Today is a great day for me. My book Breeding-back wild beasts: aurochs, wild horse and quagga is published and available on Amazon!
With this book, I turned all the material I gathered on this blog in 12 years into one comprehensive work, but I also included new studies that I haven’t covered on this blog yet. The bulk of the work is on the aurochs, but of course it also has a chapter on wild horses with a lot of material, and also a chapter on the quagga. And of course also a chapter on dedomestication, which is also relevant for “breeding-back”.
The book has more than 150 images, most of which are photos and life restorations I haven’t published previously.
These are the contents:
- In the first section, I cover the debate of the influence of megafauna on the landscape
- The phylogeny, taxonomy, behaviour, ecology and morphology of the aurochs is covered, the latter very extensively as you can imagine
- The domestication of the aurochs is outlined, including remarks on the mechanisms of domestication in general, including the domestication syndrome
- The history of breeding back is outlined, the role of genetics in breeding back is discussed
- A section on the history and various breeding lines of Heck cattle with lots of photos
- A section on Taurus cattle in Germany and Hungary with lots of photos, including never-before published new photos of Hungarian Taurus cattle
- A section on Tauros cattle with lots of photos
- A chapter of sections discussing hybridization with wild bovines in breeding back, the challenges for breeding back, new breeding strategies based on genetics et cetera
- The taxonomy of wild horses with remarks on the status of the Przewalski’s horse
- An extensive section on the quest for the morphology and appearance of western Eurasian wild horses and its alleged subtypes
- A section on the origins of the Exmoor pony, the Konik and the Sorraia
- Thoughts for a “breeding-back” project with horses, covering the Lippeaue horses
- A chapter on the phylogeny, morphology and appearance of the quagga and of course also the Quagga Project
- A chapter explaining my dedomestication hypothesis focusing on cattle, covering the Heck cattle at Oostvaardersplassen and Chillingham cattle, the latter with lots of photos
- Final remarks
The book is of course in colour and printed on qualitative paper so you can enjoy the lots and lots of photos and artworks.
As you know, I put my heart blood in this book and I am confident that readers of my blog and all other enthusiasts for these extinct animals will enjoy it very much.
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