On Sep 11, 6:27Â*am, "J. Anderson" > wrote:

> >> Is that a polar bear painted on the door of the truck behind the bike?

> >between 1925 and 1935. The army would be the national Lithuanian one.

> It's probably the white bull of
> Kaunas:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...o_rinktine.jpg
> Kaunas was at that time the temporary capital of Lithuania (Vilnius being
> occupied by the Poles).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

Introduction:

Aurochs
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Not to be confused with Wisent.
Aurochs
Fossil range: Late Pliocene to Holocene
Copy of a painting of an Aurochs owned by a merchant in Augsburg in
the 19th century. The original probably dates to the 16th century.
Conservation status

Extinct (1627) (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Bovidae
Subfamily: Bovinae
Genus: Bos
Species: â€*B. primigenius
Binomial name
â€*Bos primigenius
Subspecies

Bos primigenius primigenius
(Bojanus, 1827)
Bos primigenius namadicus
(Falconer, 1859)
Bos primigenius mauretanicus
(Thomas, 1881)
Synonyms

Bos mauretanicus Thomas, 1881
Bos namadicus Falconer, 1859

The aurochs or urus (Bos primigenius), the ancestor of domestic
cattle, was a type of huge wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia
and North Africa, but is now extinct; it survived in Europe until
1627.

The aurochs was far larger than most modern domestic cattle with a
shoulder height of 2 metres (6.6 ft) and weighing 1,000 kilograms
(2,200 lb). Domestication of bovines occurred in several parts of the
world at roughly the same time, about 8,000 years ago. It was regarded
as a challenging quarry animal, contributing to its extinction.

The last recorded aurochs, a female, died in 1627 in the Jaktorów
Forest Poland, and its skull is now the property of Livrustkammaren in
Stockholm.

Aurochs appear in prehistoric cave paintings, Julius Caesar's The
Gallic War and as the national symbol of many European countries,
states and cities such as Alba-Iulia, Kaunas, Romania, Moldavia,
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Uri.

In 1920, the Heck brothers, who were German biologists, attempted to
recreate aurochs. The resulting cattle are known as Heck cattle or
Reconstructed Aurochs, and number in the thousands in Europe today.
However, they are genetically and physiologically distinct from
aurochs. The Heck brothers' aurochs also have a pale yellow dorsal
stripe, instead of white.