extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied ⦠not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed.â He was wrong, as it turned out. Roman cows were the descendants of these same wild oxen, known as aurochs, which had originated in India and were first domesticated in Mesopotamia, 6,000 years earlier. Although sheep, goats and pigs were already being raised for meat, the domestication of oxen was a turning point: the moment farming became a business. Keeping cows was about more than feeding your immediate family. The word âcattleâ originally meant âpropertyâ â cows were an indicator of wealth.
Cows are fed magnets to cope with âhardware diseaseâ, the damage caused by the bits of wire, staples and nails which they regularly swallow. The magnet sits in the first part of the stomach and lasts the cowâs lifetime .
As a potential candidate for domestication, Bos primigenius , ticked all the boxes. It was large, ate grass and tasted delicious. You could say the same about bears, hippos and rhinos, but wild oxen herded together rather than ran away or attacked when threatened. And although bulls are fierce, the herd has such a strong hierarchy that most of the animals are used to being docile and obedient. Bears and hippos donât take orders. Nor do they produce gallons of milk, every day, without complaining. Cows quickly became our most reliable machines, converting rough grass into high-protein food and drink.
Cow farts are not destroying the world; unfortunately cow burps are. An average cow burps 600 pints of methane a day, and this is responsible for 4 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gasemissions and a third of the UKâs. Livestock farming in general creates 18 per cent of all man-made greenhouse gases â more than all the cars and other forms of transport on earth. Cows produce one pound of methane for every two pounds of meat they yield. Work is under way to produce a methane-reducing pill the size of a manâs fist, called a bolus, which would dissolve inside the cow over several months. Even so, cattle farming is costly. To make one pound of beef requires 1,300 square feet of land, six times as much as to produce the equivalent weight in eggs and forty times what it takes to grow a pound of spuds.
MILK AND METHANE MACHINE
On the other hand, cows have many uses beyond the obvious. As well as helping us tame disease through vaccination ( vacca is Latin for cow), cows have put their whole bodies at our disposal. Pliny the Elder once recommended a concoction of warm bullâs gall, leek juice and human breast milk as a cure for earache. Hippolyte Mege-Mouries used sliced cowâs udders, beef fat, pigâs gastric juices, milk and bicarbonate of soda in his original recipe for margarine. Cowsâ lungs are used to make anticoagulants, their placentas are an ingredient in many cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, and cow septum (the bit of cartilage which divides the nostrils) is made into a drug for arthritis. Their blood is made into glue, fertiliser and the foam in fire extinguishers. Brake fluid is made from their bones. Sweden even has a cow-powered train that runs on methane harvested from the stewed organs. One cowâs worth will fuel a 2-mile journey, excellent news for the Swedish carbon hoofprint.
Crane
Oldest, tallest, loudest, highest
C ranes are record-breakers. The crowned cranes ( Balearica regulorum and pavonina ) are direct descendents of the earliest-known birds, whose fossils date back to the early Eocene, over fifty-five million years ago. The sandhill crane ( Grus canadensis ) holds the record for the longest surviving species of bird: a nine-million-year-old leg bone found in Nebraska is indistinguishable from that of a modern sandhill. The oldest recorded bird was a Siberian crane ( Grus leucogeranus ) called Wolf who died in 1988, aged eighty-three, in Wisconsin
Cows are fed magnets to cope with âhardware diseaseâ, the damage caused by the bits of wire, staples and nails which they regularly swallow. The magnet sits in the first part of the stomach and lasts the cowâs lifetime .
As a potential candidate for domestication, Bos primigenius , ticked all the boxes. It was large, ate grass and tasted delicious. You could say the same about bears, hippos and rhinos, but wild oxen herded together rather than ran away or attacked when threatened. And although bulls are fierce, the herd has such a strong hierarchy that most of the animals are used to being docile and obedient. Bears and hippos donât take orders. Nor do they produce gallons of milk, every day, without complaining. Cows quickly became our most reliable machines, converting rough grass into high-protein food and drink.
Cow farts are not destroying the world; unfortunately cow burps are. An average cow burps 600 pints of methane a day, and this is responsible for 4 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gasemissions and a third of the UKâs. Livestock farming in general creates 18 per cent of all man-made greenhouse gases â more than all the cars and other forms of transport on earth. Cows produce one pound of methane for every two pounds of meat they yield. Work is under way to produce a methane-reducing pill the size of a manâs fist, called a bolus, which would dissolve inside the cow over several months. Even so, cattle farming is costly. To make one pound of beef requires 1,300 square feet of land, six times as much as to produce the equivalent weight in eggs and forty times what it takes to grow a pound of spuds.
MILK AND METHANE MACHINE
On the other hand, cows have many uses beyond the obvious. As well as helping us tame disease through vaccination ( vacca is Latin for cow), cows have put their whole bodies at our disposal. Pliny the Elder once recommended a concoction of warm bullâs gall, leek juice and human breast milk as a cure for earache. Hippolyte Mege-Mouries used sliced cowâs udders, beef fat, pigâs gastric juices, milk and bicarbonate of soda in his original recipe for margarine. Cowsâ lungs are used to make anticoagulants, their placentas are an ingredient in many cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, and cow septum (the bit of cartilage which divides the nostrils) is made into a drug for arthritis. Their blood is made into glue, fertiliser and the foam in fire extinguishers. Brake fluid is made from their bones. Sweden even has a cow-powered train that runs on methane harvested from the stewed organs. One cowâs worth will fuel a 2-mile journey, excellent news for the Swedish carbon hoofprint.
Crane
Oldest, tallest, loudest, highest
C ranes are record-breakers. The crowned cranes ( Balearica regulorum and pavonina ) are direct descendents of the earliest-known birds, whose fossils date back to the early Eocene, over fifty-five million years ago. The sandhill crane ( Grus canadensis ) holds the record for the longest surviving species of bird: a nine-million-year-old leg bone found in Nebraska is indistinguishable from that of a modern sandhill. The oldest recorded bird was a Siberian crane ( Grus leucogeranus ) called Wolf who died in 1988, aged eighty-three, in Wisconsin
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