Cattle were originally identified as three separate species:
Bos taurus, the European or "taurine" cattle (including similar types
from Africa and Asia); Bos indicus, the zebu; and the extinct Bos primigenius,
the aurochs. The aurochs is ancestral to both zebu and taurine cattle.[citation
needed] Now, these have been reclassified as one species, Bos taurus, with
three subspecies: Bos taurus primigenius, Bos taurus indicus, and Bos taurus
taurus.
Complicating the matter is the ability of cattle to
interbreed with other closely related species. Hybrid individuals and even
breeds exist, not only between taurine cattle and zebu (such as the sanga
cattle, Bos taurus africanus), but also between one or both of these and some
other members of the genus Bos – yaks (the dzo or yattlebanteng, and gaur.
Hybrids such as the beefalo breed can even occur between taurine cattle and
either species of bison, leading some authors to consider them part of the
genus Bos, as well The hybrid origin of some types may not be obvious – for
example, genetic testing of the Dwarf Lulu breed, the only taurine-type cattle
in Nepal, found them to be a mix of taurine cattle, zebu, and yak However,
cattle cannot successfully be hybridized with more distantly related bovines
such as water buffalo or African buffalo.
The aurochs originally ranged throughout Europe, North
Africa, and much of Asia. In historical times, its range became restricted to
Europe, and the last known individual died in Masovia, Poland, in about Breeders
have attempted to recreate cattle of similar appearance to aurochs by crossing
traditional types of domesticated cattle, creating the Heck cattle breed.
Cattle did not originate as the term for bovine animals. It
was borrowed from Anglo-Norman catel, itself from medieval Latin capitale
'principal sum of money, capital', itself derived in turn from Latin caput
'head'. Cattle originally meant movable personal property, especially livestock
of any kind, as opposed to real property (the land, which also included wild or
small free-roaming animals such as chickens — they were sold as part of the
land).[10] The word is a variant of chattel (a unit of personal property) and
closely related to capital in the economic sense. The term replaced earlier
Old English feoh 'cattle, property', which survives today as fee (cf. German:
Vieh, Dutch: vee, Gothic: faihu).
The word "cow" came via Anglo-Saxon cū (plural
cȳ), from Common Indo-European gʷōus (genitive gʷowés) = "a bovine
animal", compare Persian gâv, Sanskrit go-, Welsh buwch The plural cȳ
became ki or kie in Middle English, and an additional plural ending was often
added, giving kine, kien, but also kies, kuin and others. This is the origin of
the now archaic English plural, "kine". The Scots language singular
is coo or cou, and the plural is "kye".
In older English sources such as the King James Version of
the Bible, "cattle" refers to livestock, as opposed to
"deer" which refers to wildlife. "Wild cattle" may refer to
feral cattle or to undomesticated species of the genus Bos. Today, when used
without any other qualifier, the modern meaning of "cattle" is
usually restricted to domesticated bovines. In general, the same words are used
in different parts of the world, but with minor differences in the definitions.
The terminology described here contrasts the differences in definition between
the United Kingdom and other British-influenced parts of world such as Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States
An "intact" (i.e., not castrated) adult male is
called a bull. A wild, young, unmarked bull is known as a "micky" in
Australia. An unbranded bovine of either sex is called a
"maverick" in the USA and Canada.
An adult female that has had a calf (or two, depending on
regional usage) is a cow.
A young female before she has had a calf of her own and
is under three years of age is called a heifer (/ˈhɛfər/ hef-ər).A young
female that has had only one calf is occasionally called a first-calf heifer.
Young cattle of both sexes are called calves until they are
weaned, then weaners until they are a year old in some areas; in other areas,
particularly with male beef cattle, they may be known as feeder calves or
simply feeders. After that, they are referred to as yearlings or stirksif
between one and two years of age.[
A castrated male is called a steer in the United States;
older steers are often called bullocks in other parts of the world,but in
North America this term refers to a young bull. Piker bullocks are micky bulls
(uncastrated young male bulls) that were caught, castrated and then later
lost. In Australia, the term "Japanese ox" is used for grain-fed
steers in the weight range of 500 to 650 kg that are destined for the Japanese
meat trade. In North America, draft cattle under four years old are called
working steers. Improper or late castration on a bull results in it becoming a
coarse steer known as a stag in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.In some
countries, an incompletely castrated male is known also as a rig.
