Portrait of the Vig bull

Recently I did a little portrait of the Vig bull, one of the two famous Danish aurochs specimen (the other one being the Prejlerup bull). I started it by tracking out a photo of the skeleton and reconstructing the tissue around it, then redrawing my sketch onto a canvas. The actual painting was done in acrylics. 

The Vig bull is from the early Holocene of Denmark, when forests started to become more prevalent after the mass extinction of Megafauna back in the late Pleistocene, so I chose a forest edge as a background. 

The result can be seen on my new Instagram account (go here). Consider following me there, I will upload most of my new aurochs artworks there. 

I am quite happy with the result, it also matches the Lascaux bull paintings very well, I think.  

The African aurochs was even more different than usually assumed

I did a couple of posts on the fur colour of the African aurochs in the past, and all of them are more or less outdated. Yes, aurochs in Africa seem to have had a light colour saddle, but their colour was much more deviant than usually assumed.

 

It all depends on the nature of the bovines depicted in Egyptian tomb paintings. Van Vuure (2005) assumes those are all feral domestic cattle because of the horn shape depicted, but there are some that clearly show aurochs. One of them is the so-called “ostracon with fighting bulls”, which can be found on the internet. This inspired me to my painting of an aurochs bull with exactly that colour fighting off a lion in the Nile delta, which can be seen on my Instagram page.

 

But there are a number of depictions that suggest that there were even more deviant colour variants found in the North African aurochs populations. Looking at all of them, I did this reconstruction based on a skull at the Oran caves:

 

A list of tomb paintings suggesting this colour as much as what the genetic background of it might be can be found in my recently published book.

 

 

Another archaic aurochs: the Wadi Sarrat skull

A while ago, I posted a reconstruction I did of an archaic aurochs from India. This time, I did a little sculpture of an aurochs that was even older, the Wadi Sarrat skull. It was published in 2015, found in Tunisia and is roughly 770.000 years old. The skull is only partially preserved, but with complete horn cores that have astonishing dimensions. The horns face forward in a 40° angle. No postcranial material has been recovered as far as I know.

 

I reconstructed the body based on the Store-damme skeleton and the head and horns precisely after photos of the Wadi Sarrat skull. For the colouration, I was inspired by a colour found in many wildtype-coloured zebu: black base colour with a dorsal stripe, light areas on the ventral body and brownish flanks. There is no evidence for the colour of aurochs that old, and since the Wadi Sarrat skull is outside the modern aurochs crown group, we have a bit of artistic license for the colour. Here is the sculpture:

 

If the bull the Wadi Sarrat skull belonged to was proportioned like that, it would have been 160cm tall at the withers.

My new project: life-sized aurochs head bust

During the past few weeks, I have been busy with finalizing my book (which will be out soon) and also starting a new sculpture. This time it is not a small full-body sculpture but a life-sized aurochs head bust. It is based on the Ilford skull at the British Museum of London. I thought it would be most precise to at first replicate the skull as accurately as possible and then to reconstruct the soft tissue and fur around it. This is the replica of the skull, made of paper maché, fimo air and polyurethane foam, photo taken today:

 

It looks a bit slenderer than the Ilford skull, which is only on the photo. Perhaps due to perspective. A 3D-scan of the actual skull was very helpful to me for getting the proportions right. My replica is exactly 73,5 cm long, which is the size of the Ilford skull that I was told.

 

It was quite difficult to get the horns right, due to their highly three-dimensional curvature.

 

The next step will be connecting the lower jaw to the skull and then creating the base of the neck with the foam. Then I am going to sculpt the horn sheaths over the cores, which always involves some speculation as there is no rule of thumb of how much the sheath adds to the length of the horn. The final surface of the bust will be made of fimo air and I am going to paint it with acrylics.

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.

 

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.

I have a Facebook page now

I did not post much here recently (mostly because I am busy finishing my book on "breeding-back"), but I have a lot of posts in preparation. Meanwhile, you can take a look at my new facebook page "Daniel Foidl Paleoart and Breeding-back". I post most of my recent (and also older) artworks there, mostly dinosaur-related but I will also upload aurochs-related artworks and maybe also other content to the page. I'm looking forward to see you there, thanks!

Two of my aurochs sculptures are for sale

I have to create more space in my sculpture room because I keep on having new ideas, therefore some of my aurochs sculptures are available for sale now. 

