Animal A Day!

Today's animal has some pretty amazing headgear-- just look at it! The Ankole-Watusi breed of Cattle is known for it's massive horns that can grow more than 8ft from tip to tip. Those horns are used both for defense, and for helping to keep the animal cool in the warm climate it originates from. This particular breed originated in Africa, and pictures of its ancestors (Sanga Cattle) go back to the days of the Pyramids. The reason for the hyphenated name is because groups in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi have different names for the same animal. Hyphenating was the easiest naming option! Traditionally, Ankole-Watusi cattle were used mostly for their milk. That is because in many places they held more value to their owners alive than dead. Today, there is a registry for the breed in the United Sates, and its purpose is being expanded on. The Registry hopes to promote this breed, and to keep it from extinction. IUCN Status : Domesticated Location : Africa Size : Weight aro...

The Texas Longhorn is a cattle breed known for its impressively large horns-- some bulls have spreads of close to 7ft! Texas Longhorn The origins of the breed actually date back to Christopher Columbus. Early trips to "the New World" introduced Spanish Cattle to the continent. Many of these Cattle turned feral in Texas and other eventual southern states for a few hundred years, and were re-domesticated in the early 19th century. Those cattle were interbred with English stock from the East Coast, and the Texas Longhorn breed was born. Thanks to the mixed Spanish and English ancestry, the Texas Longhorn comes in many, many different color varieties. You'll find them in grey, brown, red, black, and white. Some are solidly colored, others have patches, while others have speckles. Quite the color palette! They also range in size, and can weigh anywhere from 700 to 1500lbs! Texas Longhorns are primarily bred for their meat, though they are occasionally used for dairy ...

Heck Cattle Way back we talked about the Aurochs , a now-extinct species of Cattle that once lived throughout Europe.  The Heck Cattle are an attempt to recreate the massive Aurochs by back breeding the animals until they resemble their ancestral form. This project isn't recent... it actually started back in the 1920s in Germany. Two brothers, Heinz and Lutz Heck , developed programs in Munich and Berlin respectively. Interestingly, these programs were, in part, supported by Nazi leader Hermann Göring. The two brothers used different breeds in their methodology-- Heniz used Friseians, Hungarian Greys, Scottish Highlands, and a handful of other breeds, while Lutz focused more on French and Spanish Fighting Cattle. The results were actually very similar, producing calves in only a few generations that looked like the images of Aurochs from old cave paintings and representations. However, after WWII the Berlin line was lost. There has always been controversy o...

Pseudoryx nghetinhensis The Saola is a truly amazing animal, but it could be extinct very, very soon. What makes the species so remarkable is that it was only first discovered in 1992, which is an astoundingly long time for a 200+lb bovid to remain hidden away from the world. Also amazing? Scientists have documented less than half a dozen in the wild. The species was first described from horns collected by hunters in the Annamite Mountain Range in Laos and Vietnam. The straight, Unicorn-like horns gives the species it's name, which translates to "spindle horns" in Vietnamese. They have brown coats and white markings on the face. The animals have been seen alive by local people in the remote mountainous forests close by, and some have even been captured. Unfortunately, all Saola that have been captured alive have done very poorly. So far 11 have been captured, the most recent in August 2010. All perished, and we still don't know how many are actually out ...

Dzo Dzo is the Tibetan name for hybrid creatures that are the cross between Yaks and domesticated Cattle. The name technically refers to only the male crosses (females are reffered to as Dzomo), but for the sake of ease we'll use Dzo today for a general term. Dzo are used as pack animals in Tibet and other mountainous regions because they can survive at high elevations as well as Yaks do, but have more strength and size due to the Cattle ancestry. In general, these hybrids have the faces of Cattle, but the shaggy coats of Yaks. As with many hybrids, a downside to the Dzo is that the males are sterile. Females are not always sterile though, which means that the animals can be bred back to other Cattle and Yaks, creating 3/4 crosses. It is speculated that many supposed purebred Yaks and Cattle actually have genes from the other species, due to this ability to back-cross. Status :  Hybrid Location :   Asia Size :  Weight around...

Bos sauveli ( the only captive Kouprey) Meet the Kouprey , one of the rarest hoofed mammals still alive on our planet-- in fact, it may actually extinct. These large bovines are close relatives  to the Guar and the extinct Aurochs, and could be found in only a very tiny range that includes parts of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Koupreys live in partially forested areas, where they live in small herds and feed on grasses during the night time. (It is believed they may have been diurnal once, but they adapted to avoid human contact). They have long, narrow bodies, very long legs, and have small humps on their back. Males and females can be told apart by their size, their horns, and their necks. Males have larger bodies and much larger horns that branch upwards. They also have dewlaps on their necks. Females are smaller, have shorter curved horns, and no dewlap. The Kouprey was only first discovered in 1937, and the only captive specimen was taken that same...

