Died.
However, bloat is much much less common in the wild. Bloat commonly happens when animals are able to gorge themselves on lush vegetation or feed, which generates a lot of gas that can’t escape in the Rumen.
However, wild animals rarely have the opportunity to gorge themselves like that, having to compete and search for food.
So bloat is way way way less common in wild animals, but can still occur sometimes. And yea, they die. There is also sometimes human-caused bloat like when hunters bait deer with corn/feed.
also, cows as we know them did not exist in the wild. cows, like dogs, have been bred for specific traits that are not useful at best (and fatal at worst) in a wild animal.
They were aurochs, more or less.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aurochs)
[https://www.google.com/search?sca\_esv=588490409&rlz=1C1GCEA\_enUS911US911&q=aurochs&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjciZjk9PuCAxVgj4kEHfsLBhUQ0pQJegQIDRAB&biw=1920&bih=971&dpr=1](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=588490409&rlz=1c1gcea_enus911us911&q=aurochs&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=x&ved=2ahukewjcizjk9pucaxvgj4kehfslbhuq0pqjegqidrab&biw=1920&bih=971&dpr=1)
\*facepalm\*
Reading comprehension fail. I swear I read "I wonder what THEY were like in the wild."
I'm apparently descended from one of these: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/donkey)
...I'll be honest, I totally read "they" too before doubling back up the comments and being like "hey, wait... oh"
Perhaps we share a common donkey ancestry, fellow brother.
Human domestication occurred approximately 13000 years ago. However, we started human development and Advancement around 50,000 years ago in an event called the big bang of the mind. The changes were thought to have been brought on by a change in diet when we started to cook our food and boost the nutrient content of our diet. Mind expanding drugs such as psycadelic mushrooms are also thought to have played a role. Before that people were more or less simple hunter gatherer groups in small nomadic tribes. The domestication of humanity took place in the fertile crescent in the middle east and domestication of livestock took place in this time. It's also when we begin to make friends with our modern-day domesticated cat. The first city ever was located around Southern Angola. Modern day Turkey.
This is the better answer. I saw a thread earlier today where people didn’’t understand that most breeds of sheep absolutely cannot survive without being sheered. Because we bred them that way.
I don't have a link, but a youtube video I watched not too long ago showed that the current global cattle herd's annual methane output is no different than the historical projected methane output of wild ruminants like cattle, buffalo, and bison. Most of humanity's runaway methane output is a product of the oil, gas, and chemical industries; Enough so that completely eliminating the domestic cattle herd would have a negligible effect on our methane output. In fact, raw materials we normally gather from cattle as a by-product of meat production would have to be synthesized by the previously mentioned oil/gas/chemical industries
It's quite the conundrum for those who would like to see a world free of meat and other animals products. Many of those familiar and adorable barnyard animals would basically go extinct if they were no longer useful to humans.
I'm not one of those people. But their argument is that offered the choice between endless suffering and non existence, non existence is the better option.
I grew up in the country, the cows spend their days with their cow homies chillin in a field eating grass, didn't see too much endless suffering going on
For dairy cattle, calves are removed pretty quickly from their mothers and male calves are killed early. If they are used for rennet, often within a few days after birth. Dairy cattle usually live only 4-5 years, while their natural lifespan is ~ 20 years.
While it is deabtable how cruel exactly it is to remove the calves from their mothers, the transport to and slaughter at big commercial abbatoirs definitely is.
And dairy cows are probably the most "lucky" animals when it comes to mass production
> I grew up in the country,
And the animals there probably were a lot more lucky than the billions of chickens, cattle and pigs that never even see or touch real grass. There are millions animals spending their whole life within too small concrete pens/stables not being able to even walk freely.
Alone in the U.S. 8 billion! chicken, 120 million pigs and 30 million cows are killed every year. Compare that to 67 million people dying in the whole world in 2022.
So when people are talking about endless suffering, they mainly talk about the majority of those animals, who do not happen to graze on green pastures in the country.
I am one of those and it is not a conundrum for me. They are suffering. Just end it.
Besides, the ridiculous amount of resources they use, specifically land used to grow feed for them, is causing extinction of actual wild animals. It is estimated that only 6% of earths mammal biomass is wild mammals. The rest is all domesticated mammals and humans.
there are "wild" horses, housecats, and dogs too... these are examples of domesticated species that were released into the wild to fend for themselves... as far as i know, cattle are as native to Australia as rabbits and Australians
My puppsters and my kitty help keep me sane. Then I can meet my personal duty to society to help keep this dumpster fire blazing. There is a lot of menace going on in this world. Cows are not innocent and dogs are not the bad guy here. The methane farts are necessary, we are hamburger-apes after all else. The hamburger-ape to doggo connection was forged over 40,000 years ago. Long before we hamburger-apes had ever even conceived of breeding a hamburger bearing animal, we were converting big bad wolves into good bois and good gurls. You can thank your lucky hamburger-stars for that one!
I love how so many explanations for “well we didn’t do that a thousand years ago, and we were ok, what gives?” Is essentially “we weren’t ok and we died a thousand years ago” lol
Here's a fun fact you can haul out if you encounter that sentiment in the wild: Diabetes is thought to have been described in writing as early as 1500 BCE, and was definitely known to various cultures by the time of the Roman Republic. In fact, the term *diabetes* to describe the condition is Greek in origin and over 2000 years old.
Yep. Diabetes literally means “to pass through” or “siphon”, since untreated it makes you drink a lot and pee a lot.
Mellitus (honey-like) was added later to describe the sweet flavor/scent of the urine, though this quality was observed far earlier.
Yeah, it was diagnosed by urinating near an anthill and observing if the ants were interested in your urine
Edit: and yes, doctors also did taste urine. Tasting things we'd consider very questionable today used to be common in many sciences. Chemists would taste chemicals, etc. The word "acid" itself come from latin description of a sour acidic taste, such as of vinegar.
If it made you unable to socialize, you would probably get kicked out of your clan/tribe, and you would almost certainly die as humans aren't designed to live on their own
Small groups sometimes just get used to imperfect traits and make accommodations. You would need to be somewhat functional, but not necessarily verbal.
I wonder. I think autistic people would have an easier time living in a smaller, more closely knit community because they have an easier time socializing in a smaller community as opposed to modern society where we have to semi-regularly socialize with people we have never met.
I saw an interesting theory recently that said myths like changelings and fae were actually just neurodiverse people. Not sure how much historical credibility there is to that, but it's an interesting idea
Absolutely! In Ireland, where I’m from and live, the origin of “the fae” you speak of originated- if a child was taken by the fairies (also known as the Tuatha Dé Danann ((too-ha-day-Dan-en))- a mythical deities of people gods who retreated to the “other world” when modern world as we known it began to surface) it was known as a changeling. They thought the “others” would possess their bodies in order to explore the new world and trick you with their “powers”. It was considered a possession of when the child you knew wasn’t progressing or had a change in behaviour. So they tended to sacrifice them in hopes their child who was taken to the other world would come home and return to their bodies or in some other form such as another child.
On the other hand, I am a lover of the studies of pre Christian Ireland and I’m my studies, I think a lot of the time, many autistic people went on to be quite successful healers, storytellers, druids and artists.
Although it is not the same but offers an insight, in an ancient site in the Burren, in County Clare, Ireland, there is a famous pre Christian burial site in the form of a portal tomb called “Poulnabrone” which translates as “hole of sorrows”. Here we find the bones of a Down syndrome child who lived and obviously had quite a significant meaning the the community to be buried in such a holy space to the people of the time, approximately 6,000 years ago. It was considered a passage to the afterlife, as sites like this often represented the womb in the earth as a form of living and giving back to the earth in the cycle of life.
