Cows

[RacersEdge]

I am reading this book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0393061310/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-1278033-0118469#reader-link) and I never realized what a useful animal a cow has been for the human race. Meat, milk, leather - and easy to raise - basically the perfect animal. There is really nothing else close. Where would we be without it?

[miajag81]

They are quite delicious. Thanks, cows!

[Clarkmeister]

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They are quite delicious. Thanks, cows!

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[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
I am reading this book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0393061310/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-1278033-0118469#reader-link) and I never realized what a useful animal a cow has been for the human race. Meat, milk, leather - and easy to raise - basically the perfect animal. There is really nothing else close. Where would we be without it?

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You never realized you could get meat, milk and leather from a cow? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[razor]

[ QUOTE ]
I am reading this book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0393061310/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-1278033-0118469#reader-link) and I never realized what a useful animal a cow has been for the human race. Meat, milk, leather - and easy to raise - basically the perfect animal. There is really nothing else close. Where would we be without it?

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I'm fine with the meat and leather, but I'm not really a big fan of milk. From a milk production POV the cow rocks, but the milk itself seems less than perfect to me.

[WackityWhiz]

http://www.hot.ee/diabloii/IMAGES/INFO/1/cows_3.jpg

[RacersEdge]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am reading this book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0393061310/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-1278033-0118469#reader-link) and I never realized what a useful animal a cow has been for the human race. Meat, milk, leather - and easy to raise - basically the perfect animal. There is really nothing else close. Where would we be without it?

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You never realized you could get meat, milk and leather from a cow? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

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I meant more the ease at which you get these things. You could get meat and leather from a zebra, but they are very ornery to raise. Cows pretty much do what you want them to do. You could raise lions for their meat, but obviously hard to raise - and you would go broke buying the meat you would need to feed the lions. With cows, you give them grain, they give you steak.

[Blarg]

Think cheese, and butter. Plus cooking fat, more precious than meat to many primitive people.

[Blarg]

Cows have been very carefully bred for both docility and flat out stupidity for thousands of years. They aren't naturally that docile, or that stupid, at all.

[swede123]

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Cows have been very carefully bred for both docility and flat out stupidity for thousands of years. They aren't naturally that docile, or that stupid, at all.

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I agree with the docile part, but I doubt wild cows or whatever the non-domestic version is called are particularly bright. Same goes for deer etc, not particularly intelligent animals.

Swede

[Blarg]

How smart do you have to be, to be an animal, especially a herd animal? Not very. But we've bred them to be dumber still.

[rusellmj]

Maybe they're not THAT stupid? (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2087-1838852%2C00.html)