Zubron Meet the Zubron, a hybrid creature that is the result of crosses between European Bison (Wisent) and Cattle. Think " Beefalo " but with a longer history and a slightly different Bison in the mix. The first Zubron dates all the way back to 1847 , when a Polish man named Leopold Walicki created crosses between male Wisent and female Cattle. The result was a hardy animal that was less susceptible to disease. Other benefits? Zubron would graze on less desirable tracts of land that didn't need a huge farm infrastructure. They also required far less human interaction. Downsides? First generation males were infertile, though the females weren't. So a female Zubron could be bred back to either Cattle or Wisent, creating fertile male offspring. Zubron breeding continued through the 19th century and into the 20th. By 1958 the work was taken on by the Polish Academy of Sciences, and several dozen animals were born in those first few years. In 1969 ...

Bison antiquus fossil at the Page Museum Meet the ancestor of the modern North American Bison- the Antique or Ancient Bison. These huge herbivores were some of the most common mammals found on the continent during the end of the last Ice Age. Antique Bison themselves most likely evolved from the Eurasian Steppe Bison that had crossed over to North America through the Bering Land Bridge. The species then spread across the entire continent , and could be found from Canada to Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, though they were most abundant in the American Southwest. American Bison and Antique Bison share some differences. The Antique Bison had a larger body size overall, and was about 1/3 larger than its descendant. They also had much large shoulder humps, and longer horns. Antique Bison went extinct around 10,000 years ago. The spread of the modern Bison most like contributed to their decline. Fossils have been found at numerous sites, sometimes ...

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... eight maids a'milking... Milking Shorthorn And now we come to the half the song proliferated by humans in various occupations. And because this is "Animal-A-Day" and not "Random-Profession-For-Hire-A-Day," we'll be getting a bit creative for the remainder of the entries. Though to be honest, today's entry isn't that far out of the box. Milking maids? A dairy cow? Not altogether unexpected. At any rate, the Milking Shorthorn, which is also referred to as the Dairy Shorthorn depending on the country, is a relatively old breed of Cattle that was developed as an offshoot of the Shorthorn Breed. The Shorthorn and Milking Shorthorn have the same ancestry , but have been adapted to serve different purposes. Milking Shorthorns were fist developed in Northern England during the late 18th century, and were exported to the United States, New Zealand, and Australia during the next few decades. ...

Banteng Cow and Calf Banteng are wild cattle that can be found in South and Southeast Asia. They have even been domesticated in some parts of their range, and it is estimated that there are around 1.5million domesticated individuals in the world, as compared to only a few thousand of their wild counterpart. In their domestic form, they are often referred to as Bali Cattle. Banteng Bull Though there are many Banteng in captivity, their wild populations are dwindling, and the species is considered to be Endangered . Hunting, habitat loss, and interbreeding with Cattle have caused the population to decline, and they are becoming regionally extinct. One neat little tidbit about the Banteng involves their coat coloration . Males and females are sexually dimorphic; though they are both born with reddish coats, over time the females will stay red and develop white stockings, while the males' coats will darken to an almost black color. Another e...

Domestic Yak Yaks are an interesting animal to cover. Why? Because, like the Bactrian Camel, they are both wild and domesticated. Native to the high Himalayan Mountains, Yaks were domesticated around 3,000 of years ago, and these individuals make up a vast bulk of the overall population. The wild Yaks are becoming quite rare. Their population is  decreasing  and there are estimated to be around 10,000 remaining. Domesticated Yaks are huge animals, with the largest males weighing close to 2,000lbs. Interestingly, the name "Yak" comes from a Tibetan word that refers to only males of the species, but its since come to be used for both sexes. Yaks are used for meat, milk, transportation, hair, and hides. Their dung is even used as fuel, which is fantastic in a high altitude area void of trees. Yaks have some pretty cool physical attributes. For example, they have red blood cells that are half the size of those found in cattle... but they have 3 ...

Bos primigenius Aurochs were gigantic wild cattle that roamed about Asia, Europe, and North Africa for hundreds of thousands of years. Likenesses of them are found in prehistoric art , and they are the descendants of many of our modern cattle. However, the last one died in a Polish nature reserve in 1627. The causes for their decline included hunting by humans, and competition with domestic cattle. But then along came science. Researchers in Europe are now hoping to recreate the Aurochs using a technique called "back-breeding." This process includes looking at a mapped out Aurochs genome and attempting to isolate specific traits that can be found in modern cattle. There has been a little bit of taxonomic confusion surrounding the Aurochs. Both Bos primigenius and Bos taurus  have been used, with the former winning out on the "named first" game. Many domesticated Cattle are treated as a subspecies to the Aurochs, being given the name B. p. taurus . IUCN ...