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| Domestic yak |
The large physical size and herd mentality of bovines makes them ideal subjects for domestication, especially as beasts of burden. So much so in fact, that not only have true cattle been domesticated
at least twice, but no less than four other species of bovine have also been domesticated on a wide scale since ancient times. (I am ignoring here the fact that bison, for example, have been farmed for their meat in recent decades, and am only considering "traditionally" domesticated animals). Unlike true cattle, the wild ancestors of these animals remain alive - all four of them in Asia.
One of the more familiar of these "other" domesticated bovines is the
yak (
Bos grunniens), which is descended from... well, the
wild yak (
Bos mutus). Today, wild yak are found only on the Tibetan Plateau, although in medieval times they may have lived much further north and west. One small population is known to cross the border into Ladakh in far northern India at certain times of the year, but they are otherwise extinct outside of China, having vanished from Nepal as recently as the 1990s.
