So, I have done 170 editions of animal of the week since the end of 2004, and yes, it is a well acknowledged fact that 52 weeks x 7 years far exceeds 170. A far more worrying statistic is that some BOFFINS recently estimated that there are 8.7 million species of plant and animal species in the world, and about 7.7 million of those were animals. So, if I were to feature every single animal that probably exists in the world as an Animal of the Week it would take me almost 150 000 years to do so. And that would rely on my doing one a week! Pigs (
already done, so can't even tick a cheaky one off the list) might fly.
Right, I'd better crack on.
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| Yvonne |
This week's animal is Yvonne the cow, or rather, in her honour. Given that I have so many animals to cover it's a bit foolish to do one that
already got a look in (day 8 of course), but who can resist? Yvonne's excursion around the woods of Bavaria captured the headlines in Germany and beyond when she escaped the truck to the abattoir on May 24, and her capture captured more headlines on September 2, when she was captured. At first the farmer wanted Yvonne back, then German authorities wanted her shot. Then animal lovers around the world wanted her alive, and authorities decided to leave her be. Thankfully Yvonne was taken alive given a tasty dose of tranqs when she went to join another farmer's herd for company. The chap who caught her got a 100 000 euro award from a German Newspaper, and
Gut Aiderbichl animal sanctuary in Austria, paid 600 euros to have her as a star attraction.
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| Aurochs on the rocks at Lascaux, Prof Sax |
Yvonne's frolics in the Bavarian forests echoed those of her wild forebears. Cows are descended from aurochs (
Bos primigenius) -- enormous wild cattle that from 250 000 years ago roamed from Portugal to Vladivostok and from Scandinavia to Egypt and Kerala. The ancient cattle feature heavily in Stone Age cave paintings and were likely important in the folklore of Eurasian hunter gatherers. Sometime not too many millennia after 10 000 years ago when sedentary human civilisations began to grow, they were one of the first animals to be domesticated. At least two populations of wild aurochs were domesticated, one in India giving rise to the humped cattle or zebu, and one in the middle east or Europe giving rise to cows like Yvonne. Habitat loss, hunting, and diseases spread by domestic cattle caused the populations of aurochs to dwindle and by the early 1600s just a small population remained in the forests of central Europe, the last individual died in 1627 in Poland.
Having survived into fairly recent history we've good accounts of what aurochs looked like -- 1.75 m at the shoulder (the largest domestic cattle reach about 1.5 m); the males black with a light stripe down their spine, the females red; and long lyre shaped forward sweeping horns. The genes of aurochs remain in domestic cattle, and in the early 1900s the Heck brothers tried to reawaken those genes by crossing together some of the more primitive European domestic breeds by breeding Heck cattle, a recreated aurochs, now used in some rewilding projects. The wild gene obviously still runs strong in some of the tamer domestic cows without this back-breeding, as Yvonne clearly shows.
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| What the Heck?! Walter Frisch |
Some people have suggested that Yvonne could sense that she was about to be packed off to the abattoir and that is why she 'went aurochs'. It's a common story that some animals destined for the butcher's slab
can sense their fate -- as a child I once sported an impressive black eye after a
sheep we were trying to load onto a truck to the slaughterhouse leapt
over my head (at least that's what my parents had me tell social
services).
