Wild water buffalo Bubalus arnee (Kerr, 1792)

Abstract

Linnaeus (1758), who generally used very wide genera, (because he did not use the family rank), originally named it as Bos bubalis . Kerr (1792) named it as Bos arnee . Later, both were assigned to genus Bubalus H. Smith, 1827 (in Cuvier’s Animal Kingdom , vol. 5: 371). The name bubalis is based on a domestic animal. It is also the senior synonym. However, those workers who do not use specific names based on domestic animals prefer to use arnee (Corbet & Hill 1992; Groves 1996; Choudhury 1997a, 2001b, 2010). The Asiatic wild water buffalo Bubalus arnee Kerr (= Bubalus bubalis Linn.) is among the largest members of the family Bovidae. It is also the ancestor of all the domestic varieties and breeds of buffaloes anywhere. Although the exact time and place of its domestication is uncertain there is little doubt that it has been present for at least 5000 years in India and China. Tame and possibly domesticated buffaloes appear on seals in the Indus valley (Mohenjo-daro) and in Mesopotamian civilisations from about the middle of the third millennium BC (Mason 1974; Lenstra & Bradley 1999; Massicot 2004). According to McIntosh (2007), ‘buffaloes occur as images on Indus seals, where they appear to be wild’.