What it is
Cattle are domestic bovines kept for milk, meat, hides, and draft. Living cattle belong to the taurine (Bos taurus) and indicine (Bos indicus, zebu) lineages. People bred them from aurochs (Bos primigenius) in the Holocene.
Range
Kept on every inhabited continent. Density follows pasture, feed, and dairy markets. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations maps the global distribution of cattle as livestock.
What happened
People domesticated cattle from aurochs in the Holocene and then moved the herds with farms and trade. Today the animal is a managed food system: breeds, feedlots, and pastoral herds.
When / status
A living domesticate, maintained by people worldwide.
Human role
We made the animal, spread it, and now run the herds that feed much of the world.
Sources
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Livestock Systems: cattle.