Both of them are made from air-drying modeling clay and painted with acrylics. 

Sculpture of the Sassenberg bull 

- 32,2 cm withers height, 55 cm long, 21 cm horn span 

- Body morphology based on the Store-damme skeleton, skull and horns based on the Sassenberg bull

Sculpture of an Indian aurochs bull 

- 28 cm withers height, 49 cm long, 25 cm horn span 

- Body morphology based on the Store-damme skeleton, skull and horns based on the cranium at the Geological Survey of India 

If you are interested in one of the sculptures or both, feel free to contact me at daniel.foidl@itmed.at 

What the aurochs really looked like (new reconstruction)

Last week, I finished my latest aurochs model. Just like the previous one, its postcranial morphology is based on the Store-damme skeleton, the head on the Sassenberg bull and the London skull; the horns on the Vig bull this time. This is the result: 

I think this time I accomplished it to provide a plausible, life-like picture of what a living aurochs bull most likely looked like. I am very happy with the result. It is 33 cm at the withers tall, therefore 1:6 scale for a 200 cm aurochs. 

I also started a new model, a male African aurochs, based on osteological material and what Egyptian artworks suggest what its colour was like. I promise you that it will be quite surprising. 

How bulky was the aurochs?

As mostly only bones are preserved of the aurochs, reconstructing the soft tissue surrounding them necessarily involves speculation. The anatomy of living wild bovines and cattle provide useful clues for that. But they do not tell us how pronounced the muscles really were, how large the intestinum was (this is relevant as domestic cattle have a much larger intestinum than wild bovines) and how much tissue surrounded the bones in general. 

Looking at a skeleton, there often is the tendency to underestimate the bulk of tissue that surrounded the bones. Those who are familiar with dinosaur paleoart will know of the term “shrink-wrapped” dinosaurs. That term arose when it was recognized that most dinosaur reconstructions from the 1990s and early 2000s were too skinny, often to a degree that makes anatomically no sense (which was a result of a countertrend to making dinosaurs extremely bulky in earlier 20^th century and 19^th century reconstructions). Nowadays dinosaur reconstructions much more appreciate the musculature those animals most likely had. I was not shrink-wrapping my dinosaurs in my drawings already back in the time before the term was even used in dinosaur paleoart. So, it is a bit ironic that I tend to make the same anatomical mistake in my aurochs reconstructions. 

The bones were surrounded by musculature, which has the greatest impact on the outer appearance of the animal. But the musculature was surrounded by fat tissue, which added a few millimeters to centimeters, by the skin, which added a few millimeters to centimeters, and by hair, which also added a few millimeters to centimeters. This necessarily involves a fair bit of guesswork to the reconstruction. I am always, without exception, unsure how much bulk I should add to the skeleton when doing a reconstruction. The actual shape of the animal would also not always be the same when fully grown, but it changed during the season (fatter during fall, skinnier during the end of the winter) and also across its lifetime as aging individuals get heavier, the bulls in particular. Comparing my recent reconstruction based on manipulating a photo of the Taurus bull Darth Vader III to my model of the Sassenberg bull (go here), I came to the conclusion that my model is probably not accurate. It is too skinny, particularly on the legs and the abdomen, making it a bit difficult to imagine this model as a living being. So I made some anatomical sketches trying to better appreciate the bulk of the soft tissue that surrounded the bones. 

 

The trunk 

The trunk is particularly difficult because even with seeing the ribcage and the curve of the spines in real, it cannot be derived from the skeleton how large the intestinum was. Domestic cattle have very large intestina, giving them the heavy appearance they have. Wild bovines, on the other hand, usually have a waist that narrows caudally (instead of being the centre of the mass). For my sketch, I tracked out a photo of the Store-damme skeleton that I had corrected anatomically using GIMP. The blue line shows what a young but fully grown aurochs might have looked like, similar to young fighting bulls and young wisents. The green line shows what an old bull might have looked like, based on the waist anatomy of old wisent bulls. The red line shows the domestic condition that is exhibited by most domestic cattle breeds. I have no precise anatomical method to come to these lines, I am looking at bovines in flesh and blood, guessing and drawing what I consider anatomically plausible. I am only quite confident that the red line is not plausible for an aurochs, since it is the domestic condition not found in any wild bovine. It also looks quite weird on a trunk as short as in the aurochs. 

