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| Taurine bull |
Cattle (
Bos taurus) are among the most familiar of herbivorous domestic animals. According to recent estimates, there are well
over a billion of them on the planet today, found almost anywhere that humans practice agriculture. In the west, we are familiar with them as a source of beef or milk, but, in many parts of the world, they are still used primarily as draft animals ("oxen"). Indeed, they are important enough that Christopher Columbus first brought them to America in 1493, on only his second voyage to the New World.
But one unusual thing about cattle is that there is no living wild form of the animal. There are still wolves and wildcats,
wild goats,
wild sheep, and wild boars... but there are no wild cattle. They're not unique in this respect, to be sure, and there are a few populations of
feral cattle around the world (that is animals
living in the wild whose ancestors were domesticated), but it's a fairly exclusive club nonetheless. And, obviously, it wasn't always the case.
