In the eastern Himalayan hills, wealth has long been counted in gayal
Across the forested hills of Northeast India, a family's standing was traditionally measured by how many gayal it owned. These half-wild cattle, also called mithun, have served as currency, dowry and ceremonial offering. They wander the forest freely and come home of their own accord, a partnership thought to date back over 8,000 years.
The gayal was probably domesticated along the Assam-Burma border, and genetic work published in 2020 confirmed that its maternal ancestor is the wild gaur, with some later mixing from zebu and other cattle. It is now treated as its own species of Bos. Compared with the gaur it stands lower, with shorter legs, a flat forehead, a big throat dewlap on the bulls and thick horns that jut almost straight out sideways. Coats are blackish-brown with pale lower legs, though some domestic animals are patched or entirely white.
They live on the southern slopes of the Eastern Himalayas in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and China's Yunnan, anywhere from 300 to 5,000 metres up, favouring quiet hilly forest with water, bamboo and coarse grass, plus a good salt lick. As they browse and drop manure they spread seeds and enrich the soil, so ecologists regard them as ecosystem engineers.
Twenty-four ethnic groups across four countries are recorded as keeping gayal, and the animal is the state animal of both Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. Among the Galo it symbolises community peace, and among the Adi a wedding is not settled until the groom's family gives at least one. Naga folklore holds that humans and gayal once shared a womb, and carved gayal heads on house fronts still advertise a household's status. They are kept mainly for meat and for ceremonies, and are milked in Northeast India and Bhutan.
Herding is changing. Owners increasingly build living fences to keep animals out of crops and call them in each night, partly because wild dogs called dholes take calves. India runs a National Research Centre on Mithun in Nagaland to study and conserve the breed.
Source: Gayal
