Gaur

Name and taxonomy

The name gaur comes from Sanskrit, where gaura means white, yellowish or reddish. The same word in Hindi means fair or pale. In Malaysia the animal is the seladang, and in Myanmar the pyaung. Charles Hamilton Smith proposed the name Bison gaurus in 1827, and later authors moved it into Bos or Bibos. The domestic form, the gayal or mithun, had been named earlier. In 2003 the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled that Bos gaurus stands for the wild animal.

Three subspecies were once recognised. B. g. gaurus lives in India, Nepal and Bhutan. Richard Lydekker described B. g. readei from Myanmar in 1903 and B. g. hubbacki from Pahang, Malaysia, in 1907. That split rested on colour and size and is no longer widely accepted. Today two forms are provisionally used, Bos gaurus gaurus in India and Bos gaurus laosiensis in Southeast Asia, until genetic work settles the question.

Evolution and relatives

The gaur belongs to the genus Bos, the true cattle, in the family Bovidae. Its closest relatives are the banteng, Bos javanicus, and the kouprey, Bos sauveli, which is probably extinct. Both also come from Southeast Asia. A 2021 study of nuclear genomes by Sinding and colleagues set out the family tree of the genus. Like other cattle, the gaur is a ruminant with a four-chambered stomach that ferments plant fibre.

The domestic gayal, or mithun, descends in part from the wild gaur. It is kept in the border hills of Assam, Manipur and Nagaland in north-east India, in Bangladesh, in Myanmar and in Yunnan. About 5,200 years ago the wild gaur still ranged as far north as the 34th parallel in China. A domestic cow in Iowa carried the first gaur clone, which arrived on 8 January 2001. The calf looked healthy at birth, but dysentery killed it in under two days.

Appearance

The gaur is a massive, heavily muscled ox. It stands 142 to 220 centimetres at the shoulder, with cows averaging about 168 cm and bulls about 188 cm. Head and body measure 250 to 330 cm, and the tail is 70 to 105 cm long, reaching only to the hocks. Cows weigh 440 to 1,000 kilograms, bulls 588 to 1,500 kg. In a sample of 13 Indian animals, bulls averaged about 1,500 kg and cows had a median near 700 kg. Bulls are about a quarter larger than cows.

A ridge runs along the back from the shoulders to mid-spine, so the shoulders can stand 12 cm above the rump. Long spines on the vertebrae of the forequarters make the ridge. At the top of the hump an average bull is just under 200 cm tall, and his girth behind the shoulders is about 277 cm. A fold of skin, the dewlap, hangs from the throat and chest. The ears are very large, the hooves narrow and pointed.

An adult bull is dark brown and turns almost black with age. The forehead and crown are ash grey or dirty white, the muzzle is pale, and the lower legs are white or tan. Cows and young bulls are paler, sometimes with a reddish tinge, most of all in dry, open country. The hair is short, fine and glossy, and old bulls grow thin on the back. Both sexes have horns that grow out from the sides of the head and curve upward, 60 to 115 cm long. The horns are pale green or yellow with black tips, and a high ridge of bone stands between them on the forehead.

Habitat and range

The gaur once ranged across mainland South and Southeast Asia: Nepal, India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China. Today the range is broken into pieces, and the species is gone from Sri Lanka and Peninsular Malaysia. GBIF holds records from 17 countries, but that count includes zoos and does not show the native range.

The gaur keeps mostly to evergreen, semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forest, with drier deciduous forest at the edges. Good habitat means large, quiet forest, hills below 1,500 to 1,800 metres, water, and plenty of grass, bamboo, shrubs and trees. It is recorded from sea level up to at least 2,800 m. Lowland forest is probably the best habitat, and the taste for hills may only reflect the loss of the plains to farms.

India holds most of the world's gaur, with an estimate of 12,000 to 22,000 in the mid 1990s. The Western Ghats are the stronghold, above all the Wayanad, Nagarhole, Mudumalai and Bandipur complex. Nagarahole and Bandipur each hold about 2,000 animals, Tadoba Andhari over 1,000, and Bhadra over 800. In Nepal the Chitwan herd grew from 188 to 368 animals between 1997 and 2016, and Parsa held 112. Thailand had fewer than 1,000 in the 1990s, Laos up to 200, and Yunnan in China perhaps 600 to 800. In Cambodia's Keo Seima sanctuary, surveys found about 500 gaur in 2010 but only 33 in 2020.

Diet and feeding

The gaur both grazes and browses, and it prefers the upper parts of plants: leaf blades, stems, seeds and flowers. In one survey in Goa's Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary and Mollem National Park, gaur ate 32 plant species. They took herbs, young shoots, flowers and the fruit of the elephant apple, and they liked leaves best. In winter and the monsoon they choose fresh, fine grasses and legumes such as tick clover. They also browse shrubs, including karvy, Indian boxwood and the chaste tree.

In summer, when grass dries out, gaur strip and eat the bark of teak and the bark and fruit of cashew. Teak bark is rich in calcium, at 22,400 parts per million, and in phosphorus, at 400 ppm. Bark may therefore fill a gap in minerals as well as in bulk. Feeding fills most of the day, with peaks between 6:30 and 8:30 in the morning and 17:30 and 18:45 in the evening. In the heat of midday the herd rests in the shade of big trees. Gaur drink every day but do not seem to wallow.

