Although cattle have been domesticated for less than 10,000 years, they are the world’s most important animals, as judged by their multiple contributions of draft power, meat, milk, hides, and dung. In Asia and Africa, the tie between man and beast is much more than economic (as it is in the West), and domestication itself seems to have occurred for noneconomic reasons. Cattle, like other ruminants, convert cellulose-rich materials – that are otherwise useless to humans as food – into carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. (In industrialized countries, however, cattle are fed grains from cultivated land and consequently can be viewed as competing for foods that could go directly to humans.)

The term “cattle” can have a broad or narrow meaning. One usage subsumes all five domesticated species in the genus Bos as cattle. The other restricts the term to only the two main bovines in this genus: European cattle (Bos taurus) and zebu cattle (Bos indicus). Both animals were derived from the same wild ancestor, the aurochs (Bos primigenius), and they can interbreed to produce fertile offspring. Three much more localized Asian species sometimes fall under the rubric of domesticated cattle: mithan (Bos frontalis, yak (Bos grunniens), and banteng (Bos javanicus). The mithan is found in a forested region that encompasses northeast India, northwest Burma, and Bhutan. Its ancestor is the wild gaur (Bos gaurus). The yak of Nepal and Tibet was derived from the wild yak (Bos mutus), whereas the banteng (“Bali cattle”), found on several islands of the Indonesian archipelago, was domesticated from the wild banteng of the same species. Unless otherwise qualified, the term “cattle” in this chapter refers to the two main species derived from the aurochs.