 

The head 

 

The outer shape of the head also changes quite with age. Young bulls have a slender head while older bulls are bulkier. That’s why my 2019 model looked a bit juvenile (or actually subadult), its head was too slender. I wanted to do a model more credible for a grown bull this time, but it seems that I still “shrink-wrapped” it. Here are sketches that were done tracking out the London skull in frontal view: 

 

The left one is a “shrink-wrapped” version, the left one a version that I consider more plausible. Again I had no particular anatomical method to come to this sketch, but I tried to appreciate the facial muscles that undoubtedly were there and also the skin and fat tissue. 

The other sketches are based on the skull of the Sassenberg bull: 

 

The sketch on the right shows a “shrink-wrapped”, not anatomically plausible, version. It has a paper-thin skin, barely any facial muscles or salivary glands (that sit behind the lower jaw muscles), and there is barely place for the trachea and the oesophagus. The sketch in the centre is anatomically plausible to me, perhaps for a bull in its prime. The left sketch shows the maximum bulkiness that I still consider anatomically plausible. Old bulls might have looked like that. Looking at my most recent model (here) I think it is closest to the shrink-wrapped version, thus not anatomically plausible. So I added some bulk to the head and neck region with GIMP (and also painted an eye). The result looks much more plausible and life-like, I think: 

 

This shows that some aspects of the aurochs’ life appearance are very hard to strictly derive from the skeleton when trying to be very precise, and that trying to fabricate the “perfect aurochs model” is a continuous learning process. My next model is going to be better. I think I will reconstruct the Vig bull and Cambridge specimen (? cow) next time. 

 

10 years Breeding-back Blog + the Gramsbergen aurochs

Since May this year, I have been running the Breeding-back blog for ten years now. So far, it had more than 1,2 million page views, 500 posts and more than 2000 comments. I am very happy with that and want to celebrate it by presenting my recently finished aurochs clay model, based on the Gramsbergen aurochs. 

 

What I call the Gramsbergen aurochs is a specimen that is known only from a skull fragment with horn cores that is on display at the Museum of Gramsbergen. I know two photos of this skull fragment, that are unfortunately not online anymore. One shows it in frontal view, one in dorsal view. What is interesting is that the lateral horn orientation of that specimen is comparably vertical, around 45° in frontal view. It is very hard to tell if the skull fragment is from a bull or a cow, but since the orbital bosses are not much protruding, the postorbital region does not look very massive and the horn shape does not resemble most of the definite bull skulls, I assume it is more likely that this fragment belonged to a cow. 

For my model, I used the Sassenberg skeleton as a reference for the cranial and postcranial morphology since it is the only complete definite cow skeleton from Europe that I am aware of. As always, the model was done taking measurements from the photos that I have access to, to ensure maximum accuracy. 

For the colour, I chose a rather standard scheme out of the many possible shades that an aurochs cow might have displayed. Some depictions in Lascaux show exactly that colour. 

The head itself resembles that of Sayaguesa and Lidia cows or a mix of both. I would imagine that a combination of Sayaguesa, Lidia, Watussi and Maronesa could result in an animal that resembles this particular individual quite closely at least concerning head, horns and colour. Morphology is more difficult to achieve. 

 

Reconstruction model of the Indian aurochs

After I finished my reconstruction of the Sassenberg bull, I now can present another model, this time of the Indian aurochs. 

In the lack of a complete skeleton or an assessment of the known material, this necessarily involved more speculations than the reconstruction of the well-known European subspecies. It is based on several incomplete crania of presumably male specimen, mainly on two skulls which can be seen here. They are not complete, but some morphological differences to the European form can be derived from it. More speculative was the postcranial body, where I simply took the skeleton of the Store-damme aurochs as the base. Not out of carelessness, but because I assume there were no noticeable differences in proportions and overall body shape between the European and the other aurochs subspecies because all of those traits were functional (the short trunk, the long legs, the presence of high spinal processes in the shoulder area forming a hump etc.). The horns are based entirely on the skull displayed in the Geological survey of India, because there are photos in frontal view and from the side of it, giving a good idea of how the horn cores look like in real. The colour is almost entirely speculative. What is likely is that the Indian aurochs had the E+ allele on the Extension locus, and that there was sexual dichromatism to at least some degree. This is the result:

 