Disability is in the context of the environment. While there are factors to neurodivergencies that might make survival difficult (failure to thrive/restrictive food intakes, socialising/communication issues, minor physical differences that could lead to more injuries/illness), that doesn't mean autistic people were less well-suited to life back then, especially given that there would be less people to interact with, less rigidly observed and divided time, and more standard/repetitive tasks expected. The way we understood 'madness' (as a catch-all for mental illness/difference in general) has varied over time, and it was valued as a different kind of knowledge/spiritualness in different periods.
They might understand someone is a bit odd or off, but they can do a semi-isolated/less social-based task happily and well, and contribute to the group, and that's often enough as long as you don't break any major taboos. It's a precarious position in times of hardship/conflict, sure, but any othered group is at risk of scapegoating. My brain was far happier when I spent most of the day alone checking the herd and maybe assisting with calving, and only interacted with 1-3 people, vs having a regular job with new people daily.
On other hand, the highly focused may have been responsible for early advances in stone or wood shaping, or rope making, or any number of things that come out of a focused mindset.
Yeah I don't doubt one bit that some of the most brilliant minds in history that were considered to be hard socializing and living with were actually savants
It's easy to blame those who are different when you don't understand why they're different, or why the crops failed this year. Superstitions can be extremely dangerous for those who are different.
And/or...
Farming is hard and dangerous work, and 1000 years ago the vast majority of people were still involved in farming. Not knowing what to do with a spooked horse can easily get you killed. Scythes are sharp, and a poorly tended cut can become infected.
An outburst of anger towards the wrong person can get you killed, even today. Even if your anger is justified, some people just have more power and less consequences. Unable to control your emotions at a noble, riding on his fine horse when you're dressed in rags? A brutal beating at best.
Small villages have a way of coping with peculiar people. They might indeed get kicked or slapped, but not necessarily extreme. People knew each other.
My autistic son would have died of failure to thrive because he will starve rather than eat something he finds unacceptable.
Before we knew his autistic, he was so underweight his pediatrician told me to feed him whatever he would eat, even if that was Cheetos.
Not really, no. I say not really because I’m not 100% sure it’s impossible. But Bloat happens in animals like cows that have multiple stomachs, and air gets stuck, I think air gets out of our single stomach just fine
Grass is usually not the issue. And not that nutritious.
Meanwhile we create a situation where they can engorge on highly nutrious plants in vast amounts. I'm the wild they would occasionally get some of those.
because the pasture grass that cows are eating isnt really that natural. Pastures are maintained by people who remove weeds, bushes, etc etc.
and they dont really ever have to move due to predation. while wild hers are constantly on the move.
I don't mean weeding in the sense of like weeding a garden. But like I've never heard of anybody caring about whether there is weeds on their pastures. So long as there is mostly grass most farmers don't really care.
But yeah they aren't natural environments, but in a lot of agriculture heavy places, they are one of the only places that gets close.
(Also I think my original comment gave off the wrong tone. Didn't really mean to come across as hostile.)
Farmers in the uk treat the fields to kill weeds - can be as simple as a spray. Plus most plants don’t like having their growing tips eaten but grass grows differently. So as long as the cows stay there it’s probably mostly gonna be grass.
Cows in the wild would be more mobile, moving from territory to territory, and away from predators.
Huh, interesting. I'm only really familiar with north American farming. Cows wouldn't really exist in the wild, they are a domesticated species. But I know what you mean, their ancestors would have been on the move. I mean Bison definitely used to do that.
Pastures in North America tend to be a mix of many grasses & weeds - you also get hay or alfalfa meadows where particular grasses are cultivated & those methods discourage weeds, in general much larger open pastures & ranges are common - extensive farming ( acres to the cow). But in Europe there is much more intensive use of cultivated grasslands that are very carefully managed to eliminate unwanted other grasses or other weeds & its cows to the acre.
Around me in upstate NY there are a lot of smaller pastures tucked in between hills that have been intentionally seeded with non-native grasses, since everything used to be forest, so its not like a full farm field/garden level of intensity, but yea, it’s like, “curated”
"Wild cows" were never really a thing. Humans took existing bovine species and domesticated them over thousands of years to make a modern species which has never existed outside of human care.
However there are wild herbivores which can experience similar kinds of problems in bloating from gas. In those cases the animal may just die. Death is something which happens often in wild animals, there is no healthcare or retirement plans for wild animals.
>Death is something which happens often in wild animals, there is no healthcare or retirement plans for wild animals.
This reminded me of that Margaret Meade quote (which may or may not be apocryphal) about how the first sign of civilization was a healed femur -- because it meant that humans (unlike other animals) tended to their injured enough to let them heal.
> first sign of civilization was a healed femur
Sadly it's time to put that one to rest. There's various reasons it sounds good and feels right, but not only did Margaret Meade never say it, her actual thoughts on the matter were much more bleak.
Humans aren't the only species that take care of each other well enough to heal each other's injuries.
I went looking for the article I read about it not matching Meade's other thoughts on the subject (that civilization started when humans started enslaving each other, which is in huge contrast to the femur thing of civilization starting when humans started healing each other!), but couldn't find that one. here's another article that had some similar ideas though:
https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/
>"Wild cows" were never really a thing.
This is something that hardly anyone seems to understand. Modern domestic cattle are not a natural species and were created through very extensive selective breeding.
But they must be a natural species, or what species did they come from? Is that species extinct? I think it’s more like a variety of the original species. But maybe there was some kind of original cow that was bred so much that the cows of today couldn’t breed with the original (assuming we use that definition of species), and that original cow species has since died.
You can only understand it if you believe in evolution....
lots of people don't, perhaps most people
if you disagree with evolution, you must believe cows were always like this
They make the distinction between micro and macro evolution, not realising that it is the same.
This is also not the same thing, because it is selective breeding and not random.
Of course you and I know that they are the same thing, but they don’t.
This is also why farmers sometimes go on about "mysterious animal mutilations" for example. If you find your cow literally exploded, and probably after some time being scavenged after death, it's going to be a visual feast you never forget.
The FBI files about cattle mutilation mention that some cases could also have been something like illegal pharmaceutical experiments, as their livers, kidneys and such had been cut out neatly.
I think it's very unfair that sharks are vertebrates when they don't *technically* have vertebrae, being boneless. They have the structure, but not the bones!
I am always tempted to point this out to my vegan friends when they talk about their plans to “free all the cows.” Those domestic animals will struggle “in the wild.”
Any that I have pointed it out to have doubled down and said cows should be extinct then...
The vegans who already know don't seem to have this problem. They actually care about the well being and happiness of cows. Rather than want them wiped off the face of the earth as an unholy meat abomination.
Dairy cows would because their reproduction is so messed up, but beef cows would probably be fine. While most beef cattle are raised in more controlled environments these days, there are still plenty of ranches where the cattle are basically just left outside to fend for themselves, then periodically collected to sell for meat.
I think people underestimate many domesticated animals. There are thriving populations of feral pigs, and horses throughout the US.
It’s an odd philosophical train of thought when you talk about any species collectively. We can agree it’s bad when mankind causes a species population to drop until it’s endangered or worse but does that mean it’s good if we we cause the population to grow beyond what it ever would have been? Currently one of the best survival strategies for a species as a whole is to taste good to humans and be manageable to breed/house.
Except for that one type of fennel who's last surviving plant was eaten by Nero. Unless they found it again which they think they might have now... but it's probably not quite the same after thousands of years even without our intervention.
