A new leash of life for Nagaland’s most famous unknown animal

EMN Dimapur, March 21 The bovine, the Mithun, famed for its place in the culture of the north-eastern people, particularly Nagaland, is a creature everybody knows but few, well, knows enough to appreciate its impact on the socio-cultural lives of the indigenous people. A three-day technology injection and farmers’ awareness programme on mithun rearing and care was conducted recently in three villages in Tuensang district, namely Waoshu village, Yakor village, and Sangphur village. The event was organised by the ICAR-National Research Centre on Mithun of Medziphema in collaboration with the Mithun Rearing and Women Welfare Societies of said villages. The workshops were conducted during March 17-19. The scientists from ICAR-NRCM comprising Dr. N Haque, Dr. S Mukherjeee and Dr. MH Khan apprised the farmers about the mandate of the Institute and stressed about scientific mithun rearing for the socio-economic development. More than 300 mithun farmers attended the camps along with their mithuns. Scientists of ICAR-NRCM demonstrated the method of ear tag and microchip-based animal identification and apprised the farmers towards the benefit of feeding mineral mixtures and adopting health care and vaccination for better economic returns. Various inputs including commonly used medicines, vaccines and piglets were distributed to the farmers under Tribal Sub Plan. Stationary items like copies, pencil etc were also distributed among the school children. The enthusiasm and keen interests shown by the mithun farmers of these remote villages are very encouraging. The gayal (Bos frontalis), also known as mithun, is a large semi-domesticated bovine distributed in Northeast India, Bangladesh, northern Burma and in Yunnan, China. The state animal of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland continues to be integral to the economics of animal husbandry in the region. The gayal differs in several important particulars from the gaur. It is somewhat smaller, with proportionately shorter limbs, and stands much lower at the withers. The ridge on the back is less developed, and bulls have a larger dewlap on the throat. The head is shorter and broader, with a perfectly flat forehead and a straight line between the bases of the horns. The thick and massive horns are less flattened and much less curved than in the gaur, extending almost directly outwards from the sides of the head, and curving somewhat upwards at the tips, but without any inward inclination. Their extremities are thus much farther apart than in the gaur. The female gayal is much smaller than the bull, and has scarcely any dewlap on the throat. The skin colour of the head and body is blackish-brown in both sexes, and the lower portion of the limbs are white or yellowish. The horns are of uniform blackish tint from base to tip. Some domesticated gayals are parti-coloured, while others are completely white. Distribution and habitat Gayals are essentially inhabitants of hill-forests. In India, semi-domesticated gayals are kept by several ethnic groups living in the hills of Tripura, Mizoram, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland. They also occur in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In northern Burma, they occur in the Kachin State, and in adjacent Yunnan are found only in the Trung and Salween River basins. In Nagaland, the animals are kept semi-wild, and live in herds, being watched over by special caretakers assigned by the villages or the owner of the herd. They respond to a horn kept especially for the individual caretaker or actual owner to call them. From birth until the time of butchering or market, the Mithun remain in the herd, and roam mostly freely throughout the forests. The role of the mithun is central to the lives of many residents of these areas, including transhumant ones who pair mithun management with sago palm harvesting: Although livestock is highly characteristic of the high Himalayan way of life in general, with yaks and sheep being predominant species until recently, the mithun, or gayal (Bos frontalis) is the most prominent animal exploited by Eastern Himalayan groups. The mithun is a semi-domesticate, managed in fenced tracts of forests rather than being kept in or near villages. Outside North East India, mithun are primarily imported for the purpose of cross- breeding with other bovids, for example in Bhutan. It is very common among Eastern Himalayan languages to find lexical sets denoting fauna in which the mithun is lexicalized as a “prototypical” meat animal, with all other terms being derived. Terms for ‘mithun’ in other languages of Arunachal Pradesh are typically cognate with Aka fu, suggesting that this is probably not a case of semantic shift from a wild species. The implication is that the semi-wild mithun was seen as the core species, and the true domesticates such as cattle, which arrived subsequently, as marginal to the system. (Source: Wikipedia)