Summary: <p>Join us this week to learn about the aurochs, the gaur, some mystery cattle of Patagonia, a farting monster cow, and a ghost cow that turned out to be not so ghostly!</p> <p>The aurochs:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-526" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/aurochs-300x192.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="192"></p> <p>An aurochs skull:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-527" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/resizedimage133200-Aurochs-Skull-Staffan-Widstrand-verti.jpg" alt="" width="133" height="200"></p> <p>A gaur. Holy cow (heh) those things are enormous!</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-529" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Gaur-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225"></p> <p>A heck cow:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-531" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/heckcow-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169"></p> <p>The bonnacon, famous for stink. I love how this one looks awfully embarrassed:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-528" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Bonnacon-Medieval-Monster-surprise-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199"></p> <p><strong>Show transcript:</strong></p> <p>Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.</p> <p>We’re going to learn about some unusual cattle this week. You may not think cows are very interesting, but I think I can change your mind.</p> <p>We’ll start with the aurochs, also sometimes called the urus. It was the wild ancestor of domestic cattle and also ancestor of the European bison. The European bison is still around and is sometimes called the wisent, but the aurochs is extinct.</p> <p>The aurochs was a type of Ice Age megafauna. A big bull aurochs could stand almost six feet tall at the shoulder, or 180 cm, and some researchers estimate it could weigh as much as 3,300 lbs, or 1500 kg. Both cows and bulls grew horns. In shape the aurochs looked roughly like modern cattle, but the legs were longer, it was overall more muscular, and cows had small udders that weren’t especially visible. From cave paintings of aurochs, we know that calves were born reddish-brown with a lighter muzzle, but as they grew older, the bull calves became either dark brown or black, with a white stripe along the spine called an eel stripe.</p> <p>The aurochs was strong, fast, and could be very dangerous. Bulls sometimes killed each other when fighting, and they were famously ferocious when hunted.</p> <p>Sometime between the 3<sup>rd</sup> and 1<sup>st</sup></p>
