thermoregulatory aspect. So it might indeed be possible that the Indian aurochs did have a zebu hump and that it had a function.

 

New little sculpture I made of Bos taurus namadicus with a hump, based on the GIS skull.

-       Usage of the name “tarpan” and Equus ferus

 

There is so much confusion around the word “tarpan”. It started as a local, colloquial name for local free-ranging horses which may or may not have been wild or at least partly wild horses. Then it got transferred, after the extinction of these populations, by some authors onto what they considered wild horses of Europe. This got adopted by many later authors of the 20^th century, reframing the usage of a local term for horses of dubious nature in the southwestern Eurasian steppe in the 19^th century to a synonym of the original western Eurasian wild horses, creating the false impression that it was the colloquial name for this animal in Europe, which never was unambiguously the case. There is a chance that the horses historically called tarpan were wild horses with only minor admixture from escaped domestic horses, but we cannot verify this. Therefore, using this local historical term for the biological wild horse of Western Eurasia is not wise.

 

Very, very widespread is the use of Equus ferus for the species of the wild horse. This is actually ill-grounded, even if you consider wildtypes species distinct from their domestic descendants. Equus ferus does not have a type specimen, not even a lectotype. It is loosely based on a written description of free-ranging horses encountered by Gmelin in the 18^th century. Gmelin spotted a free-ranging herd of horses consisting of what he considered wild horses, a mare he recognized as domestic plus her hybrid foal. I see no compelling reason to regard Equus ferus as suitable for qualifying as the binominal name for the wild horse, not at all. I think the adoption of this name for the species of wild horse was a poor decision by later authors. In fact, the first binominal name that was unambiguously based on a wild horse with a type specimen is Equus przewalskii. Therefore, if you regard wild horses as a species distinct from their domestic descendants, you would have to refer to them as Equus przewalskii, not Equus ferus. If you consider wild and domestic horses one species, this species would unambiguously have to be referred to as Equus caballus.

 

-       The purity of the last wild horses in Europe

 

This will remain a matter of debate forever, as historic texts are not definite enough to be sure about the nature of the last remaining free-ranging horses western to the Ural river. However, genetic evidence points to at least some of them being partly a distinct ancient wild horse strain, and there is even the chance that the very last “tarpan” kept at the Moscow zoo was “pure” or hat only minor domestic influence. I go over this in great detail in my book available on amazon.

 

-       Usage of Bos primigenius

 

I used to prefer Bos primigenius over Bos taurus for the species of aurochs and cattle because the former has a holotype and the latter does not. However, following the rules of the ICZN very strictly actually Bos taurus has priority over Bos primigenius because opinion 2027 does not apply: Linnaeus described both the aurochs and cattle under Bos taurus in 1758, he explicitly mentions the “ferus Urus Poloniae”. Thus, Bos taurus is not a senior synonym of the aurochs based on its domestic counterpart, in which case opinion 2027 would apply, it is the aurochs and always was. This was just overlooked by later authors, possibly because many considered the “urus” to be identical to the wisent until Bojanus 1827.

 

 

 

 

Possible evidence of bulls with a saddle from Europe

 While browsing the web looking for new evidence on the aurochs, I did indeed find something this time. Cave paintings from Roca dels Moros from El Cogul, Catalonia, seem to show aurochs of different colours, two males and one possible female, one with what seems to be what I call the "lateral saddle" we see in indicine cattle. 

 

As you can see, the cave paintings are badly weathered, but it seems to show two dark bulls and one possible reddish female. The male in the middle has, astoundingly, a light area on the side of the trunk that looks like what I call the "lateral zebu saddle". This trait seems to be the same as the dorsal saddle in taurine breeds, just on the side of the trunk instead of the dorsal region in indicine breeds. Which one of the traits is the ancient and which one the derived ones I cannot tell based on the evidence, maybe there even is not a general rule but it is part of the genetic variation of the wildtype (this pattern is most certainly regulated by the Agouti gene). 

