Talk:Water buffalo

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Assam buffalo[edit]

The first glimpse of the wild water buffalo of Northern India, the largest of all wild buffaloes in the world:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KG7tgRN2UNc

As u can see, they are much larger than the cape buffalo, as well as common water buffaloes. spelled buffalo wrong idiot

Title?[edit]

Is there a reason for the capitalization of the second word in this title, even though Wikipedia:Naming conventions says not to capitalize second and subsequent nouns? I'm guessing this is in error, but wanted to check here first. Heimstern Läufer 23:10, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved it since I got no reason for it to be capitalized. Heimstern Läufer 22:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the water buffalo an endangered species if there are 141,000,000 in Asian alone? Benfranklinlover 04:02, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The wild population is endangered. There are plenty of domesticated ones. Steve Dufour 07:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer the Name Domestic water buffalo or Domestic buffalo for this article, independently of capitalization or not. Domestic buffaloes occur also in Europe (so Asian is wrong) and actually it is the only form of buffalo to have been domesticated (So Water is dispensable).--Altaileopard 10:04, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't it be seperated by species?[edit]

We now know that the Swamp Buffalo (Bubalus carabanensis) has 48 chromosomes, and the River Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) has 50 chromosomes, why are we labeling them both as Water buffalo? Wouldn't it be more accurate to put the Swamp buffalos in Swamp Buffalo, and the River buffalos in River buffalo? Dionyseus 22:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Tiger Hunting Article needs to be edited. A single tiger CAN'T kill a frull grown buffalo! That's just stupid. There is no evidence at all to support this.

Why you think so?????????????????

US ARMY Water Buffalo[edit]

This article should be made. ANYONE who has served more than a month in the army knows the term "water buffalo". Nearly all units have multiple M112 500 Gallon tanks that are towed behind, usually, a five ton truck. Too little time for me to make the article. I hope a military-fan might do the honor.

Please Separate: 1) "WILD" Asian Water Buffalo from 2) "Domestic Asian Water Buffalo"[edit]

Please create a separate article for:

The actual common full name for it is "Wild Asian Water Buffalo", it is endangered (and it is little known outside wildlife circles), see IUCN Red List, while Domestic Asian Water Buffalo selectively bred for thousands of years is very famous and numbers in millions and has various livestock breeds. There are many breeds of domestic water buffalo.

Anatomical Section[edit]

Most of the info in this section should be deleted since it is about the wild buffalo not the domestic buffalo. I didn't want to just delete a big portion without discussing first. The info on the wild buffalo is repeated word for word in its own article.Monkeysocks2 (talk) 19:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reference[edit]

Atulsnischal 00:54, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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draft[edit]

" ... apart from their use as draft and dairy animals, are also used to pull bullock carts in the developing world ..." First, pulling a bullock cart IS use as a draft animal. The bit about "the developing world" is condescending west-centric, and does NOT belong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.68.134.1 (talk) 14:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Move from "Domestic buffalo" to "Domestic water buffalo"[edit]

Moved page to rename: Domestic Water Buffalo - The common name of the animal is "Water buffalo" and it is famous for remaining submerged in water when ever it can.

Atulsnischal (talk) 23:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine with me, I thought the old name was rather odd myself. Steven Walling (talk) 00:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Heads" versus "head" of buffaloes[edit]

In American English there is no doubt that, for describing a quantity of bovine critters, the plural adjective "head" applies and that the plural adjective "heads" does not apply. For non-bovine critters, this is not the rule. "Henry VIII chopped off several heads of family members" is correct, but "Henry VIII chopped of several head of family members" is not correct. On the other hand, "a bazillion head of buffaloes" is correct, but "a bazzilion heads" is wrong; unless this occurs within a quote. If it is quotational, then the content of the quote trumps the proper nonquational usage. "Us guys is the best team in the world" as quoted (seemingly ever year) by a member of the Super Bowl champion team is the accurate quote, regardless of the fact that "Our players comprise the best team in the world" is the proper syntactical expression of the sense that the speaker intended to articulate. Absent a counter-argument I will revert this in a few days. and ... thanks for fixing my mangled cite in footnote 1. Stwiso (talk) 04:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's any difference between bovine and other animals in the use of "head" for counting – it's used the same way for all animals for which it is used at all. "Heads" in the Henry situation are actual heads (plural noun), not a count of people; a noun too I think (it would have to be "beheaded several head of queens"). There are however only certain animals for which "head" seems to be used for counting – I think it's usually restricted to largish herding herbivores – you can have so many head of antelope, elephant, sheep or llamas, but not tigers, crocodiles, herring – or indeed queens. I do agree that the quote trumps the usage, unless it's an obvious mistake, such as, for example, a wrong translation or poor spelling. Do we know what the source actually does say? Richard New Forest (talk) 14:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The quote is accurate. Stwiso (talk) 22:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on edits[edit]

Just to explain the edits I've just done of some recent material (and also some older stuff).

