Water buffalo

• 1. Introduction

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  The water buffalo, Bubalus bubalis, carries a nickname that sums up its job: "the living tractor of the East." Today an estimated 208,098,759 head live across 77 countries on five continents. As recently as 2011, the global count stood at about 172 million. Most of these animals belong to families on small farms, where a buffalo is often the household's greatest capital asset. That raises a string of questions. Why do two distinct kinds of water buffalo exist, and did they really begin in separate places? What lets the animal thrive in floodwater and deep mud? What do people draw from it besides labor? And why do communities from Assam to Vietnam to the Philippines race it, pit it against rivals, and dress it in garlands?

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• 2. Two Domestications

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  A phylogenetic study points to western India, roughly 6,300 years ago or about 4300 BCE, as the likely birthplace of the river buffalo. The swamp buffalo has a separate story. It seems to have arisen independently in mainland Southeast Asia, and its domestication is dated to somewhere between 3,000 and 7,000 years ago. Both types most probably descend from the wild water buffalo, Bubalus arnee, which is native to the Indian subcontinent and tropical Southeast Asia.

  The two types then travelled in opposite directions. River buffalo spread west as far as Egypt, the Balkans, the Levant, and Italy. Swamp buffalo moved on through the rest of Southeast Asia and up to the Yangtze Valley of China.

  In 2500 BC, traders known as the Meluhhas carried water buffaloes from the Indus Valley Civilisation to Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq. One clue to what happened next survives on a seal that belonged to a scribe working for an Akkadian king. The seal shows water buffaloes being sacrificed.

  At the Neolithic Nagsabaran site in the northern Philippines, diggers found butchered remains of domesticated buffalo. The site belongs to the Lal-lo and Gattaran Shell Middens, which span roughly 2200 BCE to 400 CE. Swamp-type buffalo reached the islands of Southeast Asia from at least 2,500 years ago, and these animals became the ancestors of the Philippine carabao. From there the carabao spread to Guam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other smaller islands.

  The river buffalo of today is not the product of one tidy event. Its domestication involved more than one maternal lineage, along with a steady flow of genes from wild herds after the first taming. Twenty-two river breeds are now known, including the Murrah, Nili-Ravi, Surti, Anatolian, Mediterranean, and Egyptian. China alone holds 16 local swamp breeds.

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• 3. Names and Genes

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  In 1758, Carl Linnaeus described the animal under the name Bos bubalis. He knew it from Asia, and he also knew it as a domestic animal in Italy. Later, Ellerman and Morrison-Scott grouped the wild and domestic forms as a single species, while other authors split them. The naming varied from one author to the next, and sometimes within the works of a single author.

  In March 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature settled the matter. It ruled that Bubalus arnee is the valid name for the wild form. Bubalus bubalis stays with the domestic form and also covers feral herds. In the early 1970s, the river type had been labelled Bubalus bubalis bubalis and the swamp type Bubalus bubalis carabanensis. Today Bubalus carabanensis counts as a junior synonym of Bubalus kerabau.

  The swamp buffalo carries 48 chromosomes, while the river buffalo carries 50. The two types do not readily interbreed, though fertile offspring can occur. Analysis of the cytochrome b gene suggests the two types are different enough to count as separate species. The genetic gap is so wide that a divergence time of about 1.7 million years has been proposed. The swamp type sits closest to the tamaraw of the northern Philippines.

  DNA also settled a question about China. Neolithic buffalo remains in the north of the country had long been cited as proof of a Chinese origin for domestication. A 2008 analysis showed they belonged to the extinct Bubalus mephistopheles, with no genetic link to modern domestic buffalo. A 2004 study had already judged the bones to be from wild animals. Both findings place the first domestication outside China. Meanwhile, mitochondrial DNA and single-nucleotide polymorphism work shows the two types were later crossbred there.

  A 2020 analysis of the genomes of 91 swamp and 30 river buffaloes found that the two types had separated even before domestication. Relatives have since muddied the picture. A 2021 comparison with the lowland anoa unexpectedly placed the anoa between the swamp and river types. A 2023 Filipino study, using the cytochrome b gene, instead placed the tamaraw in that middle position.

