Aurochs

I was reading a book about food, specifically On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee, and there was a description of aurochs - those critters that seem to horn in on every cave painting. As we were collectively so perplexed by Art History's references to these critters, I thought I'd share this description.

The Cow, European and Indian. The immediate ancestor of Bos taurus, the common dairy cow, was Bos primigenius, the long-horned wild auroch. This massive animal, standing 6 feet/180 cm at the shoulder with horns 6.5 inches/17 cm in diameter, roamed Asia, Europe, and North Africa in the form of two overlapping races: the humpless European-African form, and a humped central Asian form, the zebu. The European race was domesticated in the Middle East around 8000 BCE, the heat- and parasite-tolerant zebu in south-central Asia around the same time, and an African variant of the European race in the Sahara, probably somewhat later.

In its principle homeland, central and south India, the zebu has been valued as much for its muscle power as its milk, and remains rangy and long-horned. The European dairy cow has been highly selected for milk production at least since 3000 BCE, when confinement to stalls in urban Mesopotamia and poor winter feed led to a reduction in body and horn size. To this day, the prized dairy breeds - Jerseys, Guernseys, Brown Swiss, Holsteins - are short-horned cattle that put their energy into making milk rather than muscle and bone. The modern zebu is not as copious a producer as the European breeds, but its milk is 25% richer in butterfat.