They possess little or no trypanotolerance and, consequently, may be maintained in much of Africa only through the use of expensive disease-prevention measures such as tsetse control or chemical prophylaxis.ġ Kuri cattle off the Island of Tchongolé in Lake Chad - Bovins Kuri à proximité de l'île de Tchongolé (lac Tchad) - Vacunos Kuri frente a la isla de Tchongolé, en el lago ChadĢ Collecting blood samples from Kapsiki cattle in the Kapsiki Region of northern Cameroon - Collecte d'échantillons de sang de bovine Kapsiki dans la région de Kapsiki dans le nord du Cameroun - Obtención de muestras de sangre de un vacuno Kapsiki en la región de Kapsiki, Camerún septentrionalĪt the moment, taurine herds predominate in the more southern, humid ecological zones of West Africa, inhabiting an almost continuous swath from the Gambia to Cameroon. This subspecies shows marked adaptation to arid environments and predominates in those areas of the world with Sudano-Sahelian pasture ecologies. Humped, or zebu, cattle have a more Eastern origin and, although first appearing in Egypt in ancient times, only started to spread comprehensively through West Africa along with Arabic influences within the last 1 400 years. In particular, some breeds possess trypanotolerance or varied levels of adaptation to the tsetse fly-transmitted disease, trypanosomiasis. Through natural selection resulting from a long association with the natural challenges of humid Guinean zones, these cattle have become adapted to living with endemic diseases.
These animals and their herders moved throughout the western subcontinent, around a much-reduced Sahara, some 7 000 years ago. The first cattle in Africa likely migrated from the Near East through Egypt, possibly interbreeding with local wild variants, and were humpless, or taurine, in character. These utilized two different strains of the wild ox, Bos primigenius, and gave rise to the two modern cattle types. One of these was centred in the nascent civilizations of the Near East and the other probably in northern India and Pakistan. It now seems likely, in the light of modern archaeology and the molecular results described below, that cattle were originally domesticated in at least two primary locations approximately 10 000 years ago. These breeds, including N'Dama, Kuri and varieties of West African Shorthorn, are the descendants of the original domestic cattle of the continent and represent a genetic resource unique to this portion of the globe (Lhoste, 1991) (Figure 1). It is only in regions of West and Central Africa that large numbers of apparently pure taurine breeds remain. Most of Africa is populated with zebu breeds and varieties of stabilized crossbreeds, collectively known as sanga. West Africa differs from the rest of the continent in that significant populations of both subspecies of domestic cattle, Bos taurus and Bos indicus, are found there.
The authors can be contacted at the Department of Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland. Genetic characterization and West African cattle