Animal · India, Nepal, Bhutan
Gaur
Bos gaurus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The gaur is the largest wild cattle in the world, a forest animal of South and Southeast Asia that can weigh more than a tonne. Its dark coat ends in pale lower legs that look like socks. A high ridge of muscle runs along its back.
Picture credit: Dr. Raju Kasambe (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Swaroopsingharoy (CC BY-SA 4.0) · PJeganathan (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the gaur live?
Home: Evergreen forest with grassy clearings.
In the wild it lives in these countries: India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam.
Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.
The short profile
Fully grown: up to about 2.2 m at the shoulder. It weighs about 900 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A gaur bull can stand more than two metres at the shoulder and weigh as much as a small car. The ridge along its back is solid muscle, built to carry a heavy head and horns that curve up to about a metre long. Herds are usually small, around ten animals led by an older female, while the biggest bulls often walk alone. They graze on grass and browse on bamboo shoots, leaves and bark, and they need both forest to rest in and open ground to feed on. Where people disturb them, gaur switch to feeding at night and hide in thick cover during the day. Tigers are the only predators that can bring down a healthy adult, and even a tiger usually picks a calf instead. Fewer than about 25 000 adult gaur are thought to remain, scattered across separate patches of forest from India to Vietnam. That is why the species is counted as vulnerable.
Find it on the globe
Gaur is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is a gaur the same as a buffalo?
No, it is a different kind of wild cattle with its own species name. Buffalo have flat, widely spreading horns and love water, while gaur have curved horns, a shoulder ridge and stay in the forest.
Why are its lower legs so pale?
From the knee down the legs really are whitish, so a dark gaur looks as if it is wearing socks. Scientists are not sure what this is for; it may help the animals see each other in the dim light under the trees.
Does anything hunt a grown gaur?
Only the tiger, and even for a tiger it is rare and risky. A gaur herd will face a big cat together, and a full-grown bull is strong enough to drive one off on its own.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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