The weekend after my visit to the Lippeaue and the Auerrindprojekt, I visited the Hortobagyi National Park, where the largest continuous population of aurochs-like cattle in the world are grazing together with the largest population of Przewalski’s horses in Europe.
I met with Istvan Sandor and Peter Czoban to visit the herds. It was a very enjoyable and highly interesting trip, a great nature area with a diverse fauna and a megafauna experience quite like in the Pleistocene. Many thanks to all the people involved for making this possible!
The Hortobagyi National Park is located in the Puszta, which is basically an exclave of the Eurasian steppe, but it also has rivers and swamps flowing through it, which is what enabled the presence of aurochs several thousand years ago. Bos taurus (aurochs + cattle) are not a steppe species, so they would have stuck to the wet areas flowing through the Puszta back in their days. Horses on the other hand, the PH in particular, have their prime habitat in the hot and dry grasslands of the Puszta.
The cattle are kept in several paddocks. There is a herd for demonstration for the visitors, a bull herd, a cow paddock, a heifer herd and a paddock for the most precious bulls. I go over them one by one. The bulls chosen to be breeding bulls are allowed to join the cow herds during august and September, which is when aurochs probably mated so that the calves get born during spring. Without this intervention, calves would be born all year round, which could lead to handling problems. There are several steers in all of the herds. Steers have a calming effect on the herds, and they also make an impressive sight for the visitors because of their larger size.
The demonstration herd
The most eye-catching individual in this herd is a steer that is one quarter Watussi. The cattle are accompanied by Przewalski colts that are noticeably lighter in morphology than functional wild stallions.
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| The steer |
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| The steer |
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| Przewalski colt |
The three precious bulls + one steer
Three bulls, sons of the Lippeaue bull Felipe, and one steer are kept separate from the other bulls because they are too precious to accept the risk of them getting injured or killed by other bulls on the pasture (this happened to the great bull Köpcös). Felipe was a Taurus bull, a son of Lamarck and a Sayaguesa cow, hence the bulls here are grandsons of Lamarck.
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| Steer on the right of the foto |
1323, Fülöpke, is a grandson of Lamarck on the patrilinear side and a grandson of Rimu on the matrilinear side. Thus, he is roughly 6% Watussi, at least genealogically.
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| 1444, Florian |
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| 1323, Fülöpke |
There were three bulls in Hortobagy that left a significant influence on the herds: Anno, a Heck bull from the Steinberg/Wörth lineage; Felipe; Rimu, a (Sayaguesa x Heck) x (Hungarian Grey x Watussi). A pure Watussi bull was also briefly used, as much as the Taurus bull Lasso (Heck x (Heck x Sayaguesa)), a son of Lucio from the ABU. Other bulls were used occasionally. They also imported the Heck x Lidia bull Larus from the Lippeaue, but he was not used for breeding because of excessive aggression. Istvan told me while the other bulls might attack because they want to be left alone, but Larus really tried to kill. It was not possible to handle this bull, but his skull now makes an impressive sight in the visitor center.
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| Larus' skull |
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| Lasso (bottom), Toldi? (top) |
There is also the skull of Lasso, which is significantly shorter, being three quarters Heck.
In the visitor center there is also what I have been looking for for years: a complete, mounted skeleton of a Taurus bull (or steer). It is rather small, which is why Istvan does not like it, but I think it looks great apart from the body size: the legs are really long (note that the forelimb and shoulder blade are not positioned as in life), the trunk short. The skull is comparably short, but not much shorter than in the Cambridge or Torsac-dirac aurochs. The tips of the spinal processes in the shoulder area are unfortunately broken off.
Regarding the size of the bulls in the corral, I was able to measure one of them very indirectly. When it was standing next to the fence with not much hay beneath it, its withers were reaching half the distance between the two uppermost steps of the fence – which would be 155 cm. That’s 20 cm shorter than Dominator, but not a problem, since Hungarian aurochs were not much taller.
The main bull herd
I was amazed by the bull herd. There are many rather long-legged and short-trunked individuals that have the “nearly squarely built” morphology that aurochs-like cattle are supposed to have. Most of them are black, bulls with a saddle get selected out. One bull, named Turkana, sticks out. He is Felipe x a half-Watussi cow, therefore quarter Watussi and will be a future breeding bull. I think it is the strong Watussi influence that resulted in the desired short trunk of the bulls because indicine cattle usually have a shorter trunk than taurine cattle. Istvan likes the Watussi influence very much for their elegant morphology and also their extreme heat tolerance. The summers get pretty hot in the Puszta and due to recent warming, the Heck and Hungarian Grey influence, which was important to cope with cold winters in the beginning in the 1990s, becomes less important than the heat-tolerance of Watussi in recent years. So far, the zebu hump of Watussi did not reappear in later generations, also not in crosses that have Watussi heritage on both parental sides. In first-cross generations, the zebu hump is almost gone, and when crossed with another animal that does not have the zebu hump, it is phenotypically completely gone.