This mesolithic cave painting, however, seems to suggest the presence of a "lateral zebu saddle" in an aurochs bull from this particular region and time. I think this is exciting, but I would not jump to conclusions to easily. However, the colour of the bull portrayed might have looked something like in this reconstruction of mine I did for the Wadi Sarrat cranium (just without the light areas on the ventral body side): 

 

 

 

The "Przewalski's horses are just feral Botai horses" hypothesis is outdated

Often in science, there is the problem that a wide-ranging proposal that has a lot of echo in and outside the scientific community (often more in the latter) is not based on a very solid ground. But because of its wide-ranging nature and – I dare not to say sensational – implications, it gets a lot of attention and becomes adopted in many further sources even if the wide-ranging conclusion was premature. But unfortunately, when one or several new studies come out that refute the original proposal, it does not get nearly the same resonance. This way, exciting but not factually correct “new discoveries” become mainstream in and outside the scientific community although they have been refuted already in sometimes several works. One example might be the hypothesis that the wisent is an aurochs hybrid, which is not correct according to recent research. Another example is in the focus of this post, namely the hypothesis put forward by Gaunitz et al. (2018) that the Przewalski’s horse is not a genuinely wild animal but the feralized descendant of early domesticated horses from Botai site, Kazakhstan. For brevity, I call it the Gaunitz hypothesis in this post.

 

The hypothesis

 

The 2018 Gaunitz et al. study looked at 42 ancient horse genomes, including 20 from the eneolithic Botai site. This site was of particular interest for the authors because Botai was or is considered the earliest archaeological evidence for horse husbandy (note: not necessarily domestication in a genetic sense). The big surprise of the study was that all Przewalski’s horses examined in the analysis cluster within the Botai-Borly complex, therefore the authors jumped to the conclusion that the Przewalski’s horse is not a genuine wild animal but a feral descendant of the earliest horse domestication event [1]. Further studies seem to confirm the deep nesting of the PH within the Botai-Borly complex, most notably Librado et al. [2].

Why should a domestic history for the PH surprise us that much? Obviously, because the PH does not show any obvious signs typically associated with domestication in mammals: it has a larger brain volume than domestic horses, a skull that is not paedomorphic at all with small eyes and a large viscerocranium, it has a much higher aggression potential than domestic horses even in captivity and does not have the same mutation accumulation as domestic horses have developed during domestication (known as the costs of domestication [3]). Ever since the 20^th century, the PH was used as a model for a wild horse opposed to the domestic horse. Apart from that: if the PH is not genuinely wild, it would mean that there are no genuinely wild, never-domesticated horses left on earth. So it is well worth investigating whether they truly have a domestic past or not. And it did not take long until the conclusion by Gaunitz et al. was called into question.

 

Were Botai horses domesticated?

 

In 2021, a study by Taylor & Barron-Ortiz was published that called the domestication of the Botai horses into question. They argued that the tooth recovered from the site that seems to show bit wear does not do so, as teeth of Pleistocene wild horses show the same wear pattern [4]. Furthermore, they argue that the equine lipids found on pottery from Botai do not necessarily have to be milk lipids (which would indicate that the mares there would have been tame enough to be milked) but could also be from meat or fat [4]. Also, the human teeth from the site do not show traces of milk proteins, which would be expected if they consumed milk on a regular basis [4]. Lastly, the authors argue that the age structure of the horse remains at the site is more consistent with mass harvesting of wild horses rather than raising horses under human custody, and they mention a source describing horse remains of signs of being hunted (see below). Thus, the authors conclude that Botai is not the earliest site with evidence of horse domestication but rather shows a culture that was heavily dependent on mass harvesting of wild horses present in the region [4]. Therefore, the hypothesis that the PH is a feral descendant of once domesticated horses loses its basis.

However, the paper by Taylor and Barron-Ortiz did not remain uncontested. In the same year, Outram et al. published a preprint that took their argumentation apart [5]. The Botai tooth does show a unique abrasion pattern consistent with bit wear, namely parallel abrasion at the front of the second premolar of the lower jaw, while similar wear is absent from other teeth in the mouth. This pattern was not found in the wild horses examined by Taylor and Barron-Ortiz, what actually endorses and not refutes the assumption that Botai horses were at least tamed [5].

