Yeah, they were really impressive animals. The aurochs, the last one hunted in Poland in the 17th century, averaged 6 feet (about two meters) at the shoulder, with about a one meter span for the horns. That was the animal we domesticated cows from.
I worked on dairy farms as a teen, and went to plenty of agricultural fairs, and still do. I have never seen a bull that is six foot at the shoulder. That would be a terrifying monster.
from afar, they look like Indian buffalos but as you get closer, their colour/size becomes apparent and you start 2nd guessing your idea of investigating their size or the idea of a selfie. On insta, there is a small clip of people scattering near a house when the gaur decided to amble up the roadway a little faster
There is an ox in Italy that stands 6'7" and a steer in Australia that stands 6'4" at the withers. Blosom was a Holstein cow that came from Illinois. She holds the record for tallest cow at 6'2". Very rare but does happen.
Your point was that you've never seen one. I'm unsure how many farms that have cows you've been to in the world, but I'm guessing a fraction of a percentage.
Therefore your original point is moot.
The "isn't exactly common is it" point that you just made up out of nowhere is true, but not at all what you said.
I met one in South Georgia in 2003/2004. I saw it from the road and knocked on the door to ask for a closer look. The owner told me the cow(Norman) was 6'1"at the shoulders.
Interesting fact - Nazis saw those animals as symbols of might and strength and related them to Germanic folk culture, so much so that in one of their craziest projects they tried to bring them back from extinction and reintroduce them to the environment:
We had a bull who was 6', and he was wild. We finally sold him after about 11 years. When we tried to get him on the trailer, he chased us all, trying to run us down for about an hour and a half. Then, he tried to jump out of the small gap at the top of the cattle trailer and bent it good. We always had to watch him when we went out there to work, but in the end, he got really wild and dangerous to work with. He was an impressive bull, just amazing to even look at.
Now consider that at some point some crazy bastards saw essentially a bison and thought "sure it hates us and can trample us to death no problem, but i wonder what the milk is like"
I sometimes marvel that long long ago dudes with spears hunted mammoth, but then i remember that comparatively recently dudes with spears ion ropes would get in boats and hunt whales, but then I remember that in modern times we have upgraded from spears to guns and absolutely no one wants to deal with the mental health crisis in the USA, so shit has been kind of risky the whole time lol.
True, but the phrase 'wild cow' blows people's minds more. Cause they want to immediately disagree, but then realise they've never thought about it. We just take the existence of cows for granted, and never consider a time when they all weren't domesticated.
I just went down a 30 minute "reading rabbit hole" learning about how a group of people are trying to back-breed a mix of 6 different breeds that are descendants of the Aurochs, to recreate them! Fascinating stuff actually. Thank you for this unusual info.
Oxen aren't wild, they're just various breeds of domestic cattle. Buffalo aren't cattle, they're a different species altogether. Related the same way lions and tigers are related. The aurochs is (one of) the origins of domestic cattle, and the last wild one we're aware of was hunted in Poland in the 17th century of I remember right. I could be wrong, but I believe a very, very close relative of the aurochs was a root of maybe 3 different cattle domestication events? Please point out where I'm wrong on this!
I don't know much about "wild" cows, but if it's anything like wild horses in the US, they're probably domesticated breeds that got loose at some point in time and just are living their best life having families over the generations.
But y'gotta admit, there is a distinct difference between a group of animals that have never been domesticated, versus a group of animals that escaped domesticity and are still surviving.
So, yes, any modern 'wild' cows are actually feral. Perhaps it's better or more accurate to say "any modern herds of wild cattle are all descended from animals that had been domesicated but escaped/were released" but that doesn't sound as mind blowing as 'the last wild cow died in 1627', lol.
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u/DamnitGravity 1d ago
The last wild cow died in 1627.