Aurochs

Name and taxonomy

The English name comes from German. Old High German joined ur, a word for wild ox, to ohso, ox, and the result became Aurochs. Roman writers used the Latin word urus from the time of Caesar's Gallic wars. English speakers write the plural as aurochs or aurochsen, and both forms are in use.

Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus proposed the name Bos primigenius in 1825, after he compared aurochs bones with cattle bones. The paper appeared in 1827, the same year the last wild cow died. In 2003 the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature confirmed the name for the wild species. Domestic cattle keep the older name Bos taurus, which Linnaeus gave in 1758 to feral cattle in Poland. Three subspecies are usually named: the Eurasian aurochs, the Indian aurochs and the North African aurochs. Geneticists in China argue for a fourth, the East Asian aurochs, on the basis of its mitochondrial DNA.

Evolution and relatives

The aurochs belonged to the tribe Bovini, which fossil dating places at about 11.7 million years old. The Bos line and the bison line parted between 2.5 and 1.65 million years ago. Its closest living relatives are probably domestic cattle, the zebu, the yak, the gaur and the two bison species. A possible ancestor, Bos acutifrons, left a skull in the Sivalik Hills of India about 2 million years old.

Where the species itself arose is still debated. The oldest firm fossil is a skull from Tunisia about 0.78 million years old, which points to Africa. Other authors favour Asia, because the earliest relatives lived there. In Europe the first secure records come from Ponte Molle in central Italy, about half a million years ago. Britain had aurochs by about 400,000 years ago, and East Asia probably not before 200,000 years ago. Genome studies show that the Indian aurochs split from the rest at least 166,000 years ago.

Appearance

The aurochs was built like an athlete, not like a farm cow. Its legs were long and slim, so its shoulder height came close to the length of its trunk. The skull was long and heavy to carry the horns. Bulls carried thick muscle on the neck and shoulders, which made the front end deeper than the rear. Even a cow in calf showed only a small udder from the side.

Size varied with region, and northern animals were the largest. Bulls in Denmark and Germany stood about 1.8 metres at the shoulder, while Hungarian bulls reached 1.6 metres. Cows stood 1.35 to 1.55 metres. Body mass was about 700 kilograms in later animals, and Middle Pleistocene bulls are estimated at up to 1,500 kg. The horns grew to 80 centimetres long and 10 to 20 cm thick, and curved up, out, forward and in.

No hair was known until the early 1980s, so colour comes from old descriptions and paintings. Calves were probably chestnut. Young bulls turned black, with a pale stripe along the spine, and cows stayed reddish brown. Both sexes had a light muzzle and long curly hair on the forehead. A 16th century observer, Sigismund von Herberstein, described a black animal with a grey line along its back.

Habitat and range

At its widest, the range ran from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the Pacific coast of China. It took in North Africa, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, western Siberia and the Indian subcontinent. In the north it reached the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. Fossil horns from the edge of the Tibetan Plateau lay at 3,400 metres, though most Chinese finds sit below 1,000 m.

During ice ages the European animals withdrew to Iberia, Italy and the Balkans, then spread north again in warm periods. After the last glaciation they reached Denmark and southern Sweden about 12,000 to 11,000 years ago. Holocene aurochs in Europe descended mainly from the Iberian refuge.

The species favoured low, flat country. In forested Europe it used the wet woods along rivers and the marshes beside lakes. In China, pollen found with its bones suggests grassy plains at the edge of woodland. As farms spread, it was pushed into the open ground and forest edges that people also wanted.

Diet and feeding

The aurochs had high-crowned teeth, the mark of a grazer. Its food was probably much like that of free-ranging cattle: grass first, with twigs and acorns in season. Tooth wear tells a more varied story. Danish animals of the early Holocene were pure grazers, but later ones mixed grass with leaves and shoots. Pleistocene animals from Britain browsed more than they grazed.

In autumn the herds ate hard to build fat for winter. Old accounts say the coat shone brightest at that season. Like cattle, it is thought to have drunk daily, which fits its choice of wet lowland.

Behaviour and social life

Aurochs gathered in small herds in winter. In summer they split up and lived alone or in small groups. Web sources describe cow herds with calves and bulls that stayed apart outside the rut, as in wild cattle today. If it behaved like cattle, rank was probably settled by displays and fights, among cows as well as bulls.

Old reports agree on its temper. It moved fast for its size, it attacked when provoked, and it did not usually run from people. Bones from the Jaktorow forest show that rutting bulls could wound each other fatally. A calf stayed with its mother until it could keep pace with the herd on the feeding grounds.

