The Heck bull Aretto vs. aurochs

Taking aurochs reconstructions and using them as a direct comparison for living cattle is very helpful for judging their aurochs-likeness. It is way more effective than just eye-drawing and you see all differences at once. I think that my new aurochs bull model is very suitable for this job. I invested a lot of time into making it as scientifically correct as possible and I think it represents an authentic picture of a mature male aurochs from the Holocene of the northern half of Europe. 

In Walter Frisch’s Der Auerochs (2010), there is a photo of the Heck bull Aretto in a very similar stance, and I made a photo of my model from the same angle in order to compare the Heck bull and the aurochs reconstruction directly to each other. The photo of the Heck bull is copyright by Walter Frisch, please do not use it without permission and I hope it is OK for him that I present it on the blog here. 

Aretto  is a bull from the breed line of Walter Frisch, which is a strain that has been excellently. Members of this lineage often have superb horns, especially in dimension, the colour is ok and the bulls often have a shallow hump. The body, however, is quite normal by Heck standards. Aretto was one of the best bulls of this herd, so it is very interesting to compare this individual to an aurochs. 

 

Aretto ©Walter Frisch.

Aurochs bull model

Body size:The aurochs type that my model is based on is 175cm tall at the withers on average. The size for Aretto is claimed to be 160cm in the literature, but I visited the herd myself in 2013, and I consider 140-145cm for grown bulls of this lineage more realistic (I am open to be proven otherwise). So there is a considerable size difference.

Proportions:The proportions are totally different. The head is much smaller, the legs much shorter, the neck is shorter and the trunk more elongated in the Heck bull. 

Body shape:The muscling in the Heck bull is reduced, while the intestinum is greatly enlarged, and the spine of the trunk is also slightly hanging. The hump size is noticeable reduced. 

Head:The small head in the Heck bull is paedomorphic with a short snout (not that visible on the photo). 

Horns: The horns of the Heck bull are similar to those of the aurochs, but they look as if they were pulled outwards and upwards. Their size is smaller than in my aurochs, but there were certainly also aurochs with horns of this particular size. The thickness of the horns is similar to that of an aurochs’ horns. 

Appendages:The dewlap and the scrotum are greatly elongated. 

Colour: The colour is more or less identical, except for the fact that the Heck bull inherits a less-pronounced sexual dichromatism.

All in all, you see that the Heck bull is a rather ordinary domestic bull concerning body size and morphology and that the similarities are actually restricted to colour and horns. There would of course also be differences in behaviour between a wild aurochs and a domestic individual (f.e. stress response, lethargy/alertness etc.). This does not alter the fact that Aretto, and the Frisch lineage in general, are superb breeding results as they belong to the most qualitative Heck cattle herds around and I would use them for “breeding-back” at any time. 

Despite the morphological differences, I believe that a population of Arettos would look and behave indistinguishable from wild aurochs after 100-200 years of natural selection due to dedomestication, apart from size probably. 

More of these comparisons between the aurochs model and living cattle are to come. 

By the way, when looking at this photo of Aretto, I think it is possible to detect the Watussi influence that is documented for the Neandertal/Frisch lineage (which is, per se, not a bad thing in my opinion), but more on that in a future post.