The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Gayal

(Bibos gaurus frontalis), the domesticated form of the gaur, a wild ox; it is distinguished from the gaur by the shape of its horns and its smaller dimensions. It has a very wide forehead with thick conical horns, and its build is coarse. Body length of the adult male is approximately 3 m; height at the withers, 1.5-1.6 m; weight, up to 540 kg. The gayal is deep black, often with bluish tones. The legs and the tuft on the tail are white. The cow gives birth to a single calf; gestation lasts 8-9 months. The gayal’s milk is rich in fat, and its meat is exceptionally tasty. The gayal is bred “pure” and crossbred in India east of the Brahmaputra to Burma. Hybrids are very fertile.

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References in periodicals archive

Common SNP variants with MAFs >0.10 and <0.50 ranged from 30.31% in gayal to 88.57% in ND populations.

With an FST value of 0.33 and Reynolds distances of 0.31, gayal showed strong differentiation from B.

The first and the second principal components (PC1 and PC2) explained 90.24% of the total variation and evidently distinguish the two zebu populations from gayal. The results coincided well with the STRUCTURE output at K = 2 and K = 3 (Figure 2).

In this study, we estimated genetic diversity and population structure of Bangladeshi zebu cattle populations and the semi-domesticated gayal breed by using a high-density SNP genotyping chip recently developed from indicine cattle.

Genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism analyses reveal genetic diversity and structure of wild and domestic cattle in Bangladesh

In this paper, we focus on the merits of the genetic potential gayal across its distribution and address the urgent need of Bangladeshi gayal population to protect them from extinction since the population is facing a formidable situation.

KARYOTYPIC AND PHYLOGENETIC STUDIES REVEAL THE ORIGIN OF GAYAL

There are two major hypotheses on the origin of the gayal: i) they were directly domesticated from wild gaur (Simoons, 1984); and ii) they were a hybrid descendant from crossing of wild gaur and domestic cattle, either B.

Several researches have been conducted to elucidate the origin of gayal. Shan et al.

Semi-domesticated and irreplaceable genetic resource gayal (Bos frontalis) Needs Effective Genetic Conservation in Bangladesh: a review

The gayal (Bos frontalis), also called mithan or mithun, is found in China only in the Dulong River and Nujiang River Basin in Yunnan Province, and in Menyu and Luoyu regions of the Tibet Autonomous Region where the altitude ranges between 1,500 M-4,100 M.

The gayal was classified as a separate subgenus, together with Bali cattle (Bos banteng), the kouprey (Bos sauveli) and the gaur (Bos gaurus), and distinct from European cattle (Bos taurus) and zebu cattle (Bos indicus) (Williamson and Payne, 1977).

Molecular phylogeny and taxonomic status of the gayal

(1984) proposed that the gaur was the wild ancestor of the gayal according to karyotype, red blood cells and haemoglobin type.

Molecular phylogeny of the gayal in yunnan china inferred from the analysis of Cytochrome b gene entire sequences