Yak
The long-haired domestic bovine of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya, kept for milk, meat, wool, transport and dung fuel.
Also: Bos grunniens, domestic yak, dri, nak
The yak was domesticated from the wild yak on the Tibetan Plateau, probably several thousand years ago, and lives at heights where ordinary cattle struggle, often above 3,000 metres. It has a long fringe of outer hair over a dense undercoat, large lungs and few sweat glands. Herders in Tibet, Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia and Central Asia use yaks for milk, butter, cheese, meat, wool and hair, as pack animals, and burn the dried dung as fuel. In Tibetan the word yak properly means the male; the female is a dri. Crosses between yaks and cattle, called dzo or dzomo, are common in the Himalaya.