I don’t expect to see cow horse, but something a bit slimmer and taller than a modern cow should easily be obtainable.
Think about this too. In Rodeos they clamp the bulls balls to get him to ride like the dickens. Imagine if you did that just before hitting the enemy line. I know I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in front of a pissed off ball clamped bull.
You need to remember that these cows are going to be shoulder to shoulder. There’s no realistic way for them to veer either way. The natural instinct is going to take over, and that instinct is to run forward and gore the hell out of whatever is in your way.
Unless it’s a fair bit slimmer, taller, more agile, more intelligent and faster it’s still going to be inferior to a horse.
So you’re going to spend all this time training wall-bull steeds to allow a rider, take orders, not freak out at the sounds & smells of war and then ditch using it as a steed and instead use it as a one-shot weapon against a bunch of swords, spears, guns, arrows, etc?
Sounds like an awesome way to be flanked and destroyed by equine cavalry.
My first thought was: Europeans didn’t HAVE time to breed cattle to be horses when they had Mongols, Vandals, Huns and other assorted armed and horse mounted peoples sweeping down upon them.
How so? A stampede is nothing but the most basic of fight or flight responses. A cow or herd without that instinct would quickly be erased by natural selection. A stampede is not the same thing as blind panic. If it was, then they’d be just as likely to run toward a pack of hyenas than away.
On horse, you can shoot an arrow pretty accurately by firing while all four hooves are in the air. I’m no expert but I don’t think bovine have the same gait.
Just because a smarter animal can take advantage of an instinct does not make that instict illogical. Is the fishy instinct to eat worms illogical because on occasion there is a hook secreted in it?
I never said it was illogical from a normal survival perspective. I was showing that cattle in a stampede aren’t exactly thinking it through as evidenced by the whole “running off cliffs” thing. Not just in the case of Indians who are causing it for hunting but also cowboys who would rather avoid having their cattle all die in a hole. I’m sure on the plains or veldt it works swimmingly but I don’t see any evidence that it’s not a blind panicked run which isn’t anything you want from your war steeds.
Speaking of stampedes, the same Wiki said that Texas Longhorns were the most prone to nervousness and stampedes. So the only cow I’ve seen people riding with any “regularity” would probably be among the worse for taking into battle which goes back to the whole “Just because you think you can breed it doesn’t mean you can” thing.
I seem to remember seeing a documentary of sorts on early Britain that showed a small skirmish with the French that involved a cow. But in that case it was not used as a steed but as a weapon. Did not go well for the English as I recall.
