Thursday 25 November 2021

Transforming Lerida the Taurus cow to an aurochs cow

A while ago I did a post on the Taurus cow Lerida in the Lippeaue, Germany. She is a Sayaguesa x Heck cow, and has always been among my favourite Taurus cattle individuals. Recently I used a photo of Lerida and used the program GIMP to modify her morphology so that she fits a European aurochs cow. The result is down below. The photo was provided by Matthias Scharf from the ABU. 
original photo (bottom) © Matthias Scharf
The changes I made include: 
- horn size increased 
- horns slightly elevated viewed from frontal view 
- visible udder removed 
- trunk shortened 
- dewlap size decreased 
- hump size increased

A real aurochs cow would probably be slightly more muscular, as wild bovines usually are. But apart from that, I think the manipulated photo compared to the original shows the differences and commonalities between Lerida and an aurochs cow very well. The differences are reflected by the changes on the photo that I made, the commonalities include the colour, which is flawlessly wildtype, the skull shape, the leg length, the horn shape except for the fact that they could be more raised in frontal view producing that < >-shape, and also the body size is probably right as Taurus cows are usually around 150 to 155 cm in withers height. 

4 comments:

  1. ¿Estás seguro de que la cadera estaría así de elevada en un uro? creo que es un rasgo seleccionado para compensar el peso extra de las ubres de mayor tamaño.

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    Replies
    1. Judging from the Lascaux paintings, I think the pelvis looks good. Perhaps the hump could be more pronounced and the head a bit longer.

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    2. I think the snout length is alright, compared to the Cambridge aurochs. Also, looking at the Sassenberg cow, I think the hump size is OK. There are not enough aurochs cow skeletons on display to judge the variation in that sex properly, however.

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  2. Has there been any introduction of Kalmykian cows in any Taurus project?
    / Niklas (Sweden)

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