A castrated male (occasionally a female or in some areas a
bull) kept for draft purposes is called an ox (plural oxen); "ox" may
also be used to refer to some carcass products from any adult cattle, such as
ox-hide, ox-blood, oxtail, or ox-liver.
A springer is a cow or heifer close to calving.
In all cattle species, a female twin of a bull usually
becomes an infertile partial intersex, and is called a freemartin.
Neat (horned oxen, from which neatsfoot oil is derived),
beef (young ox) and beefing (young animal fit for slaughtering) are obsolete
terms, although poll, pollard or polled cattle are still terms in use for
naturally hornless animals, or in some areas also for those that have been
disbudded or dehorned.
Cattle raised for human consumption are called beef cattle.
Within the American beef cattle industry, the older term beef (plural beeves)
is still used to refer to an animal of either sex. Some Australian, Canadian,
New Zealand and British people use the term beast, especially for single
animals when the sex is unknown.
Cattle bred specifically for milk production are called
milking or dairy cattle; a cow kept to provide milk for one family may be
called a house cow or milker. A "fresh cow" is a dairy term for a cow
or first-calf heifer who has recently given birth, or "freshened."
The adjective applying to cattle in general is usually
bovine. The terms "bull", "cow" and "calf" are
also used by extension to denote the sex or age of other large animals,
including whales, hippopotamuses, camels, elk and elephants. In laboratory
studies, young cattle are able to memorize the locations of several food
sources and retain this memory for at least 8 h, although this declined after
12 h.Fifteen-month-old heifers learn more quickly than adult cows which
have had either one or two calvings, but their longer-term memory is less
stabl Mature cattle perform well in spatial learning tasks and have a
good long-term memory in these tests. Cattle tested in a radial arm maze are
able to remember the locations of high-quality food for at least 30 days.
Although they initially learn to avoid low-quality food, this memory diminishes
over the same duration.Under less artificial testing conditions, young
cattle showed they were able to remember the location of feed for at least 48
days. Cattle can make an association between a visual stimulus and food
within 1 day – memory of this association can be retained for 1 year, despite a
slight decay.[
Calves are capable of discrimination learning and adult
cattle compare favourably with small mammals in their learning ability in the
Closed-field Test.
They are also able to discriminate between familiar
individuals, and among humans. Cattle can tell the difference between familiar
and unfamiliar animals of the same species (conspecifics). Studies show they
behave less aggressively toward familiar individuals when they are forming a
new group.Calves can also discriminate between humans based on previous
experience, as shown by approaching those who handled them positively and
avoiding those who handled them aversively.Although cattle can
discriminate between humans by their faces alone, they also use other cues such
as the color of clothes when these are available
In audio play-back studies, calves prefer their own mother's
vocalizations compared to the vocalizations of an unfamiliar mother
In laboratory studies using images, cattle can discriminate
between images of the heads of cattle and other animal species. They are
also able to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics.
Furthermore, they are able to categorize images as familiar and unfamiliar
individuals.
When mixed with other individuals, cloned calves from the
same donor form subgroups, indicating that kin discrimination occurs and may be
a basis of grouping behaviour. It has also been shown using images of cattle
that both artificially inseminated and cloned calves have similar cognitive
capacities of kin and non-kin discrimination.
Cattle can recognize familiar individuals. Visual individual
recognition is distinguished from mere visual discrimination. Recognition is a
more complex mental process than discrimination. It requires the recollection
of the learned idiosyncratic identity of an individual that has been previously
encountered and the formation of a mental representation. By using
2-dimensional images of the heads of one cow (face, profiles, ¾ views), all the
tested heifers showed individual recognition of familiar and unfamiliar
individuals from their own breed. Furthermore, almost all the heifers
recognized unknown individuals from different breeds, although this was
achieved with greater difficulty. Individual recognition was most difficult
when the visual features of the breed being tested were quite different from
the breed in the image, for example, the breed being tested had no spots
whereas the image was of a spotted breed
Cattle use visual/brain lateralisation in their visual
scanning of novel and familiar stimuli.Domestic cattle prefer to view
novel stimuli with the left eye, i.e. using the right brain hemisphere (similar
to horses, Australian magpies, chicks, toads and fish) but use the right eye,
i.e. using the left hemisphere, for viewing familiar stimuli.
