Bovids | Bovidae

Holhoornigen | Bóvidos

The horns are permanent: a bony core growing out of the frontal bone and covered for life by a sheath of horn that grows on from the base and is never shed. They therefore lengthen year by year and in many species carry rings marking the successive seasons; in part of the family the females carry them too. Every species chews the cud, and the upper jaw has no incisors: grass is cut between the lower incisors and a hard horny pad and later ground down by crescent-ridged cheekteeth. The hoof is a hard outer rim around a softer, springy sole — the climbing kit of the European representatives, nearly all of which are animals of mountain and rock: ibex, chamois and wild sheep on steep ground, and along the southern edge the gazelles and oryxes of steppe and desert. The wisent is the continent's only wild cattle, brought back from captive stock. One well-developed young is born.