Cattle
Cattle are large, domesticated, bovid ungulates widely kept as livestock. They are prominent modern members of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus Bos. Mature female cattle are called cows and mature males are called bulls.
Taurine cattle are widely distributed across Europe and temperate areas of Asia, the Americas, and Australia. Zebus are found mainly in India and tropical areas of Asia, America, and Australia. Sanga cattle are found primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. These types, sometimes classified as separate species or subspecies, are further divided into over 1,000 recognized breeds.
Cattle are commonly raised for meat, for dairy products, and for leather. As draft animals, they pull carts and farm implements. Cattle are considered sacred animals within Hinduism, and it is illegal to kill them in some Indian states. Small breeds such as the miniature Zebu are kept as pets.
Around 10,500 years ago, taurine cattle were domesticated from wild aurochs progenitors in central Anatolia, the Levant and Western Iran. A separate domestication event occurred in the Indian subcontinent, which gave rise to zebu. There were over 940 million cattle in the world by 2022. Cattle farming is responsible for around 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. They were one of the first domesticated animals to have a fully-mapped genome.
Etymology
The term cattle was borrowed from Anglo-Norman catel, itself from Medieval Latin capitāle '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 word is a variant of chattel and closely related to capital in the economic sense. The word cow came via Old English cū, from Proto-Indo-European gʷṓws 'a bovine animal', cf.,. In older English sources such as the King James Version of the Bible, cattle often means livestock, as opposed to deer, which are wild.Characteristics
Description
Cattle are large artiodactyls, mammals with cloven hooves, meaning that they walk on two toes, the third and fourth digits. Like all bovid species, they can have horns, which are unbranched and are not shed annually. Coloration varies with breed; common colors are black, white, and red/brown, and some breeds are spotted or have mixed colors. Bulls are larger than cows of the same breed by up to a few hundred kilograms. British Hereford cows, for example, weigh, while the bulls weigh. Before 1790, beef cattle averaged only net. Thereafter, weights climbed steadily.Cattle breeds vary widely in size; the tallest and heaviest is the Chianina, where a mature bull may be up to at the shoulder, and may reach in weight.
The natural life of domestic cattle is some 25–30 years. Beef cattle go to slaughter at around 18 months, and dairy cows at about five years.
Digestive system
Cattle are ruminants, meaning their digestive system is highly specialized for processing plant material such as grass rich in cellulose, a tough carbohydrate polymer which many animals cannot digest. They do this in symbiosis with micro-organisms – bacteria, fungi, and protozoa – that possess cellulases, enzymes that split cellulose into its constituent sugars. Among the many bacteria that contribute are Fibrobacter succinogenes, Ruminococcus flavefaciens, and Ruminococcus albus. Cellulolytic fungi include several species of Neocallimastix, while the protozoa include the ciliates Eudiplodinium maggie and Ostracodinium album. If the animal's feed changes over time, the composition of this microbiome changes in response.Cattle have one large stomach with four compartments; the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. The rumen is the largest compartment and it harbours the most important parts of the microbiome. The reticulum, the smallest compartment, is known as the "honeycomb". The omasum's main function is to absorb water and nutrients from the digestible feed. The abomasum has a similar function to the human stomach.
Cattle regurgitate and re-chew their food in the process of chewing the cud, like most ruminants. While feeding, cows swallow their food without chewing; it goes into the rumen for storage. Later, the food is regurgitated to the mouth, a mouthful at a time, where the cud is chewed by the molars, grinding down the coarse vegetation to small particles. The cud is then swallowed again and further digested by the micro-organisms in the cow's stomach.
Reproduction
The gestation period for a cow is about nine months long. The ratio of male to female offspring at birth is approximately 52:48. A cow's udder has two pairs of mammary glands or teats. Farms often use artificial insemination, the artificial deposition of semen in the female's genital tract; this allows farmers to choose from a wide range of bulls to breed their cattle. Estrus too may be artificially induced to facilitate the process. Copulation lasts several seconds and consists of a single pelvic thrust.Cows seek secluded areas for calving. Semi-wild Highland cattle heifers first give birth at 2 or 3 years of age, and the timing of birth is synchronized with increases in natural food quality. Average calving interval is 391 days, and calving mortality within the first year of life is 5%. Beef calves suckle an average of 5 times per day, spending some 46 minutes suckling. There is a diurnal rhythm in suckling, peaking at roughly 6am, 11:30am, and 7pm. Under natural conditions, calves stay with their mother until weaning at 8 to 11 months. Heifer and bull calves are equally attached to their mothers in the first few months of life.
Cognition
Cattle have a variety of cognitive abilities. They can memorize the locations of multiple food sources, and can retain memories for at least 48 days. Young cattle learn more quickly than adults. Calves are capable of discrimination learning, distinguishing familiar and unfamiliar animals, and between humans, using faces and other cues. Calves prefer their own mother's vocalizations to those of an unfamiliar cow. Vocalizations provide information on the age, sex, dominance status and reproductive status of the caller, and may indicate estrus in cows and competitive display in bulls. Cows can categorize images as familiar and unfamiliar individuals. Cloned calves from the same donor form subgroups, suggesting that kin discrimination may be a basis of grouping behaviour. Cattle use visual/brain lateralisation when scanning novel and familiar stimuli. They prefer to view novel stimuli with the left eye, but the right eye for familiar stimuli. Individual cattle have also been observed to display different personality traits, such as fearfulness and sociability.A case of multi-purpose tool use has been documented, where a cow named Veronika uses different ends of a deck brush to scratch different parts of her body.
Senses
Vision is the dominant sense; cattle obtain almost half of their information visually. Being prey animals, cattle evolved to look out for predators almost all around, with eyes that are on the sides of their head rather than the front. This gives them a field of view of 330°, but limits binocular vision to some 30° to 50°, compared to 140° in humans. They are dichromatic, like most mammals. Cattle avoid bitter-tasting foods, selecting sweet foods for energy. Their sensitivity to sour-tasting foods helps them to maintain optimal ruminal pH. They seek out salty foods by taste and smell to maintain their electrolyte balance. Their hearing is better than that of horses, but worse at localising sounds than goats, and much worse than dogs or humans. They can distinguish between live and recorded human speech. Olfaction probably plays a large role in their social life, indicating social and reproductive status. Cattle can tell when other animals are stressed by smelling the alarm chemicals in their urine. Cattle can be trained to recognise conspecific individuals using olfaction only.Behavior
Dominance hierarchy
Cattle live in a dominance hierarchy. This is maintained in several ways. Cattle often engage in mock fights where they test each other's strength in a non-aggressive way. Licking is primarily performed by subordinates and received by dominant animals. Mounting is a playful behavior shown by calves of both sexes and by bulls and sometimes by cows in estrus, however, this is not a dominance related behavior as has been found in other species. Dominance-associated aggressiveness does not correlate with rank position, but is closely related to rank distance between individuals. The horns of cattle are used in mate selection. Horned cattle attempt to keep greater distances between themselves and have fewer physical interactions than hornless cattle, resulting in more stable social relationships. In calves, agonistic behavior becomes less frequent as space allowance increases, but not as group size changes, whereas in adults, the number of agonistic encounters increases with group size.Dominance relationships in semi-wild highland cattle are very firm, with few overt aggressive conflicts: most disputes are settled by agonistic behaviors with no physical contact between opponents, reducing the risk of injury. Dominance status depends on age and sex, with older animals usually dominant to young ones and males dominant to females. Young bulls gain superior dominance status over adult cows when they reach about 2 years of age.