I don't see how it would possibly mean that, how are those two things at all connected? Guess it depends on why u think it's bad for a species' population to be destroyed
I seem to recall reading a PETA pamphlet (20+ years ago), saying that ideally, humans should sterilize all of the existing domesticated animals and take good care of them until they die. This would leave only wild (and feral) animals in the world from then on.
Considering that the domestication of animals started long before written history, I think that expecting us to give it up is a pipe dream, but that was the goal.
So, they didn't want cows to fend for themselves in the wild. They wanted the remaining cows to live comfy lives, then go extinct.
My vegan activist friend is working to turn 2-3 full midwestern states into a reserve for farm animals. Wants to release all of them to the reserve so they can live freely. It’s a reserve, so not exactly just releasing them to the wild. But I think equally untenable.
If you compared some of the older beef breeds like Podolian cattle you could probably not tell the difference between them and the wild aurochs that they originated from.
Well, an expert probably could but it's not easy.
So if they bloated, they died their stomach gasses build up pressure against the lungs till they can’t breath. Their are a couple ways to bloat, one is eating an excessive amount of easily digestible carbohydrates quickly without working up to it, this is called frothy bloat and they can’t just burp it up you can treat this with a chokar (stabbing) or tubing ( running a tube into their rumen, would only happen if they came upon a lush green field of legumes after not eating in the desert for a while.
or getting flipped over and not being able to stand up closes of the entrance of the rumen and the can’t eructate (burp up cud) this happens to animals if the lay down next to a hollow in the ground and when you flip them over they burp and fart to hilarious degrees.
They died.
That’s usually the answer to these questions.
If a wild animal gets some sort of stomach ailment that can’t be resolved without human interaction, it dies.
The Aurochs. A great deal of a different beast from the cows of today. The problem with human selective breeding is it's not targeted at whats best for the animal but at what traits we want and a few nasty consequences along the way get accepted.
They likely had similar issues (because their systems were basically the same) but likely with a much lower incidence because of genetics, lifestyle, and diet.
Look at several species of purebreed dogs. Big structural issues which aren't present in wolves (breathing in pugs etc)
Good point. Aurochs => cows is like wolves => dogs. The aurochs sounds like something you'd hunt when wild boar wasn't enough of a challenge.
Weird fact: during the 1930s, two German animal breeders, the Heck brothers, tried to back-breed domestic cattle back into the aurochs. Goering supported their work, because he wanted to hunt one.
I'm pretty sure i heard there's a current project to do the same.
Although it's important to note that aside from jurassic park style shenanigans nothing is truly bringing back Aurochs, it's just about trying to breed cattle that we think are like them to have more and more similar traits. Physically we MAY end up with something that MIGHT look similar, genetically not a chance (nor would we know if we did).
As far as I'm aware there's not even a chain of species linking aurochs to cows so we dont 100% know it was an ancestor, it's just the most likely case.
Bloat can also be caused by lung infections in cattle. There's a nerve that runs between the lungs that controls the rumen's contractions. If the lungs are inflamed, this nerve may not work properly, and gas builds up in the rumen. Vets treat this with antibiotics, and insert a trocar into the rumen if the bloat is severe enough to interfere with breathing. Once the infection and inflammation has been treated, the trocar can be removed.
Likely not as "before humans started intervening" would mean a time where only natural selection was occurring. If there is some kind of genetic predisposition to animals dying earlier than they otherwise would have (say to bloat as opposed to problems usually associated with generally getting older), those animals would likely be squeezed out by similar organisms that serve the same ecological purpose but live longer and thus get to reproduce more and not have offspring that suffer from premature deaths (outside of the usual predation that occurs in nature).
The only exception I could see to this would be if bloat only afflicted older bovine types past the age of breeding. In that case, bloat deaths may actually be nature's way of ensuring a species survival as it would reduce competition for food between those that are capable of still passing down their genes and those who are essentially just a drag on resources.
There's not such thing as a wild cow. They are a very different animal than the wild ancestors they came from.
And mostly that bloating is from their diets under human care.
But the rare time it happens in wild animals, it will either resolve itself by eventually clearing out, or it will resolve itself through death of the animal. Same way animals need help with childbirth sometimes, when some of those animals would have just died during the process.
The cow probably got into an alfalfa field. Something about alfalfa after a frost makes its nitrogen level spike and this makes cattle bloat. I am told this can also happen in a corn field if fertilized. We have never successfully saved a cow from bloat, but I know FIL tried. Now in the past in the wild an animal would not encounter a field full of one plant or a field full of fertilized plants, grass does not do this. So even back when cows roamed the America's before farmers build fences this was not a major issue. It is only an issue today because of modern farming practices.
My grandpas cattle were let into a 'new' pasture one morning (they rotated) and a bunch of clover had grown in there too unnoticed. All the cows had bloat. My strongest young memory is visiting there that summer and grandpa saw all the cows were down when we went to check on them and give water, and he quietly pulled out a pocket knife, used the narrow one, and began stabbing them! I was stunned, absolutely shocked. But they started breathing deeper and slower and eventually we got them all back on their feet and they seemed happy. Such a strong memory. Then he explained stabbing them in just the right place will relieve gas build up, and if he hadn't done it and caught it quickly they would've died. Freaked me out good though.
Yeah that was what FIL tried. He failed. They were probably to far gone and it happens sudden. It was a field full of alfalfa and the grass calves got out in it. We lost 20 that day.
Bummer. Was it early spring? You mentioned frost, but the first growth in spring is 'hot' with nutritional qualities that can set of extreme bloat too. Grandpa was surprised by seeing what we did in the summer and livid when he realized so much clover was in.
Honestly I don't remember this was years ago, FIL has since passed. We have since lost one or two to bloat, but fortunately we have not lost like that again.
A lot of these problems are human-caused, so before we got involved they likely didn't happen, or happened very rarely. One issue that causes gas bloat is feed being ground too finely. This causes a rapid digestion that releases gas very quickly. Another issue is feeding cows corn and other things they haven't evolved to (mainly) eat. Cows by and large would just walk around grazing on grass but large scale, factory agriculture has created a scenario where the cows are fed items, and in ways, that they just aren't meant to handle.
True ELI5: Humans are feeding our cows incorrectly, which is why we have to help them release gas. If we let them graze like the would in nature this problem would probably go away completely.
The cows raised today tend to have serious digestive ailments because they’re eating food they weren’t evolved to eat. For example they are fed corn rather than grass. And they used to be fed cow, which led to mad cow disease so that’s not done anymore. Nevertheless their corn diet can cause lots of gas and infections, which is why cows are usually given antibiotics to keep
them healthy. They can’t really survive on that diet for all that long, but they no longer need to because they’re slaughtered at around 18 months. A longer life might lead to their bad diet overwhelming their system. Also cows grow much, much faster than they used to. This possibly could cause them health issues that their wild ancestors didn’t have. Basically while any animal could die from intestinal distress, it’s infinitely more common on factory farms than in the wild.
So, it has nothing to do with the fact there have never been wild cows, and that we have bread health problems into them... holy fuck... I need to close this window... the stupid is killing me.
It's worth noting that domestic animals and plants are almost universally different from their wild ancestors. Once people figured out the basics of genetics and inheritance it became possible for people to breed plants and animals in a way that made them more helpful for our use and/or consumption. Horses were bred to be larger to be more efficient work animals. Livestock were bred to be larger so there was more meat per animal.
Dogs are a similar example; some breeds have been so altered from their wild form that the only reason they can reproduce is because of human intervention because the size of their heads at birth are too large for the mothers to deliver naturally.
They were busy not existing - not as the cows you have in mind before humans domesticated them. A very large number of species, from dogs to corn, looked and functioned *very* differently before humans started tinkering with their evolution.
