Was the European aurochs woolly and shaggy like Highland cattle?

Thinking about the coat of the European aurochs, there is a notion from Conrad Gesner, who owned a piece of an aurochs skin, describing the coat as it follows:

 

“… the hairs are really very soft (surprisingly so), like the wool of sheep, close together…” (cited from van Vuure, 2005)

 

For quite a long time, I did not know what to make of that notion. My assumption was that the coat preserved on the skin was dismembering and that the longer outer coat had been fallen off, revealing the finer hair of the undercoat. While this is possible, there is also a quote from Anton Schneeberger, describing the aurochs of Jaktorow:

 

“They look a lot like domestic cattle, but are much larger and covered in longer hairs…” (cited from van Vuure, 2005)

 

He notes that aurochs were covered in longer hair than domestic cattle. This raises two questions: was he referring to the coat in general or just the winter coat? Which domestic cattle was he thinking of when comparing the aurochs against them? Since Schneeberger’s report is rather precise and he makes a special notion on the coat being shinier during autumn but not that the hair was only longer than in domestic cattle during winter, it could be possible that he was referring to the hair in general. Since he was German, he was probably comparing them against rural Central European breeds and not short-haired Southern European or even African breeds.

 

There is a third reference on the hair of the aurochs (by Baron Bonar):

 

“When the skin of this animal has been cleaned it is covered in very fine black hairs” (cited from van Vuure, 2005)

 

So we have two historic notions stating aurochs had very fine hair and one that these were longer than in domestic cattle. The notion that the coat was woolly is curious, as most cattle on this world have rather coarse hair. However, woolly long hairs remind of breeds such as Highland cattle and Galloways. Could it be possible that aurochs had a coat like those breeds?

 

Another detail of the coat of the aurochs is interesting, namely the curly hair on the forehead. We have two independent documents describing this trait in aurochs: Schneeberger and Swiecicky. Curly hair on the forehead is rather widespread among cattle, so it is surprising that the authors mentioned them specifically as a special trait of the aurochs. Schneeberger even stated that they make them “terrible to behold” and Swiecicky described the hair on the forehead as shaggy and mentioned that there was even an idiosyncratic name for that trait of the animal in Polish. This suggests that the curly and shaggy hair between the horns was more prominent in the aurochs than in domestic cattle, which fits the notion that they were covered in longer hair than cattle. Shaggy forehead hair again reminds of Highland cattle.

 

Would a Highland cattle coat have been functional for the aurochs? Given that it makes the breed extremely cold-tolerant one might think so, since Europe was, together with Northern China, the coldest part of the range of the species. However, their long coats can make the animals suffer heat stress above 30°C, which is why they often take a bath during summer to cool down. There have been cases where Highland cattle drowned in the mud because of that. This is not advantageous in the wild, which makes it unlikely to be the wildtype condition. Also, the forehead hair of Highland cattle is often so long and shaggy that they cover parts of the eyes, which would impede the sight of the animals and thus is not advantageous as well. But there are also Highland cattle in which the summer coat is much shorter than during winter. They then also have the very fine almost woolly hair. See this bull for example. I assume the heat stress with this kind of coat would be much less than when the hair is long all the year round.

 

Other British landraces such as English Park cattle, English Longhorn, Dexter cattle and Chillingham cattle also have a coat that looks comparably woolly by cattle standards, although shorter. The coat of Galloways ranges from very similar to that of Highland cattle to very similar to that of Park cattle. British landraces have been found to have been influenced by British or Northwestern European aurochs, so they might have their coat directly from aurochs of the Northern half of Europe. Cattle from other regions of the world usually do not have that coat, except for some Turano-Mongolian cattle such as Yakutian cattle. They have the same woolly, almost fluffy, coat and are known for their adaptions to very cold climate. Yakutian cattle are not particularly close related to British landraces as Turano-Mongolian cattle were quite isolated from European cattle breeds, but they might or might not have been influenced by local aurochs in Asia. I say this because the genetic evidence we have today makes it very likely that aurochs and cattle interbred everywhere they met, which does not make them any different from other species that were domesticated.