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| Turkana |
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| Turkana |
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| Turkana |
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| 1543 |
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| 1542 |
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| 1542 |
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| 1533 |
1533, 1543 and 1542 are sons of Köpcös.
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| Look at those long-legged, short-trunked bulls! |
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| Steer |
Istvan demonstrated a funny little trick to get the bulls stopping and looking at us – grunting like a dominant bull. This makes the bulls freeze and look what is going on.
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| Me with an aurochs horn fossil at the visitor center |
The cow herds
The cows live on a very large area and interestingly, they themselves split up into two herds, in sum counting around 150 animals. That is still much larger herds than what is usual for Bos taurus, but I was told that is because of the lack of bulls in the herd. With the presence of bulls, they would split up into subgroups.
There once also was a Grey x Holstein cow in the herd named Xena. She had a phenotypically wildtype colouration, except for ventral white spots. Holstein, however, turned out to be not that beneficial for the breeding, Istvan told me. One of her sons, Zseuz, looked good – but only on the photo, Istvan said.
The cow with the horns I like the most is Damalisz, her horns are simply fantastic and resemble those of my reconstruction of the Gramsbergen skull fragment very closely. I hope she passes on this horn shape to her offspring.
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| Delphi, quarter Watussi |
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| Damalisz |
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| Reconstruction of the Gramsbergen skull fragment |
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| Damalisz |
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| Damalisz |
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| Damalisz |
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| Cintia |
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| Liszi |
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| Szepasszony (daughter of Felipe) |
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| Pure Heck from Hellabrunn Zoo |
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| Half-Watussi 1 |
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| Half-Watussi 2 |
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| Half-Watussi 3 |
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| Half-Watussi 3 |
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| Young steer |
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| Damalisz |
The wild horses
As mentioned, Hortobagy has the largest PH herd in Europe, and possibly also the most diverse European herd – not only genetically, but also phenotypically, with some individuals being very light in colour and one stallion having a much darker colour that got passed on to both of its offspring. I speculated that this stallion might be dun/nondun1 genotypically because it still has the white muzzle, but I am guessing here. It is also possible that it has a nonpangare/pangare genotype – the nonpangare allele was pretty common in the wild catches of PH from the 19th century, especially those at Askania Nova.
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| The slightly darker stallion |
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| Quite similar to P. Pallas' 1771 tarpan |
Contrary to cattle, they form one very large herd when there are a lot of horses in the given area. But something interesting happens with the social structure in these super-herds: there seems to be an either intentional or unintentional stallion coalition. The dominant stallions that already have a harem group stay together in the centre of the herd, reducing the borders that are exposed to and must be defended from the bachelor groups, which are at the outside of the herd.
Standing surrounded by 250 wild horses in the steppe was an amazing experience – I felt like I did a time travel into the Pleistocene.
Water buffalo
We also had a look at the Water buffaloes in the reserve. They are put on the swampy areas with lots of reef. The ecological impact of water buffaloes is extremely beneficial for the wet ecosystems, since their foraging and wallowing behaviour creates microhabitats for many species. Habitat disturbance often enables more diversity than the absence of disturbance and Bubalus is a native genus in Europe. However, the native European water buffalo species, B. murrensis, is lost and the Carpathian mountain buffalo is a descendant of the Asiatic wild water buffalo. They do look like they are perfectly adapted to European winters with their long winter coat, but Istvan told me that they lack the underwool – during snowy winters, they are freezing and shaking, spend most of the time in the barn and would probably not survive without human intervention.
We also talked about Hortobagy as a potential bison habitat. Istvan told me that wisent would probably not do all too well in the reserve because it is a lowland habitat with salty ground, but American plains bison probably would – they are kept in America in habitats that are essentially ecologically identical to Hortobagy.
Conclusion
How do the Hortobagy Taurus cattle compare to the Lippeaue ones? The latter seem to be larger on average, although the height data for the Hungarian Taurus is very sparse. On the other hand, they have much larger horns on average compared to the Lippeaue ones and some of the bulls have a very good morphology (long legs + short trunk). So the Lippeaue cattle are, due to Chianina, larger but have smaller horns compared to the Hortobagy ones, which are, due to Watussi and no Chianina, larger-horned but not quite as large. So it really depends on which traits you prioritize and I think both populations are wonderful.
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