Taurine cattle: the breeds

Taurine cattle, Bos taurus, are the humpless cattle. They descend from the aurochs of the Near East, tamed in the upper valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates roughly ten and a half thousand years ago, and they spread with early farmers into Europe, North Africa and East Asia. Almost every European breed is taurine, from the Holstein and Jersey to the Highland and Chianina, as are the Wagyu and Hanwoo of East Asia and the N'Dama and Kuri of Africa. In South Asia, the native cattle are zebu instead, though taurine blood has come in through crossbreeding.

Origins in the Near East

Archaeology and ancient DNA point to the northern Fertile Crescent, in what is now south-east Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq, as the place where aurochs were first kept and bred around ten and a half thousand years ago. The founding herd seems to have been small. From there, cattle travelled with farmers west along the Mediterranean and up the Danube into Europe, and south into Egypt. Wild aurochs bulls sometimes crossed with domestic cows along the way, leaving traces of local wild ancestry in some European breeds.

How to tell them

Taurine cattle have no hump over the shoulders and usually a small, tight dewlap, with shorter ears than zebu. Their coats are often thicker and they cope better with cold than with heat. They have fewer sweat glands than zebu. Within the taurine family, breeds range from the long-legged Podolic grey cattle to the compact Highland and the tiny Dexter, and from the black Angus to the white Charolais and the pied Holstein.

Taurine cattle in Africa and Asia

West Africa has old taurine breeds of its own: the long-horned N'Dama of Guinea and the short-horned Baoulé, Lagune and others. Many of them tolerate the trypanosomes carried by tsetse fly, which makes them vital where zebu struggle. The Kuri of Lake Chad is another African taurine. In East Asia, the Wagyu of Japan, the Hanwoo of Korea and Mongolian cattle are taurine or mostly so. In India, Holstein and Jersey crosses with native zebu now make up a large share of the dairy herd.

Worth knowing

Holstein Friesian: The most numerous dairy breed in the world
Aberdeen Angus: Black polled beef breed from north-east Scotland
Highland: Shaggy, long-horned cattle of the Scottish Highlands
Jersey: Small, fawn dairy cow from the island of Jersey
Chianina: Very tall white breed of Tuscany
N'Dama: Trypanotolerant West African taurine
Wagyu: Japanese cattle bred for marbling
Hanwoo: Native brown cattle of Korea

Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Menorquina: Discasto, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Malnad Gidda: Pavanaja, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Tarentaise: BlackSlash73, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

German Black Pied: WytzeNauta, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Braunvieh: 4028mdk09, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Väneko: Philaweb, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Montbéliarde: Abujoy, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Telemark: Torstein Frogner, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Western Finncattle: MPorciusCato (cropped by Pitke ), CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Danish Red: Malene Thyssen, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Abondance: Walpole, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Guernsey: Man vyi, Public domain, source

Icelandic: Christian Bickel (user Fingalo ), CC BY-SA 2.0 de, source

Murnau-Werdenfels: Pippo-b, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Latvian Brown: Ingrīda Briede, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Ayrshire: Biggle, Jacob., Public domain, source

Kerry: Pedroserafin, CC BY 2.5, source

Red Poll: Poinciana, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Swedish Red-and-White: Tjalve77, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Holstein Friesian: Vista Alegre baserria, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Caracu: Nevinho, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Fjäll: Yvonne Zimmermann, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, source

Bretonne Pie Noir: Tsaag Valren, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Taurine cattle