The white muzzle ring of the aurochs

The white or lightly coloured muzzle ring around the mouth (“mealy mouth”) of the aurochs in both sexes is a standard element when reconstructing the aurochs’ colour scheme. In this post, I am going to have a look at what the evidence actually says. 

First of all, the lightly coloured muzzle ring is part of the E+ wildtype colour in domestic cattle. Yet, written sources never mention the muzzle ring. Not even Anton Schneeberger’s precise description of the looks of the last aurochs at Jaktorow in Gesner 1602. 

Looking at contemporaneous artistic depictions, there is evidence for the muzzle ring in aurochs. Some cow depictions in cave paintings show a muzzle ring (see here and here), and also the bull depictions in Lascaux. The bull heads in Chauvet, on the other hand, definitely do not show it although the artist paid attention to the dorsal stripe. The oil painting from the 16^th century that Charles Hamilton Smith based his famous “Augsburg aurochs” drawing on and that could have been based on a life aurochs, showed, according to Smith, wholly black colour except for a white chin (van Vuure, 2005). 

In domestic cattle with a wildtype colour scheme, you sometimes see a reduced muzzle ring, particularly in aging bulls. The white area on the snout becomes smaller and darker, it may even completely disappear except for the lightly coloured chin. Apparently this also was the case in the individual the Augsburg painting was based on. In Bantengs and Gaurs, there is individual variation on the degree of the white muzzle ring. It may be fully expressed or reduced to lips and chin, or completely absent. 

Considering that some cave paintings do show the muzzle ring and that others do not, and that the original Augsburg painting showed a very reduced one, aurochs probably also were variable on this trait. It might have been reduced or virtually absent in quite a lot of bulls, particularly old ones, while it probably was present in cows and young individuals on a regular basis.  

Here you have a reconstruction of the Sassenberg bull with a reduced muzzle ring, the way many grown aurochs bulls might have looked like: 

Regarding the actual colour of the muzzle ring, whether it was plain white or just lightly coloured (beige, orangish, reddish, yellow), we have the same situation with the dorsal stripe. It might have varied from individual to individual and historic sources are not precise enough on that.