Behaviour and social life

Where people leave them alone, gaur are active by day. Where the forest is disturbed they have turned largely nocturnal. In central India few are seen on open ground after 8 o'clock in the morning. In the dry season herds gather in small areas, and they scatter into the hills when the monsoon arrives.

In January and February a herd holds eight to 11 animals, one of them a bull. In April or May more bulls join for the mating season, and a bull may move from herd to herd. By May or June the bulls leave again, to live alone or in bull groups. A herd walks 2 to 5 kilometres a day inside a home range that it does not defend. Herds sometimes merge into gatherings of 50 or more.

An old cow, the matriarch, leads the herd. Bulls settle rank by size, and no serious fight between bulls has been recorded. In quiet parts of India the gaur is timid, and an alarmed herd crashes off through the forest at speed. In Southeast Asia and South India, where gaur are used to people, locals call them bold. They graze beside domestic cattle and sometimes kill them in fights. A bull may charge without warning, most often in summer, when heat and biting insects shorten its temper.

Communication and senses

A bull in the rut gives a clear, ringing mating call that carries more than 1.6 kilometres. The alarm call is a whistling snort, and a gaur also gives a low moo like a domestic cow. A high whistle warns the rest of the herd that danger is near.

Like other cattle, the gaur relies on smell and hearing more than on sight, and its very large ears suit a life in dense forest. The size and colour of a bull probably signal his rank to other bulls, since fights are rare.

Reproduction and life cycle

Gaur mature in their second or third year. They can breed in any month, but most mating falls between December and June. Bulls wander widely in the peak season in search of receptive cows, and each bull mates with many cows. A cow carries her calf for about 275 days, slightly shorter than a domestic cow's pregnancy.

She gives birth to one calf, rarely two. The calf is weaned at seven to 12 months. Adults ring the calves when a tiger appears, and that defence is the young animal's best protection. A captive gaur can live up to 30 years. The generation length used by the IUCN is 24 to 30 years for three generations, or about 8 to 10 years each.

Predators and threats

Size and power leave the gaur with few natural enemies apart from people. Leopards, packs of dholes and large mugger crocodiles sometimes take an unguarded calf or a sick animal. Only the tiger and the saltwater crocodile are known to kill an adult, and the crocodile now rarely shares its range. A crocodile would probably need to be a male over 3.7 metres and 300 kilograms to kill a healthy adult gaur.

Tigers mostly hunt young or weak gaur, but they have killed healthy bulls of at least 1,000 kg. When a tiger shows itself, the adults form a circle around the calves. A tiger depends on ambush, so it almost always gives up once it is seen and faced. In Malaysia a herd ringed a calf that a tiger had killed and kept the cat from its meal. A gaur can kill a tiger in self-defence.

The real threat is the poacher. In Laos gaur are shot for trade and for the pot. Vietnamese poachers sought them in the 1990s for their commercial value. In Thailand poaching for meat and trophies is severe. Forest clearance shrinks and splits the range, and the loss of the plains has pushed the animal into the hills.

Population and conservation

The IUCN Red List has rated the gaur Vulnerable since 1986. The 2016 assessment put the world population at a maximum of 21,000 mature animals. It found a decline of more than 70% in Indochina and Malaysia over the last three generations, a span of 24 to 30 years. Populations in well-protected reserves appear stable. India, Bhutan and Bangladesh together hold an estimated 23,000 to 34,000 animals of all ages.

The picture is worst in Indochina. Laos held up to 200 gaur in protected areas in the mid 1990s, and a decade of camera traps later found none. In Cambodia's Mondulkiri Province, up to 1,000 may have survived to 2010 across more than 15,000 square kilometres of forest. By 2020 transects in the Sre Pok and Phnom Prich sanctuaries met 0 to 5 animals per 10 km. Vietnam's population is poorly known and may be in serious decline.

The gaur sits on CITES Appendix I, which bans commercial trade across borders. Every range state protects it by law. Its future depends on keeping the forest plants it prefers, so protecting its historic habitat matters more than any single measure.

Relationship with humans

People have lived beside the gaur for thousands of years, and they part-domesticated it as the gayal or mithun. The mithun is still kept in the hills of north-east India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Yunnan. Wild gaur walk into fields to graze beside village cattle and sometimes kill them. Farmers lose crops to a herd, and a charging bull can kill a person.

Hunters once prized the gaur as a trophy, and poachers still sell its meat and horns. Today the animal is likely a draw for wildlife tourists in the tiger reserves of southern and central India. Zoos keep small numbers, and the cloning attempt of 2001 showed how much effort science will spend on the species.

In culture and myth

Two Indian states, Goa and Bihar, list the gaur as their state animal. In Goa it stands for the wild forest of the Western Ghats and for strength. The Sanskrit root of its name, gaura, describes a pale or reddish colour and was also used for a kind of water buffalo.

Wildlife blogs suggest that tribal communities in the forest belts of India treat the gaur as a sign of strength, prosperity and pride. Some of those stories are said to cast the animal as a guardian of the forest. The same sources suggest that a few Hindu communities hold the gaur sacred, but they name no scripture. Old Indian art may show the gaur, though most cattle in temple carving are domestic zebu.

Among the peoples of north-east India the mithun, its half-domestic descendant, is said to be a measure of wealth and a wedding gift. The wild gaur is less a creature of myth than a fact of the forest: a beast that even the tiger treats with caution.