30 Facts About Cattle

Cattle are commonly raised as livestock for meat, for milk, and for hides, which are used to make leather.

Cattle were originally identified as three separate species: Bos taurus, the European or "taurine" cattle ; Bos indicus, the Indicine or "zebu"; and the extinct Bos primigenius, the aurochs.

Cattle originally meant movable personal property, especially livestock of any kind, as opposed to real property .

Cattle are ruminants, meaning their digestive system is highly specialized to allow the consumption of difficult to digest plants as food.

Cattle have one stomach with four compartments, the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum, with the rumen being the largest compartment.

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Cattle are known for regurgitating and re-chewing their food, known as cud chewing, like most ruminants.

Cattle tested in a radial arm maze are able to remember the locations of high-quality food for at least 30 days.

Cattle can make an association between a visual stimulus and food within 1 day—memory of this association can be retained for 1 year, despite a slight decay.

Cattle can tell the difference between familiar and unfamiliar animals of the same species .

Cattle temperament is defined as "the consistent behavioral and physiological difference observed between individuals in response to a stressor or environmental challenge and is used to describe the relatively stable difference in the behavioral predisposition of an animal, which can be related to psychobiological mechanisms".

Cattle are very gregarious and even short-term isolation is considered to cause severe psychological stress.

Cattle are a prey animal and to assist predator detection, their eyes are located on the sides of their head rather than the front.

Cattle have good visual acuity, but compared to humans, their visual accommodation is poor.

Cattle have two kinds of color receptors in the cone cells of their retinas.

Cattle can distinguish long wavelength colors much better than the shorter wavelengths .

Cattle have a well-developed sense of taste and can distinguish the four primary tastes .

Cattle have a range of odiferous glands over their body including interdigital, infraorbital, inguinal and sebaceous glands, indicating that olfaction probably plays a large role in their social life.

Cattle have tactile sensations detected mainly by mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors and nociceptors in the skin and muscles.

Cattle are considered to be "hider" type animals, utilizing secluded areas more in the hours before calving and continued to use it more for the hour after calving.

Cattle often engage in mock fights where they test each other's strength in a non-aggressive way.

Cattle adjust other aspects of their grazing behavior in relation to the available food; foraging velocity decreases and intake rate increases in areas of abundant palatable forage.

Cattle avoid grazing areas contaminated by the faeces of other cattle more strongly than they avoid areas contaminated by sheep, but they do not avoid pasture contaminated by rabbit faeces.

Cattle are often raised by allowing herds to graze on the grasses of large tracts of rangeland.

Cattle do have a stay apparatus, but do not sleep standing up; they lie down to sleep deeply.

Cattle produce milk, and dairy cattle are specifically bred to produce the large quantities of milk processed and sold for human consumption.

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Cattle today are the basis of a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide.

Cattle hides, used for leather to make shoes, couches and clothing, are another widespread product.

Cattle remain broadly used as draft animals in many developing countries, such as India.

Cattle are used in some sporting games, including rodeo and bullfighting.

Cattle diseases were in the center of attention in the 1980s and 1990s when the Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad cow disease, was of concern.