The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook Columbia Gazetteer American Heritage Coll. The term oxen, broadly used, refers also to closely related animals, such as the buffalo and the bison . Narrowly used, ox refers to a mature castrated male used for draft purposes. In referring to domestic cattle a grown male is a bull, a grown female a cow, an infant a calf, and an animal between one and two years old a yearling.
Some cattle are naturally hornless.
A smaller species, the Celtic shorthorn, was the most important domestic ox of the Stone Age and may also be involved in the ancestry of B. taurus. The zebu , or Indian ox, B. indica, is the humped domestic species of Asia and Africa. Several B. indica breeds have been developed in the United States into the Brahman breed. The yak , B. grunniens, and other cattle species, wild and domestic, exist in Asia. Domestic cattle were first brought to the Western Hemisphere by Columbus on his second voyage.