The first time Aidan Maccormick ever saw a tauros, he was at a breeding facility in the Netherlands. He doesn’t quite describe it as a life-changing moment, but it certainly left a deep impression on him.
“There was this dominant bull wandering around and vocalising – it was annoyed because a younger bull was herding a couple of females away,” Maccormick, who works for the Northwoods Rewilding Network, recalls. “Meanwhile, there were a couple of Exmoor pony stallions [one of Britain's native pony breeds] rearing up and fighting. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up; it was like going back in time – like looking at a cave painting.”
The tauros – wild-looking, muscular beasts with long horns – were bred from domesticated cattle and genetically at least were nothing to get excited about. But what they resembled and how they were behaving? That’s a different matter.
What are aurochs?
That’s because tauros cattle have been bred to resemble, as closely as possible, the extinct wild ancestor of all domestic cattle, the aurochs, an animal many people will recognise instinctively from the depictions drawn by our ancestors in caves such as Lascaux in the Dordogne some 20,000 years ago.
What did aurochs look like and how big were they?
The aurochs were massive bovids, with bulls measuring between 160 and 180cm at the shoulder, and weighing up to a tonne, while cows were smaller at around 150cm. That’s roughly equivalent in size to a modern dairy breed such as the black and white Holstein; cows are usually just under 150cm tall. In contrast, a typical Highland bull might be only 120cm, so significantly smaller.
Male and female aurochs were different colours – bulls were black with a pale dorsal stripe, while cows were chestnut brown. Both cows and bulls had horns, which were up to 80cm
When did aurochs go extinct?
Of course, those Stone Age humans hunted the aurochs for food and over time became
just too damn good at it. The prehistoric megafauna slowly disappeared, and their gradual extermination was further assisted as the hunters settled down and converted wild habitats into farmland.
By the modern historical age, the species had been wiped out from most of its original range of North Africa, Western Asia (as far east as India) and Europe, and was confined to Central Europe, where woodland clearances between the 9th and 12th centuries were more or less the last rites. The last-known female aurochs died in a Polish forest in 1627.
Aurochs were here in Britain, too. Their bones have been found in neolithic burial chambers in southern Dorset, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, North Yorkshire and into Scotland as far north as Shetland. It’s likely that they lived alongside, and were hunted by, Bronze Age settlers up until 2,000 or 3,000 years BC.
How can we bring aurochs back if they're extinct?
To be absolutely clear, tauros cattle are not real aurochs – they haven’t been cloned from DNA found in ancient bones.
Beginning in the early 2000s, scientists working under the Tauros Programme in the Netherlands selected six of the cattle breeds that were genetically and physically closest to aurochs – such as the Maronesa from northern Portugal, the Sayaguesa from north-west Spain and the Podolica from southern Italy – and interbred them until they had produced an animal they believe closely resembles their ancient ancestor.
Are aurochs good for wildlife?
Why go to all that effort? Conservationists believe that aurochs, or their successors the tauros cattle, can help create uniquely rich habitats for wildlife.
From stable isotope analysis of aurochs bones, scientists believe aurochs occupied marginal, wetland habitats and woodlands – indeed, they probably helped create a mosaic habitat of forest, grasslands and marshes throughout the country. Many conservationists believe we miss these large herbivores because of the way they shaped the environment, increasing habitat and species diversity.
Cattle, in general, are regarded as agents of rewilding. They are more selective grazers than, for example, sheep, creating different sward heights within a pasture while also poaching the ground with their hooves, both of which make space for wildflowers to get a foothold. Their dung provides food for invertebrates that in turn are eaten by birds, reptiles and small mammals.
But aurochs – well, tauros – according to Ronald Goderie, one of the scientists who was instrumental in bringing them back to life, add that something extra to the ecological recovery melting pot. The males have an especially significant role because they create what Goderie calls bullpits during the rutting season. Using their hooves and horns, they carve out bowls in the earth, leaving bare soil and three-dimensional microhabitats in which pioneer plant species and invertebrates can get a foothold.
Research in Europe – where tauros have been left to rewild a number of different landscapes – has revealed the sheer scale of this mini-army invasion. Ground-nesting bees and wasps make their homes in these pits, while grasshoppers, butterflies and dragonflies are attracted by their warmth – the average bullpit is 5˚C warmers than its surroundings. Mice, rabbits and foxes make use of them, and
a bee-eater nested in one bullpit in the Netherlands. “We believe these bullpits are fitness rooms for the males, for training their muscles,” says Goderie. “They are the result of the presence of testosterone in the landscape.”
It’s critical, therefore, that these animals live in natural herds with uncastrated bulls. On the European mainland, in countries that include the Netherlands, Croatia and Portugal, conservationists have been able to take the tauros and reintroduce them into large, landscape-scale reserves. Here, they are hunted by wolves and their carcasses can be left to scavengers, such as bears, white-tailed eagles and golden eagles and vultures.
