h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are so many animals that have a significant variation in sizes but cows don't deviate from the norm very much at all.

Cats range from the domestic moggy to a lion in size. Horses range from a couple of feet high to shire horse size and dogs, well Chihuahua to Great Dane.

But cows? They are all basically the same knobbly / square size and shape.

PP.

I never thought they were, and I have milked a lot of them.

Well, if you consider them in the wider definition of ungulates, you'll find a more marked dispersion of size. Indeed, the order Ungulata used to include Proboscidea (elephants) and even Cetacea (whales)

And it's interesting that we call male, female and child elephants & whales "bulls", "cows" and "calves".

I'm not so sure this is the case... its true enough for looking at those varietys of cows with long breading historys, I.E., the field full of the black and white milllkers, but I certianly recall, on going to the county fares, seeing the absolutely massive breading stock beef cattle, and ... they're got to be twice or more the size of an ordinary black and white fresian cow, or some of the smaller brown and .. ... white? varieties Mind; I'm sure if you stood the bigger ones further away, and put the smaller ones in the foreground, they'd appear about the same size < Oddly, the cow I've got upstairs in the bedroom, is pretty-much the same size as the frog and the bear that live upstairs with it...

How can you be sure there aren't zillions of tiny cows sneaking up on you through the grass>

If you are including lions and tigers as s, by 'cows' are you including bison, buffalo and yaks too?

<BB<

Talking of yaks, here's some music to accompany this thread: Yakety Sax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHmskwqCCQ

A lot is just down to breeding.... take cats; they've been selected, and then breed, over years, to increase differnces; people wanted/want unusual 'varieties' of cat, as pets... whereas for cattle, like most domestic livestock they've been bread to breed out any differences, and make for a consistant crop of either meat or milk ... I guess

Big enough to milk. Small enough to tip.

They're all different sizes.

Some are close, others are far away.

Yakety sax used to be played on the "Hee Haw" TV series.

It's known here as the Benny Hill Show theme. Both involved scantily clad women, apparently.

Anyway, back to the ungulates...

As opposed to the gulates?

There is plenty of information re gulates on the web

Gul Ates is a window clerk at the USPS in Jacksonville, Florida.

Here's a picture of a gulate:
http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/gulates.html

Murat Gulates lives in Vilnius, Lithuania.