Cattle are raised as livestock across much of the world. They eat vegetation and bring swallowed food back to the mouth to chew again.
They have sturdy bodies and coats ranging from black and white to reddish brown. Males are generally larger than females.
Cattle showed behavior indicating that they could distinguish human faces and match a face with a voice. In 2026, researchers tested Holstein cows at a farm in France. Two screens showed videos of a familiar or unfamiliar person at the same time. In the silent visual test, cows looked longer at the unfamiliar face.
For the next test, a voice was paired with the video of one of the people. Researchers compared trials where the voice matched the face with trials where it belonged to the other person. Cows looked longer at the face that matched the voice. Results from 22 cows were analyzed in the visual test and 17 in the face-and-voice test. The authors interpreted this as evidence that cows connect human faces with voices.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
FAO’s Domestic Animal Diversity Information System records and monitors livestock risk by breed. In Japan, Mishima cattle are protected as the national natural monument “Mishima Cattle Production Area.” Yamaguchi Prefecture reports that the herd fell to 33 adult cattle in 1975; conservation and propagation efforts followed, and about 90 cattle were kept there in 2020.