History of animals

The one I always like is the Northern European Rhino, which was hunted to exstinction by pre-historic peoples.

There were supposedly a species of Hippopotamus living in the Thames River and around London in ancient times, however sources regarding this are not 100% credilbe. Note to self: Look further into this
Great Topic; This is my real passion - animals - so I look forward to having good discussion, sharing some knowledge and learning new information!
- Knights -

As we know, many large mammals became extinct due to human recreation/hunting, sprawl and various other natural/unnatural processes.
Some of the most noted examples were featured in the Roman Arenas:

>>European Lion (Panthera leo europaea) - Distributed in Southern Europe from the Iberia through to Liguria, Southern (Cisalpine) Gaul, as well as the Italian Peninsula. The full extent of it's range spread through the Balkans, into Greece and Macedonia, and Thrace. The European Lion was a significant part of Roman, Greek, Macedonian and Balkan Culture and Religion because of the power and majesty it symbolised. However, as a part of sport and hunting, the European Lion gradually diminished and became extinct around 1000AD. It was also used in Roman Gladiatorial arenas. There are numerous accounts of these beasts, including those by Herodotus and Aristotle.


>>Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) - This was the species of Tiger primarily used in Roman Arenas. It would fight other animals such as lions and aurochs (see below).  They inhabited the area stretching from the most easterly border of the Roman Empire; Mesopotamia, Iran, Afghanistan and into China at its extent. It was hunted and exploited for human purposes extensively in ancient times, but survived to the Modern Age. The Soviets ran an eradication program to eliminate the already dramatically depleted population of Caspian Tiger's in Northern Afghanisatan/Southern Russia. It proved successful and it is believed the subspecies died out around the 1960's - however no exact date is agreed upon.

>>Aurochs (Bos primegenius) - The aurochs is a commonly unheard of ungulate (hoofed mammal) which was another of the animals commonly used by Romans for entertainment in the gladiatorial arenas. However, it is a very wide-spread figure used in the ancient world. They are believed to have originated in India, but migrated to the Middle East. The Aurochs spread over most of mainland Europe; into Scandanavia, Bohemia, France, The Balkans, and out towards Italy and Iberia. It also inhabited Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and the Middle East. The Aurochs was pitted against Big Cats such as the Lion or Tiger in the arenas, and it is also believed that this activity stemmed into modern day bull fighting (questionable). The aurochs was a mighty and formidable type of cattle and was domesticated for farming and agricultural purposes. The right to hunt large animals on any land was restricted to nobles and gradually to the royal household. As the population of aurochs declined, hunting ceased but the royal court still required gamekeepers to provide open fields for the aurochs to graze in. The gamekeepers were exempted from local taxes in exchange for their service and a decree made poaching aurochs punishable by death. They last fully purebred/wild one died in 1627 in Poland. The domesticated Aurochs was hybridized and interbred with other cattle at a point before the decline of this great creature, to eventuate into a modern-day subspecies of cattle.
It is nice to know that we have the genealogical descendants of fierce lion slaughtering 'cows' as domestic animals today


*more to come*

- Knights -




Edited by Knights - 14-Nov-2006 at 06:18

Wow Knights!  Thank you so much for your great posts! I love animals so much too , but  You seem to know about animals and their history so  much more than me. Please keep them coming

Edited by omshanti - 14-Nov-2006 at 08:15

Originally posted by omshanti Talking of big cows, When the Europeans went to the Americas apparently there were 6 million ( please correct me if I am wrong with the numbers )bison in north America. They were very important animals to the native-American peoples and only because of this reason , were massacred  by the Europeans. Although they escaped extinction, today very small numbers of them survive in Canada.

They weren't massacred until the latter half of the 1800s when the American railroad companies started issuing the big money. You can hardly blame the Europeans for that...





What about a positive story instead?

The musk ox, despite its name and appearance more closely related to goats than to oxen, is a up to half a ton heavy furry animal who lives in cold climates. The last of the large ancient animals, who lived alongside mammuths and sabre-toothed cats. They were native to all the Arctic regions, though in the early 1900s they had disappeared from all but Canada and Greenland. Even there they were threatened to extinction, being very easy to hunt since their defence against predators is to form a circle around the calves - effective against wolves (and maybe once against the sabre-toothed cats) but hardly against guns. However they were protected, and today around 50,000 animals remain, mostly on greenland and the Arctic islands of Canada. In the mid 1900s they were reintroduced into Norway and Russia. From Norway a group of animals left the herd and migrated to Sweden in 1971, where they roam around the sparsely populated areas. The latter group figures on the pictures below:

Iberian Peninsula have a curious history of animals, during times dominated african ones: cocrodiles, hyppopotamus, lions... Others northern: wolfs, mamuts, woolly rhinoceros... And times where both types was mixed. Like in all Europe, the arrival of the Holocene and the rise of the Homo Sapiens finished the megafauna: mamuts, rhinoceros, cave bears, all they dissapeared. And the lion, i have never heard about lions in Iberia after the 10.000, i don't know why recently many pages about lions include Iberia as a place where the european lions lived during roman times.

Originally posted by Adalwolf Have you ever tried a buffalo burger? Its a hamburger with buffalo meat instead of cow meat, and they taste soooooo good! I want to try to find buffalo steak. I bet it tastes amazing...

No, I've never eaten buffalo. I've tried mooseburgers and caribou steaks, and we have venision from white-tailed deer once in a while.

JT

I love animals, too. And I hope we could save in my country some species like the Condor, Guanaco and the marvelous Pudu.

Well, a teenage girl just died in my country because a domestic spider, (called the "spider of the corners" Loxosceles laeta) which is endemic in my country, bite her. That spider is such a dangerous criature that can kill anyone just at the first bite. Some people has lost limbs as well, or it has gangrenate the face of the victim.

Ok, found this, but didn't do any background check on the author (Sydney Horton) so this is for amusement only:

Edited by Hellios - 14-Nov-2006 at 19:37