The lipids from the pottery, so the rebuttal, are more likely to be from milk than from meat or fat because horse milk is produced during summer and therefore has a different deuterium signature compared to meat and fat, which take longer to build up in the body [5]. Furthermore, Outram and others argue that the sample size of two human teeth is not enough to refute milk consumption for the Botai people [5].

What about the signs of hunting on horse remains? The study referred to by Taylor and Barron-Ortiz was by Olsen (2005) and shows rather unambiguously that horses were hunted at the Botai site [6]. Harpoon projectiles were found and many horse remains at Botai show wounds consistent with these on rib bones and skulls, which indicates that these horses were hunted [6]. This, according to Outram et al., does not refute that there were domesticated horses at Botai, only that wild horses were hunted there too [5]. While that may be true, it has massive implications for the Gaunitz hypothesis: if not all horse remains found at Botai were from early domesticated ones but also from genuine wild horses that were hunted, the conclusion that the PH necessarily descendants from these early domestic horses loses its ground, assuming that the horses at Botai were all from the same region and thus genetically similar.

 

New data: it was a sample size problem

 

The last puzzle piece that refutes the Gaunitz hypothesis was a study by Lira Garrado et al. (2025). It actually focused mainly on the phylogenomics of the Iberian wild horse, including 87 genomes of this variant, but also included 261 other ancient horse genomes, which is a rather large sample size [7]. As it turns out, the PH is not nested in a monophyletic Botai-Borly clade, but rather both PH as much as Botai-Borly horses cluster with other old, predomestic lineages from the Ural and Central Asia; with these other old lineages, they form a much broader Central Asian/Uralic horse cluster [7]. This means that Botai/Borly horses and the PH do not form an exclusive monophyletic clade together, but rather descend from a common, large Central Asian wild horse population. There is therefore no evidence that the PH was ever domesticated; rather, it is the last remnant population of this large Central Asian wild horse population.

 

 

Literature

[1] Gaunitz, C., Fages, A., Hanghøj, K. E., Albrechtsen, A., Khan, N., Schubert, M., et al. (2018). Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski’s horses. Science, 360(6384), 111–114.

[2] Librado, P., Khan, N., Fages, A., Kusliy, M. A., Suchan, T., Tonasso-Calvière, L., et al. (2021). The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes. Nature, 598, 634–640.

[3] Moyers, B. T., Morrell, P. L., & McKay, J. K. (2018). Genetic costs of domestication and improvement. Journal of Heredity, 109(2), 103–116.

[4] Taylor, W. T. T., & Barrón-Ortiz, C. I. (2021). Rethinking the evidence for early horse domestication at Botai. Scientific Reports, 11, 7440.

[5] Outram, A. K., Bendrey, R., Evershed, R. P., Orlando, L., & Zaibert, V. F. (2021). Rebuttal of Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz 2021 Rethinking the evidence for early horse domestication at Botai. Zenodo.

[6] Olsen, S. L. (2006). Early horse domestication: weighing the evidence. In S. L. Olsen, S. Grant, A. M. Choyke, & L. Bartosiewicz (Eds.), Horses and Humans: The Evolution of Human–Equine Relationships. BAR International Series 1560 (pp. 81–113). Oxford: BAR Publishing.

[7] Lira Garrido, J., Tressières, G., Chauvey, L., Schiavinato, S., Calvière-Tonasso, L., Seguin-Orlando, A., et al. (2025). The genomic history of Iberian horses since the last Ice Age. Nature Communications, 16, 7098.

 

Visiting Hortobagy in 2026

The weekend after my visit to the Lippeaue and the Auerrindprojekt, I visited the Hortobagyi National Park, where the largest continuous population of aurochs-like cattle in the world are grazing together with the largest population of Przewalski’s horses in Europe.

 

I met with Istvan Sandor and Peter Czoban to visit the herds. It was a very enjoyable and highly interesting trip, a great nature area with a diverse fauna and a megafauna experience quite like in the Pleistocene. Many thanks to all the people involved for making this possible!

 

The Hortobagyi National Park is located in the Puszta, which is basically an exclave of the Eurasian steppe, but it also has rivers and swamps flowing through it, which is what enabled the presence of aurochs several thousand years ago. Bos taurus (aurochs + cattle) are not a steppe species, so they would have stuck to the wet areas flowing through the Puszta back in their days. Horses on the other hand, the PH in particular, have their prime habitat in the hot and dry grasslands of the Puszta.