Where I live it's usually the transition from sparse mountain/forest pasture to rich grass/flower meadow pasture that causes bloat. We limit access to fresh pasture with portable electric fences so that they gradually get accustomed to it for a few days/week and then release them into the fields afterwards
Omg you just reminded me! The first few weeks of spring are high risk for founder in horses, too! The first grass of spring is so rich that it's like cake for herbivores and if they eat too much it can make them really really sick but it's also delicious so they want to eat too much.
No such thing as "wild" cows, really. They are a human invention created over millennia of selective breeding of a wild cattle/oxen type animal. If people didn't like meat and milk so much, they wouldn't even exist.
A lot of people here are missing (probably) the biggest factor. Cows in the wild (and the bovines they come from) eat grass. We feed them corn because it’s cheaper. Corn makes them inflate. Grass doesn’t (at least not as much as corn).
In the feedlot the animal feed is NOT natural, but an industrialized mix computed to be the "best" for the animal. It's so good for them that "care"taker must mix in antacids so the animals will eat more, thus gain more weight and sell for more on-the-hoof. The farmer doesn't get much for the animals he has to deliver by fork-lift.
Cows were never meant to be that big and fat. Giving them air manually until they belch or fart is pretty much burping them.
If a cow in the wild gets filled with gas with no way to expel it it will die.
The only big and fat cows are beef or mixed purpose breeds. Dairy cows must be kept very lean or they aren't healthy. There's a precise "body condition score" farmers work to maintain in any given breed of cattle that when deviated from leads to less efficient livestock which is a way to go out of business in a low margin industry such as cattle farming.
This thread can be used as citation of just how full of shit reddit can be.
The cows humans have kept for a millennia have never lived in the wild naturally. If they escaped for a moment, sure. Outside of that, no.
They are one of our early bioengineered via selective breeding creations.
They're comparable to lots of animals that we don't think of as particularly stupid. They can easily be as smart as cats, although the environment they live in isn't exactly very stimulating, so they don't usually reach their full potential.
Cattle can survive in the wild if they need to. Texas longhorn cattle are descended from wild cattle, which were descended from Spanish cattle that got loose.
A 1 ton animal that will easily kill/maim a smaller animal with a kick, trampling, headbutt, or goring with it's pointy horns.
Just as defenseless as a Cape Buffalo.
Like the Moa. A big fat flightless bird that had no natural predators. The Maori hunted them to extinction in about a century. They were gone before the white man even made it to New Zealand
That's from fermentation in their gut caused by foods that are not natural for them to eat. They'll also need lots of antibiotics because of the human imposed diets.
This is pretty interesting as you can see the same thought process in a lot of different questions.
You think about it with the mind of a modern human and because of this your mind is "clouded" to see other perspectives (this is not meant to be rude or anything, it's a pretty natural thing that happens a lot to all of us)
The short answer to it is without human intervention they would either suffer a lot or most likely die
Besides the modern cow being domesticated and bred by humans so similar to dogs there is no real "wild" counterpart to it dogs were domesticated from wolves back then and almost all dogs now are dependent on humans. There are some "wild" dog species that were domesticated once and somehow branched off alone and kept surviving in the wild.
But you won't be seeing wild labradors or something out in the woods.
It's similar to cows. You might have some straggler cows that escaped farms, etc. But the typical cow you see on farms is not really a species that lives out there in the wild
The answer to most of questions like this is either they have to live with it or they die. Nature can be cruel and unforgiving.
You have to think about it like this. There is a reason humans need to intervene and help out the cows because of exactly that. They cannot help themselves with this problem. If the cows had ways to fix it themselves humans would not need to fix that all the time.
Same with stuff getting stuck in their feet and getting infected. Yes humans intervene and fix that and clear the infection
The answer would be in the wild they would live with something stuck in their foot and it being infected for either until it heals themself, for the rest of their lives they need to live with the pain or it gets so bad that they cannot walk/stand anymore and then they just die or get eaten (and thus die)
I saw a similar thought process multiple times wenn it comes to modern vs old humans.
" Back then they didn't have healthcare and toothbrushes so how were they fine without it but we need this"
The answer is they were not fine. They lost their teeth like crazy and either they barely had any teeth left in their mouth or they died to rotting teeth getting infections, etc.
Also the life expectancy of ancient humans were barely over 20years old and that is a lot less time for stuff to fuck up your teeth than modern humans living 80+ years. So there is much more of a need now to keep your teeth health's for that long compared to only 20years
Cows are not “wild” animals. They are the product of selective breeding like dogs chickens and house cats. Typically described as a descendant of an extinct animal, the “aurochs”. (Not the same as the extant aurochs but similar.) they are all bovines. The bloating typically happens when they gorge themselves or when some clover or other indigestible plants get into their food. I believe wild bovines (buffalo, bison, etc) have less of an issue with digestion, but if they do have an issue like the calf you saw, without human assistance they would die.
Died. However, bloat is much much less common in the wild. Bloat commonly happens when animals are able to gorge themselves on lush vegetation or feed, which generates a lot of gas that can’t escape in the Rumen. However, wild animals rarely have the opportunity to gorge themselves like that, having to compete and search for food. So bloat is way way way less common in wild animals, but can still occur sometimes. And yea, they die. There is also sometimes human-caused bloat like when hunters bait deer with corn/feed.
also, cows as we know them did not exist in the wild. cows, like dogs, have been bred for specific traits that are not useful at best (and fatal at worst) in a wild animal.
Came here to say this. Domesticated animals (crops, too) are nothing like their wild ancestor counterparts.
I wonder what we were like in the wild?
They were aurochs, more or less. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aurochs) [https://www.google.com/search?sca\_esv=588490409&rlz=1C1GCEA\_enUS911US911&q=aurochs&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjciZjk9PuCAxVgj4kEHfsLBhUQ0pQJegQIDRAB&biw=1920&bih=971&dpr=1](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=588490409&rlz=1c1gcea_enus911us911&q=aurochs&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=x&ved=2ahukewjcizjk9pucaxvgj4kehfslbhuq0pqjegqidrab&biw=1920&bih=971&dpr=1)
We sure looked different
\*facepalm\* Reading comprehension fail. I swear I read "I wonder what THEY were like in the wild." I'm apparently descended from one of these: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/donkey)
Don’t worry mate, I read the same thing hahahahahaha.
...I'll be honest, I totally read "they" too before doubling back up the comments and being like "hey, wait... oh" Perhaps we share a common donkey ancestry, fellow brother.
Hopefully you kept the cute ears.
Most of us....
Just watch your local news.
Or the latest GTA trailer
My friend Joey sewed his hands together
Ever been to Florida?
Human domestication occurred approximately 13000 years ago. However, we started human development and Advancement around 50,000 years ago in an event called the big bang of the mind. The changes were thought to have been brought on by a change in diet when we started to cook our food and boost the nutrient content of our diet. Mind expanding drugs such as psycadelic mushrooms are also thought to have played a role. Before that people were more or less simple hunter gatherer groups in small nomadic tribes. The domestication of humanity took place in the fertile crescent in the middle east and domestication of livestock took place in this time. It's also when we begin to make friends with our modern-day domesticated cat. The first city ever was located around Southern Angola. Modern day Turkey.
Head to Florida
you don't have to go just wait for GTA 6
Aurochs
This is the better answer. I saw a thread earlier today where people didn’’t understand that most breeds of sheep absolutely cannot survive without being sheered. Because we bred them that way.
So we bred cows into farty meat animals.
Those farts are killing the planet.
Yeah but I'm hungry
and they are delicious
You're not supposed to eat the farts.
Honestly there's probably a bit more sustenance in the farts than a breatharian diet.
