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.