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The Topsfield Fair closed yesterday, but I don't feel bad about not getting around to posting this until today, because it was a one-day event, anyway.
The aurochs was the wild ancestor of all modern cattle. There are other large domesticated quadrupeds which aren't descended from the aurochs, like the water buffalo, but if you're talking about cows, or even zebu, their ancestor was the aurochs. It was big. Up to six feet at the shoulder for the Northern European ones. Modern cattle top out at about five feet at the shoulder, and most are smaller. Aurochs were up to twice the weight of modern cattle, pure muscle, and mean. We're talking a ton and a half, 1360 kg.
Domesticating them involved shrinking them and making them nicer. As domestication of large wild animals often does.
The aurochs went extinct in the 17th century -- the last recorded aurochs was in Poland in 1671, I think.
So, anyway.
At the Topsfield Fair, they had an ox-pulling contest. A contest where oxen pull stuff, that is, not a contest where something tries to pull oxen. Because that latter thing would be SUCH an exercise in futility.
See, oxen are bigger than other cattle. I don't know why. There's a way to castrate male animals such that they end up bigger and stronger than intact animals, and I don't know WHY it works that way. But it does.
So I'm looking at these oxen. And the weight class I'm looking at is the 3000 lb class. Who are six feet tall at the shoulder. And for whatever reason, their horn configuration and body shape is pretty much exactly the same as the aurochs. The coloration is different, apparently.
But I realize that I'm looking at cattle that are pretty much exactly the size and shape of largest animal native to Europe in the past thousand years.
For what it's worth, the TaurOs Programme is an attempt to back-breed an aurochs-like breed of cattle that can be let loose in European wild-ecology parks to do the kind of megafauna herbivore ecological eating that big herbivores do. They're not REALLY making aurochs -- that's not really possible, and, anyway, they're trying to breed things that aren't as mean (they could be using Spanish fighting bulls, for instance, and they're very, very not).
But, yeah. I did something that was very nearly watching extinct megafauna.
The aurochs was the wild ancestor of all modern cattle. There are other large domesticated quadrupeds which aren't descended from the aurochs, like the water buffalo, but if you're talking about cows, or even zebu, their ancestor was the aurochs. It was big. Up to six feet at the shoulder for the Northern European ones. Modern cattle top out at about five feet at the shoulder, and most are smaller. Aurochs were up to twice the weight of modern cattle, pure muscle, and mean. We're talking a ton and a half, 1360 kg.
Domesticating them involved shrinking them and making them nicer. As domestication of large wild animals often does.
The aurochs went extinct in the 17th century -- the last recorded aurochs was in Poland in 1671, I think.
So, anyway.
At the Topsfield Fair, they had an ox-pulling contest. A contest where oxen pull stuff, that is, not a contest where something tries to pull oxen. Because that latter thing would be SUCH an exercise in futility.
See, oxen are bigger than other cattle. I don't know why. There's a way to castrate male animals such that they end up bigger and stronger than intact animals, and I don't know WHY it works that way. But it does.
So I'm looking at these oxen. And the weight class I'm looking at is the 3000 lb class. Who are six feet tall at the shoulder. And for whatever reason, their horn configuration and body shape is pretty much exactly the same as the aurochs. The coloration is different, apparently.
But I realize that I'm looking at cattle that are pretty much exactly the size and shape of largest animal native to Europe in the past thousand years.
For what it's worth, the TaurOs Programme is an attempt to back-breed an aurochs-like breed of cattle that can be let loose in European wild-ecology parks to do the kind of megafauna herbivore ecological eating that big herbivores do. They're not REALLY making aurochs -- that's not really possible, and, anyway, they're trying to breed things that aren't as mean (they could be using Spanish fighting bulls, for instance, and they're very, very not).
But, yeah. I did something that was very nearly watching extinct megafauna.