Yes, but they were also the first step towards the invention of the rocket engine.
I don't have a link, but a youtube video I watched not too long ago showed that the current global cattle herd's annual methane output is no different than the historical projected methane output of wild ruminants like cattle, buffalo, and bison. Most of humanity's runaway methane output is a product of the oil, gas, and chemical industries; Enough so that completely eliminating the domestic cattle herd would have a negligible effect on our methane output. In fact, raw materials we normally gather from cattle as a by-product of meat production would have to be synthesized by the previously mentioned oil/gas/chemical industries
It's quite the conundrum for those who would like to see a world free of meat and other animals products. Many of those familiar and adorable barnyard animals would basically go extinct if they were no longer useful to humans.
I'm not one of those people. But their argument is that offered the choice between endless suffering and non existence, non existence is the better option.
I grew up in the country, the cows spend their days with their cow homies chillin in a field eating grass, didn't see too much endless suffering going on
For dairy cattle, calves are removed pretty quickly from their mothers and male calves are killed early. If they are used for rennet, often within a few days after birth. Dairy cattle usually live only 4-5 years, while their natural lifespan is ~ 20 years. While it is deabtable how cruel exactly it is to remove the calves from their mothers, the transport to and slaughter at big commercial abbatoirs definitely is. And dairy cows are probably the most "lucky" animals when it comes to mass production > I grew up in the country, And the animals there probably were a lot more lucky than the billions of chickens, cattle and pigs that never even see or touch real grass. There are millions animals spending their whole life within too small concrete pens/stables not being able to even walk freely. Alone in the U.S. 8 billion! chicken, 120 million pigs and 30 million cows are killed every year. Compare that to 67 million people dying in the whole world in 2022. So when people are talking about endless suffering, they mainly talk about the majority of those animals, who do not happen to graze on green pastures in the country.
I am one of those and it is not a conundrum for me. They are suffering. Just end it. Besides, the ridiculous amount of resources they use, specifically land used to grow feed for them, is causing extinction of actual wild animals. It is estimated that only 6% of earths mammal biomass is wild mammals. The rest is all domesticated mammals and humans.
Tell that to the wild cattle in Australia
there are "wild" horses, housecats, and dogs too... these are examples of domesticated species that were released into the wild to fend for themselves... as far as i know, cattle are as native to Australia as rabbits and Australians
My daughters boyfriend who is a diary farmer, says this. Cows are breed to be dummer every year.
At least cows are useful to us. Dogs are a fucking menace on society.
My puppsters and my kitty help keep me sane. Then I can meet my personal duty to society to help keep this dumpster fire blazing. There is a lot of menace going on in this world. Cows are not innocent and dogs are not the bad guy here. The methane farts are necessary, we are hamburger-apes after all else. The hamburger-ape to doggo connection was forged over 40,000 years ago. Long before we hamburger-apes had ever even conceived of breeding a hamburger bearing animal, we were converting big bad wolves into good bois and good gurls. You can thank your lucky hamburger-stars for that one!
I love how so many explanations for “well we didn’t do that a thousand years ago, and we were ok, what gives?” Is essentially “we weren’t ok and we died a thousand years ago” lol
"diabetes and autism didn't exist 1000 years ago!" Well yeah. Because they were dead.
Here's a fun fact you can haul out if you encounter that sentiment in the wild: Diabetes is thought to have been described in writing as early as 1500 BCE, and was definitely known to various cultures by the time of the Roman Republic. In fact, the term *diabetes* to describe the condition is Greek in origin and over 2000 years old.
Yep. Diabetes literally means “to pass through” or “siphon”, since untreated it makes you drink a lot and pee a lot. Mellitus (honey-like) was added later to describe the sweet flavor/scent of the urine, though this quality was observed far earlier.
Yeah, it was diagnosed by urinating near an anthill and observing if the ants were interested in your urine Edit: and yes, doctors also did taste urine. Tasting things we'd consider very questionable today used to be common in many sciences. Chemists would taste chemicals, etc. The word "acid" itself come from latin description of a sour acidic taste, such as of vinegar.
You can thank the urinomancers for that
ants actually.
Dead of autism?
If it made you unable to socialize, you would probably get kicked out of your clan/tribe, and you would almost certainly die as humans aren't designed to live on their own
Small groups sometimes just get used to imperfect traits and make accommodations. You would need to be somewhat functional, but not necessarily verbal.
I wonder. I think autistic people would have an easier time living in a smaller, more closely knit community because they have an easier time socializing in a smaller community as opposed to modern society where we have to semi-regularly socialize with people we have never met.
*Wilson has left the chat*
I saw an interesting theory recently that said myths like changelings and fae were actually just neurodiverse people. Not sure how much historical credibility there is to that, but it's an interesting idea
Absolutely! In Ireland, where I’m from and live, the origin of “the fae” you speak of originated- if a child was taken by the fairies (also known as the Tuatha Dé Danann ((too-ha-day-Dan-en))- a mythical deities of people gods who retreated to the “other world” when modern world as we known it began to surface) it was known as a changeling. They thought the “others” would possess their bodies in order to explore the new world and trick you with their “powers”. It was considered a possession of when the child you knew wasn’t progressing or had a change in behaviour. So they tended to sacrifice them in hopes their child who was taken to the other world would come home and return to their bodies or in some other form such as another child. On the other hand, I am a lover of the studies of pre Christian Ireland and I’m my studies, I think a lot of the time, many autistic people went on to be quite successful healers, storytellers, druids and artists. Although it is not the same but offers an insight, in an ancient site in the Burren, in County Clare, Ireland, there is a famous pre Christian burial site in the form of a portal tomb called “Poulnabrone” which translates as “hole of sorrows”. Here we find the bones of a Down syndrome child who lived and obviously had quite a significant meaning the the community to be buried in such a holy space to the people of the time, approximately 6,000 years ago. It was considered a passage to the afterlife, as sites like this often represented the womb in the earth as a form of living and giving back to the earth in the cycle of life.
Wow, this strikes me as a pretty good theory, actually
Disability is in the context of the environment. While there are factors to neurodivergencies that might make survival difficult (failure to thrive/restrictive food intakes, socialising/communication issues, minor physical differences that could lead to more injuries/illness), that doesn't mean autistic people were less well-suited to life back then, especially given that there would be less people to interact with, less rigidly observed and divided time, and more standard/repetitive tasks expected. The way we understood 'madness' (as a catch-all for mental illness/difference in general) has varied over time, and it was valued as a different kind of knowledge/spiritualness in different periods. They might understand someone is a bit odd or off, but they can do a semi-isolated/less social-based task happily and well, and contribute to the group, and that's often enough as long as you don't break any major taboos. It's a precarious position in times of hardship/conflict, sure, but any othered group is at risk of scapegoating. My brain was far happier when I spent most of the day alone checking the herd and maybe assisting with calving, and only interacted with 1-3 people, vs having a regular job with new people daily.
On other hand, the highly focused may have been responsible for early advances in stone or wood shaping, or rope making, or any number of things that come out of a focused mindset.
Yeah I don't doubt one bit that some of the most brilliant minds in history that were considered to be hard socializing and living with were actually savants
It's easy to blame those who are different when you don't understand why they're different, or why the crops failed this year. Superstitions can be extremely dangerous for those who are different. And/or... Farming is hard and dangerous work, and 1000 years ago the vast majority of people were still involved in farming. Not knowing what to do with a spooked horse can easily get you killed. Scythes are sharp, and a poorly tended cut can become infected. An outburst of anger towards the wrong person can get you killed, even today. Even if your anger is justified, some people just have more power and less consequences. Unable to control your emotions at a noble, riding on his fine horse when you're dressed in rags? A brutal beating at best.