I've removed many of the quotes included with refs. Any quotes included (whether in text or footnotes) should be the minimum necessary to demonstrate the point, and only used at all if the text itself cannot do so alone (see WP:QUOTE). Those included were whole paragraphs, several saying exactly the same thing as the sentence or para they support. Such a lot of directly copied material risks copyvio. Where necessary I've included the material in the para, suitably paraphrased.

I've removed most stuff that refers to wild water buffalo. This has its own article, and everything about it belongs there, except the summary para (which already covers it pretty well). This material includes the predation stuff – however, some of that could perhaps be rewritten to apply only to domestic water buffalo, as I'm sure tigers do eat domestic ones too. (Incidentally, tiger isn't actually the only predator of either wild or domestic buffalo – note what the article says elsewhere about Saltwater Crocodile as a predator; other big crocs such as muggers and nile crocs must surely take them too.)

I've also moved some material to make the flow more logical – eg the research material to its own section, rather than in the "distribution" section.

One minor point – headings normally only have caps for the first word, or for proper nouns (See WP:MOSHEAD, and immediately preceding section).

I've done the changes in two stages to allow easy comparison: the text edits, then the moves without any text edits. Richard New Forest (talk) 12:13, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you remove the refernce to predation by tigers, if so why? Stwiso (talk) 15:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Explained above: it was mainly or wholly about wild water buffalo, and so the subject of a different article. However, also see what I said above about editing or adding to that material to make it about predation on domestic water buffalo. Richard New Forest (talk) 18:12, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing in the source that is (was) cited that limits the predation discussion to wild buffaloes. Please restore my version in tha regard, thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stwiso (talkcontribs) 18:26, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I can't see which bit is clearly about domestic water buffalo rather than wild or feral ones. Looking at your last edit, tigers were mentioned twice, both using the same Animal Diversity Web ref, but one in a section about wild buffalo ("Distribution, Asia"), and the other in a section apparently about feral or wild animals ("Environmental Impact", talking about "uncontrolled circumstances").
The ref itself is about the species as a whole, and it is not at all clear which it is talking about – it looks rather more like the wild ones to me (it also talks about hunting and habitat fragmentation). I agree that such behaviour in domestic buffalo is likely – my own "ordinary" cattle do certainly still have anti-lion instincts, despite lions having been absent from southern England for really quite some time now... However, I don't think this ref can be used to support such behaviour in domestic buffalo. Richard New Forest (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I wish you and your Article the very best, it is becoming a valuable contibution to Wikipedia. bye bye. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stwiso (talkcontribs) 22:42, 5 November 2008 (UTC) oops. I forgot to say that I will tell my friends about this Wikipedia your-way-or-your highway experience. The copyright issues are your own, please erase all my edits and start all over again. I take no resonsibilty for them as modified by you. I have deleted this Article from my watchlist and I do not plan to visit it again. Have a nice day and please enjoy this, your personal, Article. Stwiso (talk) 05:06, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Stwiso, I am afraid you may have misunderstood the situation; this is how Wikipedia works most of the time, so it is nothing personal. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on which side you are on), sometimes when your edits are disputed you must defend them with veracity, and in the WP world, that means sources, sources and more sources. Articles are built though consensus and give and take; be it for the better or for the worse, it usually results in a respectable article. Rather than throwing in the towel, may I suggest you give it a second chance? If you want some guidance, check out Wikipedia:Editor assistance in general or Wikipedia:Third opinion for this article. Hope this helps! Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 12:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

African buffalo ancestry[edit]

Right at the end of the introduction, it says, "The African buffalo is not closely related to the water buffalo, and its ancestry remains unclear." When the word "its" is used, does it mean that the African buffalo's ancestry isn't clear or the water buffalo's. I think that using FORMER or LATTER instead of ITS is better.--Pgecaj (talk) 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It was a little ambiguous – I've clarified it. Please feel free to improve Wikipedia yourself where you can. Richard New Forest (talk) 12:08, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Water Buffalo in Brazil[edit]

The article has nothing about water buffalo in Brazil.Beyond doubt, water buffalo is an important domestic animal in Brazil, where more than 3,000,000 heads exists in farms.Agre22 (talk) 12:10, 8 December 2008 (UTC)agre22[reply]

Changed "South China" to "South China Sea"[edit]

Changed "South China" to "South China Sea" in the "Fighting festivals" section near the bottom of the page. Feel free to change it if I am wrong. 06:29, 17 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.190.94.138 (talk)

could you answer questions like How are buffalo adapted to feed on grass and escape from lions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.56.157 (talk) 16:21, 9 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unrecognised punctuation character[edit]

Im getting this halfway through the page. Adult Water Buffalo range in size from 400 to 900 kg (880 to Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "," lb) Seems to be some sort of auto generated error. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.192.43.159 (talk) 12:39, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not getting that at all, but "Adult Water Buffalo range in size from 400 to 900 kg (880 to 2,000 lb) for the domestic breeds" etc. Are you still getting the error? If not, I suspect a glitch in the WP software or a temporary error in the template. Richard New Forest (talk) 21:21, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Egypt[edit]

Egypt removed due to broad, sweeping claims with no sources. The section claimed that "water buffalo is the main source of red meat" in Egypt, when other sources paint a different story. It was a blurb that was completely irrelevant to the article and has thus been removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.158.142.187 (talk) 18:15, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mozzarella[edit]

According to the Wik article on this cheese, it is a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) item, which would mean that the term should be restricted in its use. 05:15, 25 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.30.91 (talk)

Please discuss rather than erase. The relevance is that it appears that the use of the word "mozzarella" is inappropriate. I'm just giving the reason why it seems to to me rather than simply editing the article and perhaps starting an edit war.