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• 4. Built for Mud

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  At the withers, bulls stand 129-133 cm tall and cows 120-127 cm, though large individuals reach 160 cm. Typical weights run from 300 to 550 kg, and animals above 1000 kg have been recorded. Body length at maturity usually falls between 240 and 300 cm, with a tail of 60-100 cm.

  The river and swamp types look different. River buffaloes have black skin, sometimes a dark slate shade, along with longer faces and bigger limbs. Their horns grow downward and backward before curving upward in a spiral. Swamp buffaloes are born with grey skin that turns slate blue. They are heavy-bodied and stocky, with a short face, a wide muzzle, and prominent eyes. Their horns sweep outward in a semicircle, staying close to the plane of the forehead. One striking variant is the tedong bonga, a piebald black and white buffalo favoured by the Toraja of Sulawesi.

  At temperatures from 0 C in winter to 30 C and beyond in summer, these animals depend on water to cool off. River buffaloes prefer deep water. Swamp buffaloes dig mudholes with their horns and wallow until they wear a thick coat of mud. Some breeds even cope with salty seaside shores and saline sandy ground.

  During floods, water buffaloes graze under water, feeding on reeds, sedges, and marsh grasses. They also eat water hyacinth, which helps keep waterways open. On farms, the fodder list includes alfalfa, banana plants, cassava, maize, oats, and sorghum. Their rumen differs from that of other ruminants, with more bacteria, especially the kind that digest cellulose, fewer protozoa, and more fungal zoospores.

  In Egypt, India, and Pakistan, young bulls are first mated around 3.0-3.5 years old, but in Italy they may start at 2. A good river buffalo bull can sire 100 calves in a year. Heifers show their first oestrus anywhere from 13 to 33 months, depending on breed, yet breeders usually wait until three years old. Gestation lasts 281 to 334 days, with most reports between 300 and 320. Swamp buffaloes carry their calves one or two weeks longer. Working buffaloes aged 30 are not unusual, and one working life of 40 years has been recorded.

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• 5. The Working Household

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  In India, a division of labor runs along family lines: women and girls look after the milking buffaloes, while men and boys handle the working animals. Across Asia, children often lead their buffalo to the wallow, and sometimes ride it there.

  In deep paddy mud, large hooves and flexible foot joints give the animal its edge. It suits small fields well, and cultivating with a buffalo is both efficient and economical. In many rice-growing countries, buffaloes also thresh the crop and haul the sheaves at harvest. Beyond the field, they supply power for oilseed mills, sugarcane presses, and devices that raise water.

  Buffaloes serve widely as pack animals, and in India and Pakistan they pull heavy loads. When the Ottoman Turks invaded Europe, they used water buffaloes to haul heavy battering rams.

  Even the dung has a job. Farmers spread it as fertilizer, and once it dries, they burn it as fuel.

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• 6. Milk, Meat and Horn

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  In India, river buffaloes are kept mainly for milk and transport, whereas swamp buffaloes are kept mainly for work and a small amount of milk. One tally credits the species with 72 million tonnes of milk and three million tonnes of meat a year. Around 26 million animals are slaughtered annually for meat, much of it in regions prone to nutritional imbalances.

  Compared with cow milk, buffalo milk holds more total solids, crude protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus, plus slightly more lactose. Those solids make it ideal for cheese. Its conjugated linoleic acid ranges from 4.4 mg per gram of fat in September to 7.6 in June. Cream churns faster and gives more overrun than cow cream. Butter from it is more stable, and ghee has a bigger grain.

  In the Indian subcontinent, the milk is concentrated by heat into paneer, khoa, rabri, kheer, and basundi. Indonesia makes a fermented product called dadiah. Italy turns whey into ricotta and mascarpone, while Syria and Egypt make alkarish. Hard cheeses include braila in Romania and rahss in Egypt. Soft cheeses range from Italian mozzarella to karish, mish, and madhfor in Iraq, alghab in Syria, kesong puti in the Philippines, and vladeasa in Romania.

