Aurochs

How the wild animal became a domestic pet

The aurochs, or urus, is considered the first wild cattle domesticated by humans to ensure a steady supply of meat and milk and to provide draft and work animals. Domestication always involves physical changes: over time, the animals become smaller, their horns become more curved, their legs and skulls shorter, and their bodies long and massive. They are bred to ensure that particularly productive animals are born. Our modern domestic cattle are the result of the domestication of the Eurasian aurochs that began around 8,000 years ago. The wild form of the aurochs went extinct in 1627.

Three subspecies of aurochs are distinguished: Eurasian or European aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius), Indian aurochs (Bos primigenius namadicus), and African aurochs (Bos primigenius africanus or B. p. mauretanicus). The Indian aurochs went extinct in its wild form at least 4,400 years ago, and its domestication began about 9,000 years ago; today’s zebus (Bos indicus) are domesticated Indian aurochs. The African aurochs went extinct at least 3,000 years ago. Until historical times, only the Eurasian aurochs survived in its wild form.

Aurochs – Fact sheet

Alternative name	Urus, ure, auerochs, Eurasian aurochs
Scientific name	Bos primigenius, Bos primigenius primigenius, Bos taurus primigenius
Original range	Europe, Middle East, Central Asia (subspecies also in North Africa and India)
Date of extinction	1627
Causes of extinction	habitat loss, hunting
IUCN status	extinct

The aurochs as part of culture

The oldest ever found aurochs remains are around 700,000 years old and were discovered in Tunisia. The oldest evidence from Europe is 600,000 years old. The oldest cultural depictions of aurochs in Europe are considered to be cave paintings in France, such as in the Lascaux cave and the Chauvet cave. The paintings show the aurochs with other wild animals from the Ice Age. The aurochs has always been considered an important game animal for humans. Prehistorians believe that the paintings in the Lascaux cave date from around 36,000 to 19,000 BC; those in the Chauvet cave may be even older.

In antiquity, aurochs were captured by the Romans for animal fights in amphitheaters – alongside gladiator fights, animal fights were the main attractions at that time. Additionally, the Romans used the aurochs’ horns as hunting horns, and great honor was bestowed upon those who killed an aurochs.

Not only the aurochs were part of animal fights in the Roman Empire. Other now-extinct animals were also used for entertainment, such as the Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata), the African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus), the Atlas bear, or the Barbary lion.

As aurochs became rarer, hunting them became a privilege of the nobility. The horns of the aurochs were richly decorated or gold-mounted and used as drinking horns and status symbols.

Nobles hunted aurochs with hunting dogs, bows and arrows, and nets. The aurochs was attributed magical powers. This mystification was partly due to the cross-shaped heart bones seen when an aurochs was slaughtered and its heart removed. Even mature domestic cattle have two cross-shaped heart bones (Ossa cordis).

Morphology of the aurochs: Relics from the megafauna

What a wild aurochs once looked like has been reconstructed by science using numerous fossil finds, historical descriptions, and cave paintings or later contemporary depictions.

The aurochs was one of the largest herbivores in Europe after the Ice Age, although there were regional size differences: In Denmark and northern Germany, the shoulder height of aurochs bulls during the Holocene was 155 to 180 centimeters, and that of aurochs cows was 135 to 155 centimeters; in Poland, bulls had a shoulder height of 170 to 185 centimeters, and cows were 165 centimeters; in Hungary, the shoulder height of bulls was only 155 to 160 centimeters. Shoulder heights of two meters are only known from the Pleistocene.

The weight of wild cattle is likely comparable to that of today’s European bison (Bos bonasus) and bantengs (Bos javanicus) and ranged between 700 and 1,000 kilograms. The Indian aurochs had larger horns but was overall somewhat smaller. Aurochs cows were smaller than aurochs bulls, but both had horns, with bulls having larger and more curved horns. The horns could be between 80 and 140 centimeters long, with a diameter of ten to 20 centimeters.

Aurochs cows were reddish-brown, and bulls were black. The males also had a light dorsal stripe on their backs and a white-muzzled snout, similar to the bantengs.

Compared to their domesticated form, aurochs had long and slender legs, so their shoulder height was roughly equal to their body length. Due to their large horns, their skulls were much larger and longer than those of domestic cattle. Especially aurochs bulls had a pronounced neck and shoulder musculature, giving them the so-called shoulder hump, which can still be seen in today’s Spanish fighting cattle bred for bullfighting.

