Wild aurochs have been gone for four hundred years, a species that fossil studies have shown to have existed on Earth for two million years.

The European subspecies survived the longest, the other two, Bos namadicus, the Indian, and Bos africanus, died out earlier.

Even-toed ungulates, ruminants, and forehead weapons, as the phylogenetically ancient mammals and herbivores are called after their scientific order, suborder, and infraorder, were hunted into the first quarter of the seventeenth century.

It was realized too late that they had become dangerously rare.

The killing of wild aurochs was quickly declared the privilege of nobles and ruling houses.

Poachers who abused the animals had to reckon with the death penalty.

But even this protection of the wild animals did not save them anymore.

The cultivated landscapes had spread and deprived the aurochs of more and more areas in which they could graze undisturbed.

However, these two factors, hunting and habitat loss, were not the only factors that led to the extinction.

It is also believed that their domesticated counterparts infected the wild animals with diseases that the aurochs' immune system could not deal with.

Using cattle as an example, one can learn to relate terms such as biodiversity and loss of species diversity not only to wild animals and wild plants.

About a billion cattle live in the world, three thousand different breeds of cattle are currently documented.

However, 196 of them are already extinct and many are currently classified as endangered.

The great differentiation of the cattle and their surprisingly specific adaptation to the climatic conditions between Pakistan and Greenland is now a disadvantage for some breeds.

If, according to the criteria of modern agriculture, they grow too slowly, are too demanding and too expensive to keep, less fertile or less strong, then the farmers replace them - and in this they are probably similar worldwide - with breeds that they consider more advantageous.

Increasingly sophisticated breeding efforts to genetically control cattle populations are also contributing to a focus on the best performing breeds and crossbreeding among them.

What counts is: How much meat is on a calf or adult ox, how easily does a cow give birth, how susceptible is the animal to diseases of the hooves, how much milk does a cow give per year, and how robust are its stressed udders, how is it about their probable useful life?

Grabbed by the horns

The German "Rinderallianz" advertises in its bull catalog for the "handpicked selection of daughter-proven bulls" and can "trump with three bulls on the German top 20 list".

The company keeps breeding bulls and sells their genetically analyzed semen and, if necessary, sends the insemination technicians along with them.

The 2021 balance sheet shows almost one million marketed sperm portions and a turnover of 110 million euros.

But there are also beef bull auctions and shows where the young farmers present their favorite calves.

The Phoenixgroup, to which the company belongs, provides online seminars for the further training of its adult customers: "Are you still estimating or are you already measuring?

Weight management in calves,” is one of them.