For the colour, I used Deshi zebu bulls as a template. Those light areas between the legs are speculative, but not entirely baseless as it could also have been present in the African aurochs and even banteng have lightly coloured “armpits”. Should there ever be evidence against those light areas, I can easily paint over them on my model, but I doubt there ever will be. The horns look very large after adding the horn sheath to the cores, but the Indian aurochs had proportionally larger horns than the European subspecies. And some specimen quite possibly also larger horns in absolute dimensions. I gave my Indian aurochs a larger dewlap than what is likely for the European subspecies, because of thermoregulation and display function. Also the ear shape is that of zebus, because I consider it likely or at least possible that the ear shape of zebus was inherited from the Indian aurochs. This gives the model a more indicine appeal, additionally to the skull shape. All in all, I think it is a quite plausible representation for what the ancestor of zebus possibly might have looked like. 

 

Life reconstruction model of the Sassenberg bull

It has been two months since my latest post. I didn’t publish any posts in those two months because I was busy doing new aurochs models. I started models of the Sassenberg bull, an Indian aurochs, and the Gramsbergen skull fragment. And last week I finished my model of the Sassenberg bull. 

 

As usual, I started the model by working directly with photos of the original bones/skeletal mounts to achieve maximum accuracy. I know photos of the Sassenberg bull skeleton in lateral view, but the postcranial skeleton of this specimen is partly a composite, and thus not the most reliable options when we have more complete skeletons of a single individual. Therefore, I chose the Store-damme bull skeleton as the basis for the postcranial skeleton. I used a photo from the internet which shows the skeleton in a perfectly lateral view, and “corrected” the inaccurate posture of the mount using GIMP. I manipulated the position of the skeletal elements until an accurately assembled skeleton was the result. Using a different bull for the postcranial body is not a big issue, as there was little to no variation in the postcranial proportions of the aurochs, except for the fact that some had longer spinal processes in the shoulder region than others, but not to a huge extent. For the anatomy of the skull/head, I used a photo of the Sassenberg bull. The most idiosyncratic part of an aurochs were its horns, and I used photos from several different angles in order to correctly replicate the horn cores. Then, after sculpting the body, I sculpted the horn sheath on the horn core. This is necessarily only an approximation, as there was no general rule how much the horn sheaths added to the length and thickness of the horn. For the body morphology, I did not use more or less strongly domesticated cattle breeds as an analogue, but chose Spanish fighting cattle individuals as much as living wild bovines. I did so because the morphology of cattle was greatly affected by domestication, and Lidia cattle are probably the least-derived taurine cattle breed. But there is always some variation concerning the bulkiness of the individual, and it also depends on the individual age. A very old bull, be it Lidia or a wild bovine, is certainly more massive than a very young adult bull. I wanted to reconstruct the Sassenberg bull in its “prime time”, perhaps at the age of around 6 to 7 years in domestic cattle age years. I will do more massive “old” bulls in the future as well. 

This is the result: 

The model was sculpted from air-drying modelling clay of the DAS brand and was painted with acrylics. It is 33 cm tall at the withers, the scale to an actual aurochs bull depends on which height you choose for that, as the European aurochs varied from 160 to 200 and perhaps more cm at the withers in life. During sculpting my model, I constantly checked its accuracy by superimposing a photo of the model on the “corrected” photo of the actual skeletal mount, and I can happily say that the model lines up perfectly with the skeleton in lateral view. As for the head and horns, here is a photo of the model next to a photo of the Sassenberg mount in exactly the same position: 

I am very happy with the result and I think it is quite likely that the model is more or less accurate. More reconstruction models are about to follow, the next one will probably be the Indian aurochs. 

 

Portrait of a generic aurochs cow

For today, I have a quick little sketch of an aurochs cow that I painted with GIMP. It is not a reconstruction of a particular specimen, but is a portrait of a generic aurochs cow that aims to show all the traits typical for female European aurochs. 

So far, no "breeding-back" cow of any project looks like that. However, I think it is quite possible to achieve something that resembles this quite closely. Possible breed combinations suitable for this endeavour would be Sayaguesa, Lidia, Chianina/Maltese, Watussi and Maronesa, considering only the best representatives of the respective breeds. One has to keep in mind that "breeding-back" with cattle is a long-term project as they are a slowly reproducing species. A possible breeding scheme could be breeding an F2 of the combination F2 (Sayaguesa x (F2 Lidia x Chianina/Maltese)) x F2 (Sayaguesa (F2 Watussi x Maronesa)). That would take five generations, hence 10-15 years. That is a long time of course, but current breeding projects have been running for a similar time span for now and the results of such a lineage could be quite qualitative. It must be kept in mind that the scheme I just described is only one of very many ways of getting to the goal that is producing a lineage of cattle that resembles the European aurochs to the largest possible degree. 

