bovidet, (familie Bovidae), et hvilket som helst hovdyr i familien Bovidae (orden Artiodactyla), som inkluderer antiloper, sauer, geiter, storfe, bøffler og bison. Det som skiller Bovidae fra andre cud-tyggende artiodactyls (spesielt hjort, familie Cervidae) er tilstedeværelsen av horn som består av et skjede som dekker en benete kjerne som vokser fra skallens frontben. I motsetning til gevirene til hjort og det amerikanske hestehornet, forgrenes ikke kvinne horn og blir aldri kastet. Hannene på alle arter og hunnene på omtrent to tredjedeler av alle artene har horn - i alle mulige former og størrelser, fra de korte, rette piggene av duikers og dverge antiloper til de enorme scimitar-formede hornene av ville geiter og sable antilope og til de lange korketrekkerhornene til blackbuck, kudu og markhor. Det er 143 forskjellige arter og 50 slekter av Bovidae,inkludert en helt ny art plassert i sin egen slekt, saola, oppdaget på 1990-tallet i montanskogene som deler Laos og Vietnam.
Naturlig historie
Bovider er langt fra den mest mangfoldige, utbredte og rikholdige familien av hovspattedyr. Deres størrelse varierer fra 1,5 kg (3-pund) kongelig antilope til 1 000 kg (2 200 pund) bison og vill okser (se gaur). De okkuperer praktisk talt alle slags leveområder som er tilgjengelige for landlevende planteetere i Afrika, Eurasia og Nord-Amerika, hvor de spenner over hele spekteret av biomer fra ekvatoriale regnskoger i Afrika (kongelig antilope og duiker) til den arktiske tundraen (moskusoksen).
Mange beitearter som bodde i store åpne sletter og stepper, hadde en gang bestander av flere millioner. Det viktigste eksemplet er dominansen av Amerikas prærier og Great Plains av en enkelt art, bisonen, som utgjorde 30–60 millioner dyr. I Afrika varierte en blanding av arter, hovedsakelig antiloper, tropiske savanner og underdeler og den tempererte Highveld-gressmarkene i Sør-Afrika i mange millioner, mens gasellene og deres allierte i Asia var like rikelig på steppe og underjord.
The fate of the bison, which was brought to the verge of extinction by hide and meat hunters late in the 19th century, was repeated in Asia and Africa. During the 20th century, efforts to save wildlife and wilderness resulted in the establishment of a worldwide network of protected areas. However, these amount to less than 10 percent of the ecosystems that they were intended to conserve. As humankind continued to increase, wildlife and natural habitats outside of these protected areas continued to disappear and have been replaced by settlements, cultivation, and livestock. Now millions upon millions of cattle, sheep, and goats dominate and usually degrade the savannas, steppes, and subdeserts, leaving little room for the remaining wild bovids. Thanks to the demand for their meat, hides, and milk, livestock now inhabit every continent except Antarctica. In an ironic turn of events, out of the extraordinary array of 143 bovid species, only one sheep, one goat, and three bovine species have been domesticated. Yet, husbanded by humans, these three species have played a major role in hastening the demise of all the rest, including species exquisitely adapted to ecosystems in which livestock can survive only through human intervention.
However, large populations of a few wild bovids still survive to show what the ecosystems of Africa and Asia were like when they were still intact. Among these populations are two million wildebeest and gazelles in the Serengeti ecosystem and possibly hundreds of thousands of white-eared kob and tiang on the floodplains of South Sudan. Over a million saiga lived in Kazakhstan and Kalmykia until the early 1990s, when the breakup of the Soviet Union left them largely unprotected, and the unsettled steppe of eastern Mongolia still supports an estimated one million Mongolian gazelles.
Evolution and diversification
Bovids are the most recent and adaptable family of hoofed mammals to evolve. The earliest bovid, known from fossil horn cores, occurs in Eurasia in the Miocene Epoch about 18 million years ago. Eotragus was a small, solitary forest and bush dweller dependent on cover. Africa’s duikers and dwarf antelopes are considered closest to this ancestral type. The subsequent radiation of bovid species followed the spread of grasses, which in turn followed a change from a subtropical to a cooler, more seasonal climate in the middle Miocene. This climate change replaced subtropical woodlands with more open and productive habitats. With their superior ability to extract nutrients from a fibrous diet, ruminants evolved into a variety of species that could use a relatively narrow range of ecological conditions more efficiently than other less-specialized animals. Among the ruminants, the bovids were singularly adept at tailoring their size, shape, feeding apparatus, digestive system, dispersion pattern, and social system to a particular habitat. By partitioning ecosystems into many segments (giving each species a narrow niche), they became the most diverse and abundant large herbivores.
The opening of a land bridge across the Red Sea connected the Arabian Peninsula and Africa during cool periods when polar ice caps lowered the sea level and thus enabled the interchange of Asian and African bovids and other ruminants. The first ruminants to enter Africa arrived in the early Miocene, before the bovids arose. Horn cores unearthed in North Africa show that Eotragus crossed over soon after evolving in Eurasia. By the mid-Miocene Gazella, one of the oldest bovid genera, was present in East Africa and widespread in Eurasia. By the late Miocene African bovids had diversified into nine distinct tribes, most of which had Asian relatives.
However, most of today’s genera and species of bovids appeared only during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, following a major invasion of Asian genera into Africa five million years ago. During the Pleistocene Ice Age, while most of the Eurasian tropical savanna fauna became extinct, Africa remained the main refuge of Plio-Pleistocene mammals.
The alternating expansion and contraction of the equatorial rainforest during wet and dry periods of the Ice Age promoted speciation by isolating populations of the same species that then became different subspecies and species in the process of adapting to different ecological conditions. Meanwhile, bovids adapted to cold climates evolved on the northern continents; most notable among these bovids were members of the subfamily Caprinae (goats, sheep, goat antelopes, and musk oxen), bovines (yak, bison, and the aurochs, the ancestor of domestic cattle), and the gazelle tribe (Antilopini; e.g., the Mongolian gazelle).
At the climax of bovid diversity and abundance in the later Pliocene and Pleistocene (which has been called the golden age of mammals), there were many more genera and species than there are now. After the Ice Age ended some 10,000 years ago, many bovids and other ruminants became extinct in the Northern Hemisphere. Predation by hunter-gatherers has been blamed in some cases. This was also when humankind began to domesticate animals and cultivate crops, with eventual dire consequences both for their wild progenitors and the natural environment.
However, in the tropical refuge of sub-Saharan Africa, although some mammals went extinct (e.g., giant forms of buffalo and hartebeest), most of the genera and species that evolved during the golden age of mammals survived to the present. All but four of the 75 African bovid species are antelopes, and south of the Sahara there are only one buffalo, one sheep (the aoudad) and two goats (ibexes). Conversely, there are only 15 antelope species in Eurasia, all but three of which are members of the gazelle tribe, and none in North America. Bovid diversity on these northern continents reposes mainly in sheep, goats, and goat antelopes.
Nevertheless, despite loss of habitat, competition with domestic species, and overhunting virtually everywhere bovids occur, few species are yet extinct. However, many species are endangered, and the survival of all is now entirely dependent on human beings. Members of the same tribe, which share descent from a common ancestor, mostly inhabit the same biome, occupy somewhat similar habitats, and have a similar conformation, behavioral repertoire, social organization, and mating system. (The wild Bovini are a notable exception in that they exploit a wide variety of biomes and habitats.)