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Water buffalo milk[edit]

Hi all editors and viewers! I decided to place the following table here because a full citation is pending since more than 4 years, and also because the constituent values listed imply that constituents are stable, which is not not the case. They vary between water buffalo breeds, and also depend on feeding. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 19:16, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Milk Composition Analysis, per 100 grams[1][full citation needed]

Constituents unit Cow Goat Sheep Buffalo
Water g 87.8 88.9 83.0 81.1
Protein g 3.2 3.1 5.4 4.5
Fat g 3.9 3.5 6.0 8.0
Carbohydrate g 4.8 4.4 5.1 4.9
Energy kcal 66 60 95 110
kJ 275 253 396 463
Sugars (Lactose) g 4.8 4.4 5.1 4.9
Fatty Acids:
Saturated g 2.4 2.3 3.8 4.2
Monounsaturated g 1.1 0.8 1.5 1.7
Polyunsaturated g 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.2
Cholesterol mg 14 10 11 8
Calcium iu 120 100 170 195
  1. ^ McCance, Widdowson, Scherz, Kloos. [1][dead link]

Taxonomy and naming need clarification[edit]

The classification and naming in this article are confusing. The swamp and river types appear to be given the same taxonomic name, yet a posting on this Talk page in 2007 (Shouldn't it be seperated by species?) states "We now know that the Swamp Buffalo (Bubalus carabanensis) has 48 chromosomes, and the River Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) has 50 chromosomes". This was not contested. More confusingly, Swamp buffalo redirects to Carabao (which appears to be a name for buffaloes only in the Phillipines, but River buffalo redirects to this article. Can someone explain this? I tend to be very bold in my edits, but everytime I edit anything taxonomically related, I seem to stir up a hornet's nest, so I will avoid it on this occasion.__DrChrissy (talk) 00:33, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't note this redirect of Swamp buffalo before, but it should be redirected to this article as well. Bubalus carabanensis is not a valid taxon; the swamp buffalo is a different line of Bubalus bubalis breed than the river buffalo.-- BhagyaMani (talk) 16:23, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There have been on-and-off proposals to make them two different species, but none have gained enough traction so far. Bubalus carabanensis Castillo, 1971 is at least an available name; whether it is valid takes some subjective judgement, because the zoological concept of validity is like that.
The recent genomic approaches to the problem might just do it, but who knows. The swamp buffalo only got its entire genome on GenBank in 2023; I expect someone to come up with a paper for the genome. Artoria2e5 🌉 03:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lead image[edit]

Thank you to the editor that changed the lead image after I had recently changed it. I am not disputing this change whatsoever, but for my own peace of mind, could you clarify which species is the feral buffalo in Australia. If it is not a water buffalo, perhaps it should be deleted completely from this article to avoid confusion. If it is a wild water buffalo, it might be an appropriate image for that article.__DrChrissy (talk) 17:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Australia's feral water buffaloes are Bubalus bubalis. So this image's title "WildWaterBuffalo(Bubalus bubalis arnee)" is incorrect and mislead quite a few editors to use it in the taxobox of the wild water buffalo article. Renaming this jpg file to e.g. "feral-water-buffalo-Australia" would help to avoid future confusion. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 12:03, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see now. Thank you very much for clarifying this.__DrChrissy (talk) 16:41, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Confused?[edit]

The article for "carabao" states that this species is the "Bubalus bubalis" and exists only in the Philippines and Guam. But this article for "water buffalo" also states that it is Bubalus bubalis and exists all over Asia... Which is it?24.117.62.13 (talk) 19:52, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Possible copyright problem[edit]

This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. 💵Money💵emoji💵💸 16:37, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 17 September 2022[edit]

Citation #35 has fallen victim to linkrot. Please replace the URL with https://web.archive.org/web/20120417140011/http://vet.unne.edu.ar/revista/21-suple-1/12%20bufalos.pdf 175.39.61.121 (talk) 21:16, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

 Done, IP editor. Thank you so much for submitting a clear, useful and correct edit request, it's much appreciated (most edit requests are none of those things). Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:40, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How many clones?[edit]

The research section says the second institute to clone the water buffalo did so in 2016, while we list two other institutes having done so prior to 2016, which is correct? XeCyranium (talk) 20:43, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@XeCyranium: in vitro fertilization is not cloning. WAIT, the way the first paragraph is written does seem to suggest that, but the citation only indicates an attempt to do so. I will fix the text. Artoria2e5 🌉 07:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]