In 2022, a film crew working on the Lika Plains near the Adriatic coast of Croatia picked up some remarkable behaviour. A small herd of aurochs had been released into the area a few years earlier, and thermal-imaging video footage showed the bulls responding to the threat of a pack of wolves by forming a semi-circle and facing outwards with their fearsome horns to the front.
Cows and calves sheltered behind this defensive shield, along with a group of wild horses, including a foal.
Ronald Goderie, a Dutch ecologist who has been closely involved in the European rewilding movement for four decades, says there is historical evidence of aurochs protecting themselves in this way, and of other species taking advantage of it. “That’s what we had heard, but it had never been filmed,” he adds. “It’s a semi-circle with cows and wild horses behind it, and the wolves outside showing a lot of aggression.”