The cattle are kept in several paddocks. There is a herd for demonstration for the visitors, a bull herd, a cow paddock, a heifer herd and a paddock for the most precious bulls. I go over them one by one. The bulls chosen to be breeding bulls are allowed to join the cow herds during august and September, which is when aurochs probably mated so that the calves get born during spring. Without this intervention, calves would be born all year round, which could lead to handling problems. There are several steers in all of the herds. Steers have a calming effect on the herds, and they also make an impressive sight for the visitors because of their larger size.

 

The demonstration herd

 

The most eye-catching individual in this herd is a steer that is one quarter Watussi. The cattle are accompanied by Przewalski colts that are noticeably lighter in morphology than functional wild stallions. 

The steer

The steer 

Przewalski colt

The three precious bulls + one steer

 

Three bulls, sons of the Lippeaue bull Felipe, and one steer are kept separate from the other bulls because they are too precious to accept the risk of them getting injured or killed by other bulls on the pasture (this happened to the great bull Köpcös). Felipe was a Taurus bull, a son of Lamarck and a Sayaguesa cow, hence the bulls here are grandsons of Lamarck.

 

Steer on the right of the foto

1323, Fülöpke, is a grandson of Lamarck on the patrilinear side and a grandson of Rimu on the matrilinear side. Thus, he is roughly 6% Watussi, at least genealogically.

1444, Florian

1323, Fülöpke

 

There were three bulls in Hortobagy that left a significant influence on the herds: Anno, a Heck bull from the Steinberg/Wörth lineage; Felipe; Rimu, a (Sayaguesa x Heck) x (Hungarian Grey x Watussi). A pure Watussi bull was also briefly used, as much as the Taurus bull Lasso (Heck x (Heck x Sayaguesa)), a son of Lucio from the ABU. Other bulls were used occasionally. They also imported the Heck x Lidia bull Larus from the Lippeaue, but he was not used for breeding because of excessive aggression. Istvan told me while the other bulls might attack because they want to be left alone, but Larus really tried to kill. It was not possible to handle this bull, but his skull now makes an impressive sight in the visitor center.

 

Larus' skull

Lasso (bottom), Toldi? (top)

There is also the skull of Lasso, which is significantly shorter, being three quarters Heck.

 

In the visitor center there is also what I have been looking for for years: a complete, mounted skeleton of a Taurus bull (or steer). It is rather small, which is why Istvan does not like it, but I think it looks great apart from the body size: the legs are really long (note that the forelimb and shoulder blade are not positioned as in life), the trunk short. The skull is comparably short, but not much shorter than in the Cambridge or Torsac-dirac aurochs. The tips of the spinal processes in the shoulder area are unfortunately broken off.

Regarding the size of the bulls in the corral, I was able to measure one of them very indirectly. When it was standing next to the fence with not much hay beneath it, its withers were reaching half the distance between the two uppermost steps of the fence – which would be 155 cm. That’s 20 cm shorter than Dominator, but not a problem, since Hungarian aurochs were not much taller.

 

The main bull herd

 

I was amazed by the bull herd. There are many rather long-legged and short-trunked individuals that have the “nearly squarely built” morphology that aurochs-like cattle are supposed to have. Most of them are black, bulls with a saddle get selected out. One bull, named Turkana, sticks out. He is Felipe x a half-Watussi cow, therefore quarter Watussi and will be a future breeding bull. I think it is the strong Watussi influence that resulted in the desired short trunk of the bulls because indicine cattle usually have a shorter trunk than taurine cattle. Istvan likes the Watussi influence very much for their elegant morphology and also their extreme heat tolerance. The summers get pretty hot in the Puszta and due to recent warming, the Heck and Hungarian Grey influence, which was important to cope with cold winters in the beginning in the 1990s, becomes less important than the heat-tolerance of Watussi in recent years. So far, the zebu hump of Watussi did not reappear in later generations, also not in crosses that have Watussi heritage on both parental sides. In first-cross generations, the zebu hump is almost gone, and when crossed with another animal that does not have the zebu hump, it is phenotypically completely gone. 