What a "breeding-back" zebu could look like

All current “breeding-back” projects focus on the European subspecies, but that one is not the only that left living, domesticated descendants. There probably was introgression into African taurine cattle from B. primigenius mauretanicus, and the Indian aurochs was domesticated as well, the results being called zebus. A “breeding-back” initiative for zebus would be very interesting, as they still exhibit some of the autapomorphies of the Indian aurochs. 

However, since the Indian aurochs, also called Narbada ox or as I also like to call it, wild zebu, is less well-documented than the European form, the breeding objectives for such a zebu “breeding-back” project would be less clear. I did a number of posts on the Indian aurochs, the most recent being this one. 

To sum up what the Indian aurochs most likely roughly looked like: 

- smaller than the European form, possibly between 150 and 160 cm withers height in bulls

- proportionally larger, slightly more upright and more wide-ranging horns 

- narrower skull with less prominent eye sockets 

- probably very similar postcranial anatomy, with long legs, short trunk and a shoulder hump (not to be confused with the fleshy indicine hump) 

- perhaps a slightly larger dewlap than the European aurochs 

- a colour possibly similar to that of the European aurochs, perhaps with some minor differences as zebu colours suggest

- very likely sexual dichromatism comparable to the European aurochs and Java banteng 

All of these traits can be achieved or approximated by breeding with less-derived zebu landraces. I would include: 

- some Deshi variants (wildtype colour, useful anatomy) 

- Kankrej (sometimes horns of a useful curvature and size, large-bodied) 

- Deoni (very short trunk and long legs, small udder and slender body) 

- Watussi (horn size and partly curvature)

This set of breeds can result in a zebu that looks more like what their wild ancestor looked like than many or all other zebus breeds. However, it would not yet seize the complete potential to mimic Bos primigenius namadicus as the horns would probably be more or less too upright, the zebus would still have an indicine hump which is unlikely to have been present in the Indian aurochs, they would have little to no sexual dichromatism as this trait is barely present in zebus. The solution to that is, in my opinion, to include: 

- Sayaguesa: for the overall aurochs-like morphology, for the lack of an indicine hump and the presence of a well-developed shoulder hump as in the aurochs 

- Java banteng: for the sexual dichromatism. Many cow-coloured zebus have a colour that is virtually identical to that of the Java banteng minus the white socks and buttocks (reddish-brown colour, dark brown dorsal stripe etc.), suggesting that female Indian aurochs had this colour. Of course it would be possible to include a taurine breed that reliably has sexual dichromatism such as Maronesa, but in these the cows are not nearly as lightly-coloured as in zebus and Java banteng. 

Some might think now that I am crazy suggesting a taurine breed and another species for “breeding-back” focusing on the Indian aurochs. But for once, I am not afraid of using less-derived zebu landraces for “breeding-back” focusing on the European aurochs, since they share some alleles with the European aurochs that taurine cattle have lost and contribute some phenotypically desired traits that taurine cattle do not have. So the reverse is legitimate to me as well, using a taurine landrace to acquire a trait that cannot be achieved with zebus alone, in this case, the lack of an indicine hump and the overall aurochs-like morphology. As for the banteng, I suggest using wild yaks and Java banteng for “breeding-back” focusing on the European subspecies, but only in very small doses and only in experimental herds, used very wisely with efficient selection (and not rampant hybridization in order to see what happens). The wild yak is unnecessary for a zebu project and possibly even counterproductive considering its climatic adaptions, so I’d only go with small doses of Java banteng to breed for the right colour dimorphism. I would backcross the hybrids as often as possible with “pure” zebus until the taurine and banteng influence is reduced to virtually nil genealogically, but always keeping those individuals that display the desired traits. 

I did a painting with GIMP what such a “breeding-back” zebu bull could look like, and this is the result: 

Overall, while the result would still be a domestic animal, it possibly resembles what we know of the Indian aurochs quite well on certain traits, and would be suitable to fill its ecologic niche in Southern Asia.