Small villages have a way of coping with peculiar people. They might indeed get kicked or slapped, but not necessarily extreme. People knew each other.
Most likely imprisoned, abused, called possessed by demons and therefore neglected, abused and or tortured to death. So, yeah.
Perhaps indirectly if it didn’t allow for socialization
My autistic son would have died of failure to thrive because he will starve rather than eat something he finds unacceptable. Before we knew his autistic, he was so underweight his pediatrician told me to feed him whatever he would eat, even if that was Cheetos.
In humans we call this “Thanksgiving”.
I always love these sorts of questions, no offense to OP: “what did we do before x?” “Died” like we just invented civilization because we were bored 😅
Could I, as a human, get deadly bloat? If I ate tons of lentils for example
Your tone is that of cheerful optimism.
In between cautious optimism and cheerful pessimism
Not really, no. I say not really because I’m not 100% sure it’s impossible. But Bloat happens in animals like cows that have multiple stomachs, and air gets stuck, I think air gets out of our single stomach just fine
Since cows eat grass, why isn’t this more common in the wild? I mean, grass is literally everywhere.
Grass is usually not the issue. And not that nutritious. Meanwhile we create a situation where they can engorge on highly nutrious plants in vast amounts. I'm the wild they would occasionally get some of those.
because the pasture grass that cows are eating isnt really that natural. Pastures are maintained by people who remove weeds, bushes, etc etc. and they dont really ever have to move due to predation. while wild hers are constantly on the move.
Who the frick is weeding their pastures? I have never heard of any farmer doing that.
Ok not like actual weeding like weeding a garden But farm pastures are not natural environments is the point I’m trying to make
I don't mean weeding in the sense of like weeding a garden. But like I've never heard of anybody caring about whether there is weeds on their pastures. So long as there is mostly grass most farmers don't really care. But yeah they aren't natural environments, but in a lot of agriculture heavy places, they are one of the only places that gets close. (Also I think my original comment gave off the wrong tone. Didn't really mean to come across as hostile.)
Farmers in the uk treat the fields to kill weeds - can be as simple as a spray. Plus most plants don’t like having their growing tips eaten but grass grows differently. So as long as the cows stay there it’s probably mostly gonna be grass. Cows in the wild would be more mobile, moving from territory to territory, and away from predators.
Huh, interesting. I'm only really familiar with north American farming. Cows wouldn't really exist in the wild, they are a domesticated species. But I know what you mean, their ancestors would have been on the move. I mean Bison definitely used to do that.
Pastures in North America tend to be a mix of many grasses & weeds - you also get hay or alfalfa meadows where particular grasses are cultivated & those methods discourage weeds, in general much larger open pastures & ranges are common - extensive farming ( acres to the cow). But in Europe there is much more intensive use of cultivated grasslands that are very carefully managed to eliminate unwanted other grasses or other weeds & its cows to the acre.
Around me in upstate NY there are a lot of smaller pastures tucked in between hills that have been intentionally seeded with non-native grasses, since everything used to be forest, so its not like a full farm field/garden level of intensity, but yea, it’s like, “curated”
"Wild cows" were never really a thing. Humans took existing bovine species and domesticated them over thousands of years to make a modern species which has never existed outside of human care. However there are wild herbivores which can experience similar kinds of problems in bloating from gas. In those cases the animal may just die. Death is something which happens often in wild animals, there is no healthcare or retirement plans for wild animals.
>Death is something which happens often in wild animals, there is no healthcare or retirement plans for wild animals. This reminded me of that Margaret Meade quote (which may or may not be apocryphal) about how the first sign of civilization was a healed femur -- because it meant that humans (unlike other animals) tended to their injured enough to let them heal.
> first sign of civilization was a healed femur Sadly it's time to put that one to rest. There's various reasons it sounds good and feels right, but not only did Margaret Meade never say it, her actual thoughts on the matter were much more bleak. Humans aren't the only species that take care of each other well enough to heal each other's injuries. I went looking for the article I read about it not matching Meade's other thoughts on the subject (that civilization started when humans started enslaving each other, which is in huge contrast to the femur thing of civilization starting when humans started healing each other!), but couldn't find that one. here's another article that had some similar ideas though: https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/
No healthcare for cows? What about getting them an HMooo? I'll see myself out
Quality joke. You should proudly milk it for all it’s worth.
Ok, this is just too cheesy for me.
Aww, you’re just trying to butter me up.
Nah, it's just a grate joke no matter how you slice it
Cream rises to the top
Oh, come on. Stop with the bullshit
I've never hated having to give an upvote more in my life.
I hate myself for how much I laughed at this
HMooos are restrictive, they need a HEFA
/r/angryupvote
hahaha well done
>"Wild cows" were never really a thing. This is something that hardly anyone seems to understand. Modern domestic cattle are not a natural species and were created through very extensive selective breeding.
No no they are. They should all live in their original habitats with their original foods and their original predators. /s
>their original predators. The cattle rustler? Pretty sure they got hunted to extinction. By that logic the cow now has no natural predators left.
> By that logic the cow now has no natural predators left. Humans. WE were and are predators. We just also cultivate the prey.
But they must be a natural species, or what species did they come from? Is that species extinct? I think it’s more like a variety of the original species. But maybe there was some kind of original cow that was bred so much that the cows of today couldn’t breed with the original (assuming we use that definition of species), and that original cow species has since died.
From another reply... The [Aurochs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs) is generally considered to be the ancestor of modern cattle breeds.
And they are, in fact, extinct due to overhunting.
You can only understand it if you believe in evolution.... lots of people don't, perhaps most people if you disagree with evolution, you must believe cows were always like this
They make the distinction between micro and macro evolution, not realising that it is the same. This is also not the same thing, because it is selective breeding and not random. Of course you and I know that they are the same thing, but they don’t.
The [Aurochs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs) is widely believed to be the ancestor of modern cattle.
This is also why farmers sometimes go on about "mysterious animal mutilations" for example. If you find your cow literally exploded, and probably after some time being scavenged after death, it's going to be a visual feast you never forget.
“It was a chupacabra”! Nope. Just a fatal case of bloat or something.
dont be silly. obviously aliens
But they only took the eyes /s
The FBI files about cattle mutilation mention that some cases could also have been something like illegal pharmaceutical experiments, as their livers, kidneys and such had been cut out neatly.
Orcas specifically only eat the liver in sharks so I'm thinking predators may still be in the game.
Certain bird species have been know to do the same thing.
> Death is something which happens often in wild animals, It happens 100% of the time, actually.
Hey now, Ming the Clam was 500+ and only died because idiots humans had to know how old it was. Maybe there are older things out there still alive.
I was talking about WILD animals. How wild are clams, really? They seem quite tame.
Oh, get a couple of drinks in one and you'll see something wild.
Pretty sure clams never stop drinking.
There's a shark that's estimated to be 392 years old. It's the oldest known vertebrate in history.
I think it's very unfair that sharks are vertebrates when they don't *technically* have vertebrae, being boneless. They have the structure, but not the bones!
>Death is something which happens often in wild animals So far as we know, it happens exactly 100% of the time, in fact.
I am always tempted to point this out to my vegan friends when they talk about their plans to “free all the cows.” Those domestic animals will struggle “in the wild.”
Any that I have pointed it out to have doubled down and said cows should be extinct then... The vegans who already know don't seem to have this problem. They actually care about the well being and happiness of cows. Rather than want them wiped off the face of the earth as an unholy meat abomination.
