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Buffalo, yellow cattle and yak, can they cross each other?
Domestic cattle of all colors in the world can cross with each other to produce fertile offspring, so they belong to the same species. Buffalo and yak belong to different species, and there is obvious interspecific isolation between them and domestic cattle. That is, buffalo, yellow cattle and yak cannot cross each other.

Buffalo belongs to the buffalo native to India. Buffalo has been domesticated in India and China for about 5,000 years and is famous for its incredible cutlass-shaped horns. Buffalo can be divided into two categories: river buffalo and swamp buffalo.

Buffalo mainly live in Europe, especially in the Balkans and South America. They are mainly raised for high-fat milk and can be made into high-quality cheese and yogurt. Male river cattle are raised mainly for eating meat, and also have excellent dragging ability. There are several kinds of river cattle, and the general feature is 50 chromosomes.

Marsh buffaloes are produced in East Asian countries and are mainly used in agriculture and meat production. The typical swamp buffalo horn is wide, with a V-shape on its chest, and its milk yield is low, with 48 chromosomes, 2 less than that of river buffalo.

River buffalo and swamp buffalo can cross to form fertile buffalo with 49 chromosomes, which belongs to a chromosomal abnormality. Crossbreeding between river buffalo and swamp buffalo can improve the milk yield of swamp buffalo.

In fact, China's north and south cattle are different. The southern yellow cattle breed is Bos taurus indicus, the hump is generally Bos taurus (see the figure below), and the northern yellow cattle breed is Bos Taurus, both of which have 60 chromosomes.

Buffalo can't cross outside the genus, so cattle and buffaloes can't cross. As can be seen from the chromosome number of the two, there is a great difference. Some records show that the hybrid embryos of buffalo and cattle miscarry at about 8-cell stage. So far, there have been many crossbreeding records of different kinds of cattle in captivity, but none of them include buffaloes.

Extended data?

In academic circles, the domestication of domestic cattle and the complex history of the formation of China yellow cattle have always been a topic of in-depth study. It is generally believed that the ancestors of domestic cattle all over the world are wild cattle. They once lived in Europe, Asia and North Africa and were divided into many different subspecies. They were domesticated as domestic animals by humans in prehistoric times, but now bison are extinct everywhere.

The origin of China yellow cattle is complex and its genetic basis is very rich. At the same time, due to the vast territory and great differences in ecological environment, local yellow cattle breeds adapted to different ecological environments have rich genetic diversity. China yellow cattle have multiple origins, that is, East Asian domestic cattle have the same origin as ordinary cattle and beef cattle in other parts of the world.

Previous research based on genome chip data provided some cattle genome infiltration events, including Javanese cattle infiltrating into China Hainan cattle and ordinary cattle infiltrating into Mongolian yak (different species with not far genetic distance can infiltrate each other, such as yellow cattle and yak crossing into bulls, male cows being infertile and female bulls being fertile).

Wild animals usually have better environmental adaptability than domestic animals. Java cattle and yak are representative cattle breeds adapted to the hot and humid environment in Southeast Asia and the alpine environment in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, respectively. The researchers found that 2.9% and 65,438 0.2% of the genomes of China Nanliu cattle and Tibet common cattle were obtained from Java cattle and yak through cross-species hybridization.

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