What was an auroch? An auroch is a type of wild cattle that went extinct during the Bronze Age. It is probably the wild ancestor of modern domestic cattle. There is a lot of talk about trying to bring aurochs back from extinction, but I don’t know if that will happen. The word auroch comes from the Old German “urohso”, which meant “wild ox”.
Aurochs were a bovine herbivore, similar to a modern wild cow. The males (bulls) grew to about 180 cm and the females (cows) grew to about 155 cm. That is a fair bit taller than modern cows. Larger males were probably about 1 ton. That is a little bit heavier than modern bison. They evolved in Asia in the Middle Pleistocene, which was about 800,000 years ago, and they wandered west to colonize most of Europe. Aurochs had large horns, sometimes a meter long, which they probably used for defense. Aurochs were fast and incredibly strong, similar in strength to a modern ox. They didn’t have many natural predators because of that strength and those horns. Wolves and other carnivores did prey on them, but they often went for the young and the sick. Because of this, aurochs didn’t have a lot of fear and they were apparently not scared of humans. Aurochs were a key part of the ecosystem and they were able to live on almost any kind of land.
The aurochs were pretty much extinct by 7,000 years ago, but they weren’t hunted to extinction, as the giant sloth was. So, what happened to them? Well, early humans did hunt and eat them. There is a lot of evidence of this. However, the majority of aurochs were wiped out through lack of habitat and they were bred out. Their habitat was destroyed because it was about this time that agriculture began to take over. People realized that by burning down forests they could find the animals more easily and they realized that if they farmed, they didn’t have to struggle so much to find food. Before farming, they spent almost all of their time trying to find enough food to survive. After agriculture was discovered, they had time to do other things and society flourished. The expanding agricultural land removed the grazing land of the aurochs. The second reason was that they were domesticated and bred out of existence.
With the advent of agriculture was the knowledge that keeping animals meant there was always a food source. Animals like cattle, also provide things like milk, cheese, and yoghurt as well, along with hides. People domesticated the auroch about 10,000 years ago. They probably chose the auroch because they live in small groups and are not that likely to wander off if they have food. Bison, for example, travel in herds of tens of thousands and don’t like to stay in one place. There are not many fences that can keep in a herd of bison. Then, once the auroch had been domesticated, people started to selectively breed them to make the animals better to manage. Over the next two to three thousand years, the auroch remains that have been found get smaller and smaller until they are the same size as modern cows. Smaller animals are much easier to farm. Gradually, over time, the aurochs disappeared and the cattle we have today were left. Aurochs are the ancestors of all modern cattle. It is thought that all cattle can be traced back to just 80 female aurochs that were domesticated.
There is some talk about trying to bring aurochs back from extinction. However, this doesn’t mean in a Jurassic Park style way by finding the DNA of an auroch and cloning it. It is a system called back-breeding. It works in exactly the same way that the aurochs became modern cattle, only in the opposite direction. Cows are chosen with attributes that aurochs probably had and, using selective breeding, over several generations, aurochs are recreated. They won’t be exactly the same as aurochs because no one has ever seen an auroch, but they will be pretty close. They will also have some of their DNA as well because strains of their DNA run through all cattle that are alive today. One such project has created an animal that they call Tauros. They have created several hundred cattle that are almost as large as aurochs and their program is ongoing. It will be interesting to see what they end up with. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://www.theextinctions.com/articles-1/ns0atubs8qd60o16itraa69zhw7e0w
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-did-aurochs-live
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs
https://www.mossy.earth/rewilding-knowledge/aurochs-rewilding
https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/news/aurochsen
https://rewildingeurope.com/rewilding-in-action/wildlife-comeback/tauros
Image By EU – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2846254