Nazi-bred super cows?!

Their meat will not be reaching the Sunday lunch table and nobody would dare get close enough to try to milk them. But a herd of “super cows”, descended from animals bred in Nazi Germany, is making an impressive sight on a farm in south-west England. The animals, Heck cattle, were bred by the brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck, two zoologists who wanted to recreate the aurochs. An extinct European wild ox, the aurochs features as an important beast in Teutonic mythology. Only a few Heck cattle survived after the second world war but now Derek Gow, a farmer and conservation consultant, has shipped 13 bulls and cows from Belgium to the farm in Devon, where they have joined a growing collection of beavers, polecats and water voles. - from Guardian

But this herd of 13 bulls, cows and calves known as Heck cattle is the product of Nazi genetic engineering, an attempt to reintroduce the extinct aurochs, the last of which died of old age in a Polish forest nearly four centuries ago. The cattle have been imported into Britain for the first time by Derek Gow, a conservationist who is also at the forefront of attempts to reintroduce the beaver. Mr Gow said: “They look like the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira. It makes you think of the light of a tallow lamp and these huge bulls on these cave paintings leaping out at you from darkened walls.” - from TimesUK

Hitler’s Luftwaffe chief Herman Göring led the effort to resurrect the cattle by commissioning the zoologist Heck brothers to “back breed” the most primitive pedigrees of cow available in Europe. The success of the project – part of Göring’s vision to turn conquered Eastern European territories into a primeval Aryan wilderness – is widely disputed. “Most geneticists now believe that it is impossible to recover a lost species by back breeding, but few dispute that Heck cattle resemble the ancient aurochs, at least superficially,” the paper reported. The Times added that Gow, who is also heading the effort to reintroduce the beaver into the British wild, intends to breed calmer examples of the cattle, which he eventually hopes to offer “as grazing animals for nature reserves and ‘rewilding’ projects.” - from The Local