Word: gaur
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...hovered protectively over it, and within an hour started to nurse it. But for zoo officials-indeed, for all animal lovers concerned with preserving endangered species-this blessed event was something very special. Flossie's offspring was not an ordinary black-and-white Holstein calf but a baby gaur (rhymes with flower), a rare type of wild ox that lives in the remote forests of South Asia from India and Nepal to the Malay Peninsula...
...their meat in some countries and crowded out of favorite hideaways by an expanding human population, no more than about 2,000 of the animals still roam freely in the wild. The dark, white-stockinged creatures are the world's largest wild cattle. Fully grown, a male gaur may measure 6 ft. from hoof to shoulder and weigh nearly 2,000 Ibs. Perhaps wisely, no one has really ever bothered to domesticate the beasts...
...birth is the result of some extraordinary modern midwifery by Veterinarian Janet Stover, 29, and her colleagues. To increase the gaur's chances of survival, they picked a likely mother from the zoo's own small gaur herd-its 17 members, including the latest addition, account for about 10% of all the gaurs in captivity. The chosen female was then treated with hormones that stimulated what fertility researchers call superovulation-the release of more than one egg at a time. Finally, last fall they let the animal breed normally with a gaur bull...
...less a single country than an archipelago of small, lush river valleys, cut off from each other by sharp mountains and limestone plateaus where roam the elephant, tiger and gaur. In winter, the hills of Laos are alight with opium poppies, and in summer the floods brought by the monsoon rains lap under the stilted houses and over the 500 miles of meandering dirt roads. Years ago, someone built a railroad station in Savannakhet, but never got around to building a railroad. The Me kong River, crashing down from a canyon in China's Yunnan province, then slowed...
...days, Bao Dai's favorite sport (in addition to chasing chorus girls) was tracking down tigers, elephants and gaur (fierce wild buffalo) on foot through the jungle. That took intelligence and guts. Both traits are needed in the fierce jungle of Viet Namese politics, and Bao Dai is displaying both. The Communist radio had predicted that he would be assassinated; the French authorities were so concerned that at public ceremonies they kept the crowds 100 yards from His Majesty and gave him an armored car. But Bao Dai scorned such protection. At Hanoi, which he proclaimed his capital...