 

So, what does this tell us about the European aurochs’ coat? Without having any skins preserved, we cannot be sure how long, soft and woolly its coat was, and to which extent the winter coat and summer coat differed. But intuitively I think the coat might have been somewhat intermediary between that of Highland cattle and Chillingham cattle. I think so because the notion that the aurochs was covered in longer hair than domestic cattle was the second aspect of the aurochs’ appearance of all that Schneeberger mentioned, so that this might have been quite a prominent one. I have been speculating for quite a while that aurochs bulls might have had the curly mane that Chillingham cattle have (see the post “Forelocks and manes”). Its function might be protection from the horns during combat and is found in many taurine cattle bulls. Interestingly, it is also found in some Heck bulls in the Oostvaardersplassen reserve, but rarely outside the reserve. As for the hair between the horns, I think some Highland cattle with curly hair between the horns might be a good model for those of the aurochs, because they must have been prominent enough to be mentioned in several independent sources and to be called “shaggy”, which would suggest that the hair was longer than in Chillingham cattle at least between the horns.

 

Should this have implications for “breeding-back”? Maybe, maybe not. First of all, we don’t know how widespread that kind of fur was among the aurochs and I think it is quite likely that aurochs with a more southerly presence had the same coat we see in most taurine cattle. But if the cattle are to be as precise of a phenotypic copy of Northern/Central European aurochs, the use of Highland cattle might advantageous and I would like Chillingham cattle to be used in “breeding-back” in general. Yakutian cattle would also be fantastic, but probably difficult to acquire. Heck cattle and Tauros cattle have Highland cattle in their ancestry, so there might be potential in achieving the coat described by Schneeberger. At least in Tauros cattle, as the crossing-in of Highland cattle has been rather recently while it has been 100 years in Heck cattle. On the other hand, so far, breeding-back cattle have done fine under natural conditions with the coat they have. And perhaps it would be best to create a genetically diverse aurochs-like population with many different alleles for coat phenotypes and let natural selection do the rest.

 

Interesting in this regard are the feral cattle on Sanak island. They descend mainly from Highland cattle, but were exposed to natural selection. Despite the climate on the island, they are not quite as shaggy and long-haired as usual Highland cattle. Perhaps natural selection has reduced the hair length to the maximum that is functional in the given climate. This might make the Sanak island cattle a possible model for the coat of the aurochs, just like Chillingham cattle and OVP Heck cattle.

 

I did a reconstruction of an aurochs based on a skull found in Lake District in England with a coat that I can imagine as one of the plausible possibilities of a more shaggy aurochs during summer. The coat could have been longer or shorter too, without a preserved skin we cannot know for sure, unfortunately.

 

How to rescue Bos taurus taxonomically

I once did a post on why I use Bos primigenius for the species of aurochs and cattle although it is predated by Bos taurus. Opinion 2027 of the ICZN allows this, and it has the advantage that Bos primigenius has a holotype, the incomplete Haßleben skeleton, while Bos taurus neither has a holotype nor a lectotype. However, I am not completely satisfied with that solution, because the fact that it is up to the author’s preference can create a lot of confusion. Apart from that, Bos taurus is the first name under which the aurochs was taxonomically classified (Linnaeus mentions it explicitly as “ferus Urus” in his description), so it should not end up on the taxonomical graveyard and it is questionable if opinion 2027 actually applied because the aurochs was included in the description. But how to clear up the mess and create a clear situation on what name to use for the species?

 

I see two options:

- The ICZN publishes a regulation for handling wildtypes and domesticates as different species. In this case, domestic cattle would be Bos taurus and Bos indicus, and the aurochs Bos primigenius.

- Someone does a proper redescription of Bos taurus, with a lectotype that is a “ferus Urus”, an aurochs and a few paratypes to account for the variability within the species, wild and domestic.

 

The upper option would not be useful. A universal species definition does not exist, and good arguments can both be made for the stance that domesticates are the same species as their wildtype and for the stance that they are different species. But the case of cattle shows that the latter is not practicable. Since taurine and indicine cattle descended from different variants of aurochs, they cannot form one species together that excludes the aurochs. In this case, all three (aurochs, taurine and indicine cattle) would have to be classified as separate species. Sanga cattle, which are hybrids of taurine and indicine cattle, would then be species hybrids. Hybrids between two species that only have minor differences and would without doubt be classified as one species if one did not know their evolutionary history. So the first option would be somewhat absurd.