Turkana

Turkana

Turkana

 

 

1543

1542

1542

1533

1533, 1543 and 1542 are sons of Köpcös.

 

Look at those long-legged, short-trunked bulls!

Steer

 

Istvan demonstrated a funny little trick to get the bulls stopping and looking at us – grunting like a dominant bull. This makes the bulls freeze and look what is going on. 

 

Me with an aurochs horn fossil at the visitor center

 

The cow herds

 

The cows live on a very large area and interestingly, they themselves split up into two herds, in sum counting around 150 animals. That is still much larger herds than what is usual for Bos taurus, but I was told that is because of the lack of bulls in the herd. With the presence of bulls, they would split up into subgroups.

 

There once also was a Grey x Holstein cow in the herd named Xena. She had a phenotypically wildtype colouration, except for ventral white spots. Holstein, however, turned out to be not that beneficial for the breeding, Istvan told me. One of her sons, Zseuz, looked good – but only on the photo, Istvan said.

 

The cow with the horns I like the most is Damalisz, her horns are simply fantastic and resemble those of my reconstruction of the Gramsbergen skull fragment very closely. I hope she passes on this horn shape to her offspring.

 

 

Delphi, quarter Watussi

Damalisz

Reconstruction of the Gramsbergen skull fragment

Damalisz

Damalisz

Damalisz

Cintia

Liszi

Szepasszony (daughter of Felipe)

Pure Heck from Hellabrunn Zoo

Half-Watussi 1

Half-Watussi 2

Half-Watussi 3

Half-Watussi 3

Young steer

Damalisz

The wild horses

 

As mentioned, Hortobagy has the largest PH herd in Europe, and possibly also the most diverse European herd – not only genetically, but also phenotypically, with some individuals being very light in colour and one stallion having a much darker colour that got passed on to both of its offspring. I speculated that this stallion might be dun/nondun1 genotypically because it still has the white muzzle, but I am guessing here. It is also possible that it has a nonpangare/pangare genotype – the nonpangare allele was pretty common in the wild catches of PH from the 19^th century, especially those at Askania Nova.  

 

The slightly darker mare

Quite similar to P. Pallas' 1771 tarpan 

Contrary to cattle, they form one very large herd when there are a lot of horses in the given area. But something interesting happens with the social structure in these super-herds: there seems to be an either intentional or unintentional stallion coalition. The dominant stallions that already have a harem group stay together in the centre of the herd, reducing the borders that are exposed to and must be defended from the bachelor groups, which are at the outside of the herd.

 

Standing surrounded by 250 wild horses in the steppe was an amazing experience – I felt like I did a time travel into the Pleistocene.

 

Water buffalo

 

We also had a look at the Water buffaloes in the reserve. They are put on the swampy areas with lots of reef. The ecological impact of water buffaloes is extremely beneficial for the wet ecosystems, since their foraging and wallowing behaviour creates microhabitats for many species. Habitat disturbance often enables more diversity than the absence of disturbance and Bubalus is a native genus in Europe. However, the native European water buffalo species, B. murrensis, is lost and the Carpathian mountain buffalo is a descendant of the Asiatic wild water buffalo. They do look like they are perfectly adapted to European winters with their long winter coat, but Istvan told me that they lack the underwool – during snowy winters, they are freezing and shaking, spend most of the time in the barn and would probably not survive without human intervention.

 

We also talked about Hortobagy as a potential bison habitat. Istvan told me that wisent would probably not do all too well in the reserve because it is a lowland habitat with salty ground, but American plains bison probably would – they are kept in America in habitats that are essentially ecologically identical to Hortobagy.

 

Conclusion

 

How do the Hortobagy Taurus cattle compare to the Lippeaue ones? The latter seem to be larger on average, although the height data for the Hungarian Taurus is very sparse. On the other hand, they have much larger horns on average compared to the Lippeaue ones and some of the bulls have a very good morphology (long legs + short trunk). So the Lippeaue cattle are, due to Chianina, larger but have smaller horns compared to the Hortobagy ones, which are, due to Watussi and no Chianina, larger-horned but not quite as large. So it really depends on which traits you prioritize and I think both populations are wonderful.