Talk:Zebu
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[edit] There was a report in today's The Sun about Zebu
...apparently being marketed as "British beef". If anything, I'm disgusted with the patriotism more than the fact that we could be eating Zebu. Could be added to the article...--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 13:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Bos primigenius or Bos taurus?
There seems to be some confusion in this articles as to whether or not to count the zebu as part of Bos taurus (domestic cattle) or Bos primigenius (aurochs). There's some debate among scientists, but shouldn't this be mentioned, and one or the other decided, to keep the page from contradicting itself? The page for Bos has the zebu listed as taurus. --Petemella 12:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
- I've corrected this, and so made this article consistent within itself and with aurochs — and with Bos too (which explains that Bos taurus is an alternative for use only if domesticated cattle are regarded as a separate species).
- I've also tried to correct the impression that the only Bos primigenius taurus cattle are European — there are African and Asian ones too (see aurochs). I could not think of a way of doing this without using the perhaps rather technical term "taurine".
- Related to this, I've queried the general claim that zebu are better adapted to hot climates and certain tropical diseases than taurine cattle. This may well be true when comparing them with European and north-east Asian taurine breeds, but what about the African taurine ones, which appear to cope well with the climate? These have generally only been supplanted by zebu in those eastern parts of Africa relatively accessible from the Indian Ocean (as stated in the article). Because of this, the claim that zebu were imported into Africa for resistance-to-climate reasons needs sustantiation — they might just as easily have been brought for cultural reasons. --Richard New Forest 14:25, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Trinomial authority
This is given as Linneus, without qualification. However, he surely was the one who called it Bos indicus. An authority for the primigenius element is needed (him too, I suppose...). I don't know how the convention goes, but should he not be in brackets or something, or repeated, or both? --Richard New Forest 14:25, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