The aurochs was a hemereophobe

Wherever humans settled, the aurochs disappeared. The aurochs always avoided human proximity. High population density, city and settlement construction, accompanying landscape changes, introduced livestock, and hunting made the aurochs a culture avoider.

As the population grew, the aurochs population numbers declined. In North Africa and the Middle East, aurochs disappeared in antiquity, and in Bavaria, the last aurochs was shot in 1470 in the Neuburg Forest, Germany. By the 15th century, aurochs were extinct in Central Europe.

The last aurochs hid in the European primeval forest of less densely populated Eastern Europe, in Poland, East Prussia, and Lithuania. Not only aurochs, but other large European ungulates also sought refuge there: moose, European bison, and wild horses.

The forest of Jaktorów, located about 55 kilometers southwest of Warsaw (Poland), served as the last refuge for aurochs – protected and cared for by the Dukes of Masovia. They placed the wild cattle under protection and ensured they were fed in winter.

Otto Antonius, the former director of the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, evaluated the records from that time: in 1564 there were 11 bulls, 22 cows, and five calves; in 1599 there were a total of 24 aurochs, and by 1602 only four remained. By 1620, there was only one aurochs cow left, which finally died in 1627.

Why the aurochs went extinct

The rapid disappearance of the last remaining aurochs in Jaktorów is explained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) by the change in their owners. Initially, they belonged to the nobility and were protected and cared for, but later they became royal property.

King Sigismund I and his successor Sigismund August apparently had less interest in aurochs than their predecessors. They did little to protect the wild cattle. Because the aurochs’ habitat was very limited in the end, not all animals could find enough food in winter and starved. Additionally, it is said that some bulls killed each other in fights, and very aggressive bulls were shot to provide meat for the king.

After political unrest from 1572 onwards, a royal decree was not issued until 1604, stating that everything must be done to protect the aurochs. By that time, however, there were hardly any aurochs left, so the decree had no effect.

The growing population, deforestation, and settlement construction gradually displaced the aurochs from its habitat. Additionally, domesticated cattle competed with aurochs for feeding grounds. Livestock diseases and hunting also contributed to the species’ disappearance.

According to historical records, as noted by Cis van Vuure in Retracing The Aurochs (2005), a second aurochs population may have survived until after 1600. These animals were said to have lived in the Zamoyski Park in Poland. Igor Akimushkin mentions in Vom Aussterben bedroht? (1972) a claim by zoologist Max Hilzheimer that an aurochs lived until 1669 in Kaliningrad, Russia.

Breeding to create an aurochs-like animal

The idea that domestic cattle, when released into the wild, could revert to an animal similar to the wild form was proposed by Polish zoologist Feliks Pawel Jarocki in 1835. By using domestic cattle and their partially retained wild traits, an aurochs-like animal was to be created.

All taurine and zebuine domestic cattle are descended from the aurochs, and many breeds have emerged that have retained different characteristics of the original aurochs – whether similar proportions, coat color, horns, robustness, or the ability to survive in the wild year-round without human intervention.

The biologist brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck aimed to reunite the original traits of the aurochs, distributed among different domestic cattle breeds, through crossbreeding and selection. Heinz Heck began his breeding program in the 1920s, using Scottish Highland cattle, steppe cattle, Corsican cattle, as well as dairy cattle such as Braunvieh and Murnau-Werdenfelser.

The result of the breeding program is the Heck cattle, which indeed has similar horns and coat colors to the aurochs. However, the similarities end there, as the Heck cattle is much smaller, has shorter legs, a massive body, a short skull, and sometimes color and horn variants that differ from the aurochs.

There are various projects where Heck cattle and other cattle are crossbred to perform back-breeding. The further breeding of Heck cattle is called Taurus cattle. Taurus cattle resemble the aurochs quite closely and have a shoulder height of up to 165 centimeters.

One of the most recent projects in Germany, called Auerrind, has been active since 2015 and does not use Heck cattle for breeding but instead five other breeds that are similar to the aurochs in appearance, genetics, or behavior: Chianina, Maremmana, Sayaguesa, Hungarian steppe cattle, and Watussi. The goal of the project is to achieve a high degree of homogeneity in the crossbred animals within ten to 20 years.