THE lesbian love life of domestic cattle has prompted a fact-finding mission to Malaysia's central highlands to study the world's last remaining herd of wild cattle. Australia's only professor of animal welfare, Clive Phillips from the University of Queensland, is hoping a basic study of Malaysia's endangered Gaur cattle will help explain why domestic cows mount each other during fertile periods. "With domestic cattle the cows show mounting homosexual behaviour when they are on heat and the wild cattle don't show that," Professor Phillips said. He said factors such as stress, a selective domestication process which favoured outwardly sexual cows and the number of animals on heat in a small enclosure, could explain why domestic cows displayed this deviation in sexual behaviour.
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