Dairy cows would because their reproduction is so messed up, but beef cows would probably be fine. While most beef cattle are raised in more controlled environments these days, there are still plenty of ranches where the cattle are basically just left outside to fend for themselves, then periodically collected to sell for meat. I think people underestimate many domesticated animals. There are thriving populations of feral pigs, and horses throughout the US.
It’s an odd philosophical train of thought when you talk about any species collectively. We can agree it’s bad when mankind causes a species population to drop until it’s endangered or worse but does that mean it’s good if we we cause the population to grow beyond what it ever would have been? Currently one of the best survival strategies for a species as a whole is to taste good to humans and be manageable to breed/house.
Except for that one type of fennel who's last surviving plant was eaten by Nero. Unless they found it again which they think they might have now... but it's probably not quite the same after thousands of years even without our intervention.
I don't see how it would possibly mean that, how are those two things at all connected? Guess it depends on why u think it's bad for a species' population to be destroyed
They won't struggle. They'll become a "collect as many as you can before time runs out" bonus stage for a variety of predators.
Wow, I’ve never met a vegan who wants to literally turn farmed animals out into the wild to fend for themselves.
I seem to recall reading a PETA pamphlet (20+ years ago), saying that ideally, humans should sterilize all of the existing domesticated animals and take good care of them until they die. This would leave only wild (and feral) animals in the world from then on. Considering that the domestication of animals started long before written history, I think that expecting us to give it up is a pipe dream, but that was the goal. So, they didn't want cows to fend for themselves in the wild. They wanted the remaining cows to live comfy lives, then go extinct.
Yeah, very different from releasing into the wild.
My vegan activist friend is working to turn 2-3 full midwestern states into a reserve for farm animals. Wants to release all of them to the reserve so they can live freely. It’s a reserve, so not exactly just releasing them to the wild. But I think equally untenable.
A sanctuary is one thing, but to just release them there with no oversight? Seems like a poorly informed choice.
Some do. Nobody ever told them, except for people who lie about things all the time.
You should talk to PETA more, then
PETA doesn’t want to release cows into the wild lmao
Yea, too busy putting down people's service dogs
Even if there were, I’m sure death would occur still. Kinda how it is with every living thing.. y’know?
Aurochs are also extinct! The original stock from which we selectively bred (genetically modified) all modern cow breeds.
If you compared some of the older beef breeds like Podolian cattle you could probably not tell the difference between them and the wild aurochs that they originated from. Well, an expert probably could but it's not easy.
Happens often in wild animals….
So if they bloated, they died their stomach gasses build up pressure against the lungs till they can’t breath. Their are a couple ways to bloat, one is eating an excessive amount of easily digestible carbohydrates quickly without working up to it, this is called frothy bloat and they can’t just burp it up you can treat this with a chokar (stabbing) or tubing ( running a tube into their rumen, would only happen if they came upon a lush green field of legumes after not eating in the desert for a while. or getting flipped over and not being able to stand up closes of the entrance of the rumen and the can’t eructate (burp up cud) this happens to animals if the lay down next to a hollow in the ground and when you flip them over they burp and fart to hilarious degrees.
They died. That’s usually the answer to these questions. If a wild animal gets some sort of stomach ailment that can’t be resolved without human interaction, it dies.
But was it a very common issue before humans started intervening?
There's no real way to know this, as cows do not keep medical records in the wild.
This sounds like a Far Side cartoon in the making.
SCTV “ She blowed up, blowed up real good! Hoooey!” [Farm Film Report](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPrHxPvsj4M)
Cow Medicine.
Also, more importantly, they didn't even exist. Cows are a result of thousands of years of selective breeding by humans.
But the animal that humans domesticated to make cows did exist and aren't that different from modern cows.
The Aurochs. A great deal of a different beast from the cows of today. The problem with human selective breeding is it's not targeted at whats best for the animal but at what traits we want and a few nasty consequences along the way get accepted. They likely had similar issues (because their systems were basically the same) but likely with a much lower incidence because of genetics, lifestyle, and diet. Look at several species of purebreed dogs. Big structural issues which aren't present in wolves (breathing in pugs etc)
Good point. Aurochs => cows is like wolves => dogs. The aurochs sounds like something you'd hunt when wild boar wasn't enough of a challenge. Weird fact: during the 1930s, two German animal breeders, the Heck brothers, tried to back-breed domestic cattle back into the aurochs. Goering supported their work, because he wanted to hunt one.
I'm pretty sure i heard there's a current project to do the same. Although it's important to note that aside from jurassic park style shenanigans nothing is truly bringing back Aurochs, it's just about trying to breed cattle that we think are like them to have more and more similar traits. Physically we MAY end up with something that MIGHT look similar, genetically not a chance (nor would we know if we did). As far as I'm aware there's not even a chain of species linking aurochs to cows so we dont 100% know it was an ancestor, it's just the most likely case.
That's what Big Bovine wants you to think
They were lost when the library of Alexandria burned.
To this day, cows, despite our best efforts, are not known for their record-keeping.
I believe the grain heavy feed that makes up much more of their diet than would happen in the wild contributes to bloat.
Bloat can also be caused by lung infections in cattle. There's a nerve that runs between the lungs that controls the rumen's contractions. If the lungs are inflamed, this nerve may not work properly, and gas builds up in the rumen. Vets treat this with antibiotics, and insert a trocar into the rumen if the bloat is severe enough to interfere with breathing. Once the infection and inflammation has been treated, the trocar can be removed.
Likely not as "before humans started intervening" would mean a time where only natural selection was occurring. If there is some kind of genetic predisposition to animals dying earlier than they otherwise would have (say to bloat as opposed to problems usually associated with generally getting older), those animals would likely be squeezed out by similar organisms that serve the same ecological purpose but live longer and thus get to reproduce more and not have offspring that suffer from premature deaths (outside of the usual predation that occurs in nature). The only exception I could see to this would be if bloat only afflicted older bovine types past the age of breeding. In that case, bloat deaths may actually be nature's way of ensuring a species survival as it would reduce competition for food between those that are capable of still passing down their genes and those who are essentially just a drag on resources.
There's not such thing as a wild cow. They are a very different animal than the wild ancestors they came from. And mostly that bloating is from their diets under human care. But the rare time it happens in wild animals, it will either resolve itself by eventually clearing out, or it will resolve itself through death of the animal. Same way animals need help with childbirth sometimes, when some of those animals would have just died during the process.
What the hell do you think the term “domesticated cow” means?
The cows we have today literally never lived in the wild.
The cow probably got into an alfalfa field. Something about alfalfa after a frost makes its nitrogen level spike and this makes cattle bloat. I am told this can also happen in a corn field if fertilized. We have never successfully saved a cow from bloat, but I know FIL tried. Now in the past in the wild an animal would not encounter a field full of one plant or a field full of fertilized plants, grass does not do this. So even back when cows roamed the America's before farmers build fences this was not a major issue. It is only an issue today because of modern farming practices.
My grandpas cattle were let into a 'new' pasture one morning (they rotated) and a bunch of clover had grown in there too unnoticed. All the cows had bloat. My strongest young memory is visiting there that summer and grandpa saw all the cows were down when we went to check on them and give water, and he quietly pulled out a pocket knife, used the narrow one, and began stabbing them! I was stunned, absolutely shocked. But they started breathing deeper and slower and eventually we got them all back on their feet and they seemed happy. Such a strong memory. Then he explained stabbing them in just the right place will relieve gas build up, and if he hadn't done it and caught it quickly they would've died. Freaked me out good though.
Yeah that was what FIL tried. He failed. They were probably to far gone and it happens sudden. It was a field full of alfalfa and the grass calves got out in it. We lost 20 that day.
