Human Evolution on Cows
How have humans impacted on the evolution and domestication of cattle (cows) throughout generations? Humans have caused a huge impact on the most popular farm animal, the cow. Artificial selection is the forced reproduction of individuals in a certain population humans are involved. Cattle referring to cows have originally evolved over millions of years through natural selection and human impact causing a change or an evolution in the species. Normally it’s the fittest or healthier and good-looking cows that tend to survive the most. Once humans got involved in the process of selecting the traits that they liked and desired they breed them for specific traits such as meat and their milk. Today there are over 800 different
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The environment depends a lot and may have a negative or positive effect on a cow. For example black cattle may have a hard time adapting and living in a hot environment with high solar radiation. Another limitation is that they inject cows with vaccines to make them stronger and have more muscle. Each year 30 million cows are sent to feedlot where they feed cattle with high proteins and hormones to produce more beef and have more protein, which is bad for them because it alters the healthy growing process. Not only does it affect their physical shape but also it causes a discomfort in their daily activities and diseases could be found. A study was found that scientists injected genes from bacteria known as archaea into cells and then into cow embryos using the technique used to clone dolly sheep. Five calves were born were born and three were found to carry genes with low lactose milk while two of them died. When manipulating cows to have desired traits its probable they will die or have a mutation. Focusing on the good benefits artificial selection brings is that cows will make more milk and beef for the benefit of humans to have more quantity. Biotechnology is good is breeding to remove the harmful characteristics that some cows may inherit such as selecting cattle without