  The 2020 production table shows how concentrated the milk supply is. India produced 90,026,273 tonnes and Pakistan 37,256,000 tonnes. China followed at 2,919,966 tonnes, then Egypt at 1,747,641 and Nepal at 1,380,600. The world total reached 134,425,197 tonnes.

  The carcass offers more than milk. Buffalo meat, called carabeef, is a major source of export revenue for India. The hides make tough leather, and bones and horns are carved into jewellery, especially earrings. Horns also form the embouchure of musical instruments such as the ney and the kaval.

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• 7. Wetlands and Laboratories

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  At Chippenham Fen National Nature Reserve in Great Britain, grazing water buffaloes help conservation. They cope better than cattle with wet ground and poor-quality vegetation. Conservation scientists have begun recommending introduced feral herds for managing runaway growth in and around natural wetlands. By grazing, the animals open up clogged water bodies for waterfowl, wetland birds, and other wildlife. In uncontrolled conditions, though, they can trample vegetation, disturb bird and reptile nesting sites, and spread exotic weeds.

  In 2004, the Philippine Carabao Center in Nueva Ecija produced the first swamp-type buffalo born from an in vitro-produced, vitrified embryo. She was named "Glory" after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The center itself came from the Carabao Act of 1992, Republic Act 3707, which was the most successful project of Joseph Estrada as an opposition senator.

  Attempts to cross domestic cattle with water buffaloes have a long record of failure. None has succeeded so far, and the embryos usually stall at the 8-cell stage.

  The first cloned swamp-type buffaloes were born in 2007 through micromanipulation-based somatic cell nuclear transfer. Three calves were born, and two of them died. In 2009, the National Dairy Research Institute cloned a river-type buffalo with a simplified method called "handmade cloning." The Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes cloned another in 2016.

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• 8. Festivals and Symbols

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  The Minangkabau people of West Sumatra decorate their houses and clothing with motifs based on buffalo horns. The design honors a legend in which their kingdom's chosen buffalo, a kabau, defeated one put forward by, traditionally, the Majapahit empire.

  Elsewhere the animal carries other meanings. In Chinese tradition, it is linked with a contemplative life. The buffalo is the third animal of the Thai zodiac and the fourth of the Sinhalese zodiac in Sri Lanka. In Tibet, a buffalo head symbolized death. The Hindu god of death, Yama, rides a water buffalo, and a male buffalo is sacrificed in India during Shaktism festivals. The carabao is regarded as a national symbol of the Philippines, though no Philippine law says so.

  On the Cobourg Peninsula of Australia, water buffalo escaped from British colonies and went feral. Aboriginal Australians of Arnhem Land later met these never-before-seen animals and called them nganaparru. They understood them as a new form of their dreaming, or djang. In 1979, art depicting the buffalo came to light again in a cave at a site called Djarrng, near Gunbalanya.

  The Moh juj Water Buffalo Fighting Festival takes place every year during Bhogali Bihu in Assam. In Vietnam, the Do Son festival falls on the ninth day of the eighth lunar month in Haiphong City. Preparations begin two to three months ahead, and the fighters are chosen and trained months in advance. The event is tied to worship of the Water God and to the Hien Sinh custom, which shows the martial spirit of the people of Do Son.

  On Ko Samui in Thailand, the fights are held on occasions such as New Year's Day in January and Songkran in mid-April. Two males wrestle head to head. Unlike Spanish-style bullfighting, the contest is fairly harmless. The first buffalo to turn and run loses, and the winner becomes worth several million baht.

  Racing has its own season. The Kambala races of Karnataka run between October and March, and buffalo racing in Kerala is similar.

  On the 14th and the 15th of May each year, the town of Pulilan in the Philippines holds the Pulilan Carabao Festival for Isidore the Laborer, the patron saint of farmers. Farmers thank him for a bountiful harvest by parading garlanded carabaos down the main street. The highlight comes when the carabaos kneel in front of the parish church.

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