Curated category
Livestock
- PigA pig called Big Bill weighed 1157 kg and stood 1.5 metres at the shoulder, a creature far beyond the 140 to 300 kg of an ordinary adult.
- SheepSheep recognize and remember the faces of fifty other sheep for over two years. That finding, reported in 2001 by Kenneth M.
- HorseThe horse, Equus ferus caballus, travels on the same bones a human would use to walk on tiptoe. It carries an average weight of 500 kg on a single toe per…
- GoatThe goat was one of the first animals humans ever domesticated. The earliest remnants of domesticated goats, dating back 10,000 years, were found at Ganj…
- LivestockLivestock surround us in ways most people never stop to count. Cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, horses, camels, yaks, water buffalo, reindeer, llamas…
- PoultryPoultry are domesticated birds kept by humans for meat, eggs, and feathers, and they form the backbone of one of the oldest agricultural relationships on…
- StableStable is a word so ordinary that most people pass right by it. It names a building for animals, yes, but it also names something older and stranger: a claim…
- GrazingGrazing is the oldest continuous food system on Earth, predating cities, writing, and fixed fields. Before the first permanent human settlements rose around…
- CamelCamel bones unearthed in Timna Valley, Israel, dating to around 930 BC, set off a wave of headlines when archaeologists Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef…
- American bisonThe American bison, Bison bison, once numbered an estimated 60 million individuals across North America. That figure is almost impossible to picture: a…
- DeerDeer appear in the cave paintings at Lascaux in southwestern France, among some 90 images of stags etched by Cro-Magnon hands tens of thousands of years ago.
- Nomadic pastoralismA herder in Nigeria moves cattle across dry earth to find fresh grass. This act defines nomadic pastoralism, a practice where livestock are herded to seek…
- Animal husbandryAnimal husbandry began around 13,000 BC, during the Neolithic Revolution, when humans first domesticated animals before they had cultivated a single crop.