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Review
. 2020 Dec 1:7:570413.
doi: 10.3389/fvets.2020.570413. eCollection 2020.

Bubalus bubalis: A Short Story

Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino  1 , Marco Zava  2 , Domenico Vecchio  3 , Antonio Borghese  4
Affiliations
Review

Bubalus bubalis: A Short Story

Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino et al. Front Vet Sci. .

Abstract

The domestic buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), also known as water buffalo or Asian buffalo to prevent confusion with the American bison (Bison bison), wrongly named buffalo in North America, comprises two subspecies: the river buffalo (B. bubalis bubalis) and the swamp buffalo (B. bubalis kerebau). The swamp buffalo has a consistent phenotype and is considered as one type, even if many breeds are recognized within it; conversely, the river buffalo subspecies has many breeds. We found limited information available regarding the worldwide distribution of buffaloes. The best estimate is that 208,098,759 buffalo head are distributed in 77 countries in five continents. In this review, we presented the basic aspects of the water buffalo and unraveled the buffalo path followed from the origin of the species to its current global distribution. We reviewed several data sources to provide a better estimate of the world buffalo count and distribution.

Keywords: breeds; bubaline; buffalo population; dairy buffalo; water buffalo.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Zoological classification of the water buffalo in the Bovinae family.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Phylogenetic tree of the genus Bubalus based on D-loop region complementing with IOC and cytochrome B.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Buffalo breeds worldwide. (A) Sulawesi breed spotted animal (Indonesia); (B) the Carabao breed from Philippines; (C) Fuling breed in China; (D) Murrah buffaloes herd from São Paulo, Brazil; (E) Nili-Ravi breed at Pakistan; (F) Mediterranean Italy breed raised in Mozambique; (G) Jaffarabadi bull in Brazil; (H) Buffalypso breed from Trinidad and Tobago. Source: Castro, S.R., Borghese (7).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Water buffalo population worldwide. Legend indicate number of head in each country; t, thousand; m, million. Data source available at Supplementary Table 1.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Worldwide buffalo population trends: (A) worldwide buffalo population from the past 50 years (1968–2018); (B) worldwide buffalo population from the past 50 years (1968–2018) separated by continent. The right red axis indicates the count for Asia. America, Africa, and Europe are represented in the left axis. Source FAOSTAT (51).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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