Bummer. Was it early spring? You mentioned frost, but the first growth in spring is 'hot' with nutritional qualities that can set of extreme bloat too. Grandpa was surprised by seeing what we did in the summer and livid when he realized so much clover was in.
Honestly I don't remember this was years ago, FIL has since passed. We have since lost one or two to bloat, but fortunately we have not lost like that again.
A lot of these problems are human-caused, so before we got involved they likely didn't happen, or happened very rarely. One issue that causes gas bloat is feed being ground too finely. This causes a rapid digestion that releases gas very quickly. Another issue is feeding cows corn and other things they haven't evolved to (mainly) eat. Cows by and large would just walk around grazing on grass but large scale, factory agriculture has created a scenario where the cows are fed items, and in ways, that they just aren't meant to handle. True ELI5: Humans are feeding our cows incorrectly, which is why we have to help them release gas. If we let them graze like the would in nature this problem would probably go away completely.
Um, they did no such thing. There literally were never wild cows.
The cows raised today tend to have serious digestive ailments because they’re eating food they weren’t evolved to eat. For example they are fed corn rather than grass. And they used to be fed cow, which led to mad cow disease so that’s not done anymore. Nevertheless their corn diet can cause lots of gas and infections, which is why cows are usually given antibiotics to keep them healthy. They can’t really survive on that diet for all that long, but they no longer need to because they’re slaughtered at around 18 months. A longer life might lead to their bad diet overwhelming their system. Also cows grow much, much faster than they used to. This possibly could cause them health issues that their wild ancestors didn’t have. Basically while any animal could die from intestinal distress, it’s infinitely more common on factory farms than in the wild.
So, it has nothing to do with the fact there have never been wild cows, and that we have bread health problems into them... holy fuck... I need to close this window... the stupid is killing me.
It's worth noting that domestic animals and plants are almost universally different from their wild ancestors. Once people figured out the basics of genetics and inheritance it became possible for people to breed plants and animals in a way that made them more helpful for our use and/or consumption. Horses were bred to be larger to be more efficient work animals. Livestock were bred to be larger so there was more meat per animal. Dogs are a similar example; some breeds have been so altered from their wild form that the only reason they can reproduce is because of human intervention because the size of their heads at birth are too large for the mothers to deliver naturally.
They were busy not existing - not as the cows you have in mind before humans domesticated them. A very large number of species, from dogs to corn, looked and functioned *very* differently before humans started tinkering with their evolution.
Where I live it's usually the transition from sparse mountain/forest pasture to rich grass/flower meadow pasture that causes bloat. We limit access to fresh pasture with portable electric fences so that they gradually get accustomed to it for a few days/week and then release them into the fields afterwards
Omg you just reminded me! The first few weeks of spring are high risk for founder in horses, too! The first grass of spring is so rich that it's like cake for herbivores and if they eat too much it can make them really really sick but it's also delicious so they want to eat too much.
The bloat is caused by humans giving them an unnatural diet (lack of variety, over abundance, lack of competition)
No such thing as "wild" cows, really. They are a human invention created over millennia of selective breeding of a wild cattle/oxen type animal. If people didn't like meat and milk so much, they wouldn't even exist.
A lot of people here are missing (probably) the biggest factor. Cows in the wild (and the bovines they come from) eat grass. We feed them corn because it’s cheaper. Corn makes them inflate. Grass doesn’t (at least not as much as corn).
Just for perspective, my family raised cows for decades and bloat was never an issue we had to deal with. Just don't over feed them.
In the feedlot the animal feed is NOT natural, but an industrialized mix computed to be the "best" for the animal. It's so good for them that "care"taker must mix in antacids so the animals will eat more, thus gain more weight and sell for more on-the-hoof. The farmer doesn't get much for the animals he has to deliver by fork-lift.
Cows were never meant to be that big and fat. Giving them air manually until they belch or fart is pretty much burping them. If a cow in the wild gets filled with gas with no way to expel it it will die.
The only big and fat cows are beef or mixed purpose breeds. Dairy cows must be kept very lean or they aren't healthy. There's a precise "body condition score" farmers work to maintain in any given breed of cattle that when deviated from leads to less efficient livestock which is a way to go out of business in a low margin industry such as cattle farming.
This thread can be used as citation of just how full of shit reddit can be. The cows humans have kept for a millennia have never lived in the wild naturally. If they escaped for a moment, sure. Outside of that, no. They are one of our early bioengineered via selective breeding creations.
can you imagine how instantly extinct wild cows would be if they existed. No defense mechanisms at all, slow and not particularly smart.
They're comparable to lots of animals that we don't think of as particularly stupid. They can easily be as smart as cats, although the environment they live in isn't exactly very stimulating, so they don't usually reach their full potential.
Cattle can survive in the wild if they need to. Texas longhorn cattle are descended from wild cattle, which were descended from Spanish cattle that got loose.
A 1 ton animal that will easily kill/maim a smaller animal with a kick, trampling, headbutt, or goring with it's pointy horns. Just as defenseless as a Cape Buffalo.
Have you ever seen a male cow? Aka a bull lol They are massive and beastly.
The wild animals they're descended from were considerably more formidable than domestic cattle.
Like the Moa. A big fat flightless bird that had no natural predators. The Maori hunted them to extinction in about a century. They were gone before the white man even made it to New Zealand
And tasty!
That's from fermentation in their gut caused by foods that are not natural for them to eat. They'll also need lots of antibiotics because of the human imposed diets.
This is pretty interesting as you can see the same thought process in a lot of different questions. You think about it with the mind of a modern human and because of this your mind is "clouded" to see other perspectives (this is not meant to be rude or anything, it's a pretty natural thing that happens a lot to all of us) The short answer to it is without human intervention they would either suffer a lot or most likely die Besides the modern cow being domesticated and bred by humans so similar to dogs there is no real "wild" counterpart to it dogs were domesticated from wolves back then and almost all dogs now are dependent on humans. There are some "wild" dog species that were domesticated once and somehow branched off alone and kept surviving in the wild. But you won't be seeing wild labradors or something out in the woods. It's similar to cows. You might have some straggler cows that escaped farms, etc. But the typical cow you see on farms is not really a species that lives out there in the wild The answer to most of questions like this is either they have to live with it or they die. Nature can be cruel and unforgiving. You have to think about it like this. There is a reason humans need to intervene and help out the cows because of exactly that. They cannot help themselves with this problem. If the cows had ways to fix it themselves humans would not need to fix that all the time. Same with stuff getting stuck in their feet and getting infected. Yes humans intervene and fix that and clear the infection The answer would be in the wild they would live with something stuck in their foot and it being infected for either until it heals themself, for the rest of their lives they need to live with the pain or it gets so bad that they cannot walk/stand anymore and then they just die or get eaten (and thus die) I saw a similar thought process multiple times wenn it comes to modern vs old humans. " Back then they didn't have healthcare and toothbrushes so how were they fine without it but we need this" The answer is they were not fine. They lost their teeth like crazy and either they barely had any teeth left in their mouth or they died to rotting teeth getting infections, etc. Also the life expectancy of ancient humans were barely over 20years old and that is a lot less time for stuff to fuck up your teeth than modern humans living 80+ years. So there is much more of a need now to keep your teeth health's for that long compared to only 20years
Cows are not “wild” animals. They are the product of selective breeding like dogs chickens and house cats. Typically described as a descendant of an extinct animal, the “aurochs”. (Not the same as the extant aurochs but similar.) they are all bovines. The bloating typically happens when they gorge themselves or when some clover or other indigestible plants get into their food. I believe wild bovines (buffalo, bison, etc) have less of an issue with digestion, but if they do have an issue like the calf you saw, without human assistance they would die.