OX, a bovine animal; that is, a ruminant of the sub-family Bovinæ, which includes the typical species of the large family Bovidæ (q.v.); more specifically, an adult castrated male of some domesticated breed. An uncastrated adult male is a “bull,” a female a “cow,” a young individual of either sex a “calf,” a yearling female a “heifer,” a young castrated male a “steer” and a bull castrated when mature a “stag.” The herd collectively is spoken of as “oxen” or “cattle.” Hence, by extension, all the Bovinæ are spoken of as cattle, wild or tame, a list of which follows. The group is characterized by its large size and bulky form and by various minor characteristics, of which the foremost is the roundness, smoothness, horizontal up-curving growth and comparative shortness of the horns. Like the other sections of the family, antelopes, sheep, goats, etc., oxen are easily recognized but rather difficult to define technically. The history of the group begins, so far as known, in the Lower Pliocene (Siwalik) formations of India. The oxen apparently originated in that part of the world and reached Europe and North America in the time represented by the Upper Pliocene rocks. In some of the earlier species the females seem to have been hornless; but the type quickly assumed its proper form and some of those fossil in the Siwalki beds are closely related to our modern domesticated cattle. Europe possessed in the Pleistocene, or period just preceding the Glacial Period, a widespread, gigantic long-horned species named Bos primigenius and another species (B. brachycerus) with much shorter horns. Both seem to have survived the Glacial Period in sufficient strength to reoccupy the continent after the recession of the ice; and they constituted the great forest oxen, which Cæsar found in his campaigns in Gaul and Germany and to which, not distinguishing them, he gave the general name urus. Some survived as late, at least, as the reign of Charlemagne, and from them were derived, no doubt, the modern domesticated races of the Western World, possibly with some small and later admixture of native Eastern species. These cattle were tall, strong and seem to have differed mainly in the comparative length and shape of the horns; and there seems no doubt that a remnant of Bos primigenius, nearly, or, as some believe, quite pure, exists in the white cattle preserved in the Chillingham estates in the north of England (see Chillingham White Cattle); it is also regarded as certain that the Holstein breed is a direct descendant of this species. The other (short-horned) species has long been extinct, but was apparently the progenitor of the great body of European domestic cattle, whence have been derived the herds of America, South Africa, Australia and, in fact, all the world except the Orient.
The domestication of cattle began in prehistoric times; and some Asiatic species now extinct may have supplied the stock represented as in the service of the civilized nations of ancient Persia, asia Minor, Syria and Egypt by the early carvings and paintings which have come down to us, but they may have been derived from one or both of the species above mentioned. They were carried to Carthage and westward and to southern Europe when the civilizations of Greece and the Italian Peninsula arose and some were no doubt gradually taken by Roman settlers into western Europe as fast as it was subjugated, where they would be crossed with the larger, hardier short-horned local races of Gaul. Apparently the native cattle of the British Isles were of the long-horned (B. primigenius) stock only; but when what now is England was conquered and colonized by the Romans and later by the Saxons, Normans, etc., the better short-horned cattle which they brought with them were substituted first in the south of England and gradually elsewhere, replacing the British long-horns everywhere except in the extreme north, where the red Highland cattle perhaps represent them to this day. The Friesian and Holstein breeds of the Netherlands and the semi-wild Spanish cattle are regarded also as nearly direct descendants of these aboriginal long-horned oxen and from the Spanish stock, transported to South and Central America in the 16th century, came the vast plains-ranging herds of the Argentine pampas, Mexico, Texas and neighboring States. It was not until comparatively recent times that care and improved methods of breeding began to develop in England, northern France and the Netherlands the improved breeds now so distinct and valuable for beef or for milking. Most of the early cattle brought to eastern North America seem to have been of the short-horned English variety; and these, keeping pace with European development by intelligent selection and the frequent importation of foreign sires of high quality and mingled with the western “scrub” cattle, have produced the excellent varieties now to be seen in the United States and Canada.
Nearest to our domestic cattle are two East Indian species, the gaur and the gayal (qq.v.), which are domesticated to some extent by the people west of the Bay of Bengal. Closely related is the banteng (q.v.) of Sumatra. The common humped or Brahman cattle (see Zebu) of India and eastward represent a distinct species, of which no wild herds remain and which has been bred into many distinct varieties, of which one of the most aberrant is the Abyssinian sanga. The yak (q.v.) of Tibet and the diminutive forest-ox (see Anoa) of Celebes, bring the list of oxen down to the buffalos. Of these (see Buffalo) the East Indian species still exists in wild bands in the jungles of India and the Malayan Peninsula, but has been domesticated for a very long period and is used as a beast of draft and of burden throughout southeastern Asia and in many parts of tropical Africa. Africa has two native species, neither in domestication. A fourth species inhabits Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands. The bisons (q.v.), composed of the American bison and the aurochs, neither of which have been domesticated to any practical extent, both of which are extinct except in small protected herds, complete the list of the bovine animals of the world.
Consult standard zoologies, especially the writings of Blanford upon the mammals of India, Persia and Abyssinia; Lydekker, ‘Oxen, Sheep and Goats of the World’ (1898); and the authors cited under Bison, Buffalo, etc.