Communication and senses

No one recorded the voice of an aurochs, so its calls are assumed to match those of cattle. Like other wild cattle, it probably lowed to keep a herd together and bellowed in the rut. The pale stripe on a bull's back and the dark coat may have served as signals at a distance. Bulls likely tested the air for cows in season, as bovines do with the flehmen grimace.

The forward-set horns were display and weapon at once. Bull horns curved more strongly than cow horns, which suggests a role in fights between males. As in cattle, smell and hearing were probably sharper than sight.

Reproduction and life cycle

The rut fell in September. Bulls fought hard for cows, and some fights ended in death. Calves arrived in spring, when new grass was ready. By comparison with cattle, gestation probably lasted about nine months and a cow bore one calf. A newborn was probably chestnut and changed colour as it grew, black in bulls and reddish in cows.

A calf followed its mother until it had the strength to travel with the herd. No source records an aurochs lifespan. Secondary web sources estimate 20 to 25 years, which is likely, given the lifespan of wild cattle.

Predators and threats

A healthy adult had little to fear from any animal. Grey wolves and brown bears took calves. In the Holocene, lions, tigers and wolves were probably its main predators across the wider range. Earlier, in the Middle Pleistocene, the European jaguar and the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium hunted it. Cave hyenas ate aurochs in Italy during the Late Pleistocene.

The one predator it could not outlast was the human. Neanderthals butchered aurochs at Biache-Saint-Vaast in France about 240,000 years ago. Hunting continued through the Stone Age, the Roman period and the Middle Ages. Forest clearance between the 9th and 12th centuries removed its last cover in central Europe.

Population and conservation

The species vanished in stages, region by region. The Indian aurochs disappeared some time in the Holocene, probably before written records began there. The youngest African remains date to about 6,000 years ago, though some authors extend it to Roman times. In China it lasted to at least 3,600 years ago, and in Britain to about 3,000 years ago.

By the 13th century only eastern Europe held aurochs, and hunting them became a right of nobles and kings. The last herd lived in the marshy Jaktorow Forest in Poland. It fell from about 50 animals in the mid 16th century to four by 1601. The last cow died of natural causes in 1627. A horn core from Sofia hints that a few survived in Bulgaria into the late 17th or early 18th century.

The IUCN Red List code is EX, extinct. Heinz Heck began crossing cattle breeds in the 1920s to recreate the aurochs, which produced Heck cattle. Later projects, Taurus cattle, the Tauros Programme and the Uruz Project, use southern European breeds. An animal that looks like an aurochs still carries a cattle genome, so these herds are stand-ins, not a revival.

Relationship with humans

Farmers tamed the aurochs twice. About 10,500 years ago, in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria, a founding stock of about 80 animals became taurine cattle. Those cattle followed the Danube and the Mediterranean coast into Europe. In the Indian subcontinent, the Indian aurochs became the zebu about 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. Wild bulls kept breeding with domestic cows in Europe between 9500 and 1000 BC, so some old breeds still carry aurochs genes.

Hunters valued it as much as herders did. Greeks and Romans drank from its horns, and Roman shows displayed captured aurochs in the Colosseum. In the Middle Ages the forehead hair was cut from living bulls and worn in belts, in the belief that it aided fertility in women. A drinking horn from the last bull survives, and one at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge carries the college arms.

A living aurochs would count as dangerous. Descriptions from its last centuries stress speed, a short temper and no fear of people. Today the animal exists only as bones, art and the cattle that carry its blood.

In culture and myth

The aurochs is among the oldest subjects in art. Painters at Chauvet worked about 36,000 years ago and at Lascaux about 21,000 years ago, and both caves show aurochs. Engravings at Qurta on the Nile, at least 15,000 years old, are the oldest known in Africa. Egyptian tombs show royal aurochs hunts, and the last such scene dates to about 1175 BC at Medinet Habu.

In Mesopotamian tradition, the wild bull stood for power and sexual potency. It served as a title of the gods Enlil and Shamash, of King Sennacherib and of the hero Gilgamesh. An aurochs appears on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, built in the 6th century BC. In Greek tradition, Zeus took the form of a bull to carry off Europa, and some writers read that bull as an aurochs.

In the Germanic Nibelungenlied, Sigurd kills four aurochs on a single hunt. In Norse tradition, the rune Uruz means aurochs and stands for strength and vitality. In Moldavian tradition, a prince hunted a great wild ox, and the aurochs head with a star became the state arms. In Polish and Slovak tradition, the Turon, a shaggy black horned figure, joins midwinter carolling, and its name comes from tur, the aurochs. Eastern European speech still calls a big strong man an aurochs.