The second option is what I would opt for. Linnaeus’ description of Bos taurus as much as Bojanus’ description of Bos primigenius are both rather minimalistic by modern standards, so a clear description that accounts for all the autapomorphies of the species of aurochs and cattle that sets them apart from other Bovini would be useful. As a lectotype (which is the type specimen assigned to a species based on a written description alone) I would use the rather complete skeleton from Neumark-Nord, which is mounted an impressive attacking pose (this one). It is very well-preserved, a typical aurochs and there is no chance that it is intermixed with domestic cattle as it is roughly 200.000 years old. I would also chose a few other specimen as paratypes, namely the Sassenberg cow (to account for the differences between male and female) and the Prejlerup bull (to cover the wide range of horn sizes within the species) and perhaps a few others.

 

The species of aurochs and cattle would then have to be labelled as Bos taurus. I think this name is just as beautiful as B. primigenius, as it just means “cattle” and it would include the wildtype which we call “aurochs”. On a subspecies level it would get a bit more complicated. If you regard domesticates as taxa (which doesn’t necessarily have to be, you could also just see them as populations that have experienced artificial selection), taurine cattle would be Bos taurus taurus and indicine cattle Bos taurus indicus, the aurochs would be Bos taurus primigenius. This would raise the question if the wild mainland aurochs needs to be subdivided into different subspecies. The latest research makes the approach of having several mainland aurochs subspecies questionable at least. I think “morphes” or “stages” might be more practicable. I go over this in my upcoming book, so please stay tuned.

 

The weird proto-aurochs from the Pleistocene of India

I actually wanted to include this in my upcoming book – which will be published soon – but it turned out to be too speculative for my taste. It is about this skull from the Middle Pleistocene of India: 

Copyright holder unknown - if you are the copyright owner and would like me to remove that photo, please let me know.

As you can see, the horns are very wide-ranging, but unfortunately not preserved completely. In order to get a more complete picture of what the horns might have looked like in life, I sculpted a little head bust in trophy-style to reconstruct the horns three-dimensionally.

I only know a couple of photos of this skull, of which none are in a clear profile shot, but I was able to replicate the horn cores rather exactly based on the photos. Then I sculpted the horn sheaths over them. This is the result:

While the actual morphology of the head and horns is based on osteological evidence, the colour is entirely speculative. As these Middle Pleistocene aurochs are very likely outside the taurine + indicine clade, I played a bit with my fantasy regarding the colour. It could well be possible that it had the “standard” aurochs colour, especially considering the fact that Java banteng have an almost identical colour to the “standard” colour.

All in all, based on what I have seen from Bos acutifrons so far, I think the idea that there was a morphological continuum from acutifrons to namadicus to primigenius is not far-fetched. Interestingly, the earliest record of aurochs is currently from Tunisia. In the Early Pleistocene in Africa, there was another species of catte that had, just like acutifrons, large and very wide-ranging horns as well, Bos buiaensis. I think it is not entirely impossible that acutifrons and buiaensis were conspecific and ranged across two continents (just like primigenius) and gave rise to the aurochs. But without any genetic information, which would also be needed from Leptobos, Epileptobos and Pelorovis, it is impossible to resolve the exact origins of the aurochs – at least currently.

 

So, was namadicus a distinct species, Bos namadicus, or a subspecies of Bos primigenius? This question is, in the lack of a clear species definition, impossible to answer and thus is up to the author’s preference. Another problem is that since species evolve gradually, that “transitional forms” and “real species” are just arbitrary categories based on the time we live in, which we choose as an arbitrary anchor. If species A evolves into species B, and species B into C, the transitional species between B and C would be regarded as a “true” species for its time, and would relate to the transitional species from A to B like a “true” species, making A, B, and C merely “transitional” forms. We can expand that problem even further. Species A and C, if they would for some reason meet each other, might not be able to reproduce with each other, but the species B can reproduce with both of them, making A, B and C one ring species across time. We could trace that back to the very ancestors of all life. The species concept does not work across time, I think. Just some thoughts.