![]() ![]() The buffalo matures at the age of four, lives about twenty years and is worth from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars. The buffalo feeds on aquatic grasses and reeds which line the banks.įew animals have changed less in captivity than the buffalo, which never interbreeds with the native humped Indian cattle. In recent times Napoleon on his return from Egypt introduced them in Landes, a department of France bordering on the Pyrenees, and the Bay of Biscay, where the land on the shore is so swampy or sandy that the peasants walk on stilts when tending their herds, but the venture was not a success, due perhaps to lack of the tropical heat to which the buffalo is accustomed. were introduced by the Romans for agricultural purposes. They were at about this period used in Greece and Hungary, and in 600 A.D. They were used by the Egyptians in the fifth century and at the same time the Arabs brought them to Persia. It is not known when these animals became domesticated, but certainly many centuries ago. Zinn in “Wild Animals of Yesterday and Today.” * They are also found on Mellville Island, off the northern coast of Australia, where they were introduced many years ago and now number thousands. In its domestic state it differs but little from the wild buffalo, probably because of the semi-wild conditions in which alone it can be kept peaceable in captivity. It is also found in the Philippines, where it is known as the carabao. The domesticated buffalo is found in India, Burma, the Straits Settlements, Java, southern China and throughout the entire Malay Archipelago. They are not domesticated and are fast disappearing.īuffaloes are good swimmers but are ungainly in their movements on land. Its hide is so thick and tough that the natives use it for shields. They swell near the skull and then bend backwards, rising a little in height in front, with the points approaching each other. Its horns are peculiar, being very large and almost touching near their base to form a cap to protect the forehead. ![]() The cape buffalo ( bubalus caffer) is a native of South Africa and perhaps is the largest and most ferocious of all. They are hunted by beating with a line of elephants, by tracking on a single elephant or on foot, and no big game shooting is attended with greater danger. The wild herd when attacked is said to form a ring, with the cows and calves on the inside and the bulls on the outside, with lowered horns pointing outward, a ring which no wild animal can break through. It was with a herd of buffaloes that Mowgli, in Kipling’s Jungle Tales, killed Shere Khan, the tiger, and regained his power over his jungle friends. Buffaloes, both wild and domesticated, have a great hatred for the tiger, and the domesticated animals have been known to rescue their herdsmen from his attack. The Burmese when referring to a desperate combat of any kind say “Kywe knit Kya lo beh” – like a fight between a buffalo and a tiger – meaning to the death. Water Buffaloes ploughing in the rice fields in Ceylon. It lives in the tall grass jungles and in the neighborhood of swamps, feeding in the evening and early morning and lying down in the water or mud of the swamp during the day. It is also found in Burma, in the northern part of Ceylon and in the Philippines. The wild buffalo is found in the plain of Brahmaputra and the Ganges, at the foot of the Himalayas, from eastern Assam to Tirhut and along the coast of Midnapur and Orissa provinces in India, as well as on the grass lands of the eastern portions of the Central Provinces, especially in Mandla, Raipur, Sambalpur and Bastar, whence it extends as far south as the Godavari and Pranhita valleys. It should not be confounded with the so-called American buffalo, which is not a buffalo but a bison, differing from the true buffalo both in appearance and anatomy. The water or mud buffalo ( bubalus buffelus), from whose hide rawhide loom pickers are made, inhabits the Malay Archipelago and southern China, and is also found in the Philippines. The Water Buffalo (Often called The Mud Buffalo) Much of the remainder dealt with the Water Buffalo hide industry from way back then. Editor’s Note: Kristi gifted me this lovely old book from which we have selected some content. ![]()
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