We cows are amazing creatures. Perhaps sometimes humans forget how remarkable we are because we have been living quietly beside humans for thousands of years. Perhaps humans take us for granted… So let me tell you a bit about my species.

BOVINE is the big name that means all the domestic animals of the species that are CATTLE or WATER BUFFALO or BISON or YAK. This is in the same way that the word, HUMAN is the big name for all sorts of humans over the ages, like NEANDERTHALS and modern humans like you, MODERN HUMANS.

You might be interested to know that the Latin names for these different kinds of creatures…

Scientists still actually use these Latin names. I think I’d like to be a Bubalus Bubalis because it sounds bubbly, but I’m not I’m just the Bos Taurus type because I’m a cow. You are human and I, Albi am Bos Taurus (cattle). I suppose that actually sounds good. Bos Taurus, Bos Taurus, I like the sound of that.

Us cattle are a very nice bunch of creatures. We are on the whole, very gentle. We started to be around 10,500 yers ago, originally coming from the wild AUROCH (Their Latin name is BOS PRIMIGENIUS).

The AUROCH were huge, really big. I mean really, really, really big. They had a shoulder height of 180cm in bulls! That’s almost as tall as a door! Imagine, with their heads on top they were huge. They were nearly 250cm long – so that’s, take a door off and lay it on its side and that is how long they were. They were huge herbivores. They were in Africa, Asia and Europe, even up north in what is now Sweden. They were everywhere but unfortunately, humans hunted them all to extinction. That means that humans killed every single one of them. Isn’t that sad? They were magnificent creatures and humans killed them all. I hate to say this, but humans of the past have behaved very badly towards animals. They have their pets but are not very nice to the others. Please don’t be like the human beings before you. Human beings are changing for the better. You can be one of the better humans. You are young and able to decide how you want to be. Please be good to animals and that means not just your pet dog or cat or guinea pig.

Anyway, the last AUROCH was killed in 1627 in the Jaktorów forest in Poland. Except, if you read the book about me, you will see that there were some Auroch that I met.

There are lots more things to know about cows and as the weeks go by I will be adding to this page to tell you more.