Bulls cannot see red, and the gentle ones are the most dangerous
The matador's red cape has nothing to do with the bull's charge. Cattle, like most mammals, are red–green colour blind, so it is the cape's motion that provokes them. Farming lore holds a more unsettling truth too: the placid bull, not the notorious one, is the animal most likely to hurt its keeper.
Another common belief is wrong as well. Horns are not a male feature in cattle; whether an animal has them depends on its breed and on whether the horn buds were removed. Naturally hornless cattle are called polled. Bulls do differ from cows in build, with heavier bones, bigger feet, a thick muscular neck, bony ridges above the eyes and often a woolly mane. They are about the same height as cows but weigh far more, typically 500 to 1,000 kilograms. The word bull also covers the males of many other large animals, from elephants and whales to alligators.
That bulk makes them hazardous. An estimated 42% of livestock-related deaths in Canada are caused by bulls, and dairy breeds are considered especially unpredictable. Before 1940, bull handling was one of the leading causes of death in American dairying, which is why one farming magazine advised always carrying a staff. Keepers have devised many safeguards: copper nose rings attached to a rigid metre-long pole, masks that limit a bull's view to the ground just ahead, and chains that trip him if he lowers his head to charge. Bulls living among cows tend to be calmer than those kept alone.
Most male cattle never become bulls at all; they are castrated as calves and raised for beef. The risks of keeping a breeding bull pushed many dairy farmers towards artificial insemination, using semen frozen in liquid nitrogen, and some ranchers now keep bulls largely to sell it.
The animal's symbolic power is ancient. Bulls appear in cave paintings up to 17,000 years old and in the Epic of Gilgamesh, give the zodiac its Taurus, and in Hinduism the seated bull Nandi carries the god Shiva. England banned the cruel sport of bull-baiting in 1835, and the dogs bred for it gave us the name bulldog.
Source: Bull
