The animal most people think they know
The Asiatic wild buffalo (Bubalus arnee) is not the domesticated water buffalo pulling a plough through a paddy field. It is a separate species, larger, faster, and genetically distinct from the domestic buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) that Indian farmers have kept for thousands of years. An adult wild bull can weigh over 1,200 kilograms and carry horns spanning more than 1.8 metres tip to tip, the widest horn spread of any living bovid. The two animals share a common ancestor but diverged enough over millennia that they were classified as separate species. That classification is now under biological pressure.
