As part of a post-Diwali celebration in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhidavad village, brave men lie on the ground and allow themselves to be trampled by dozens of cattle in the name of religion.

The festival of Diwali is marked with various rituals and traditions across India, but none quite as bizarre as the custom of one village in Madhya Pradesh, where men lie on the ground and allow cows to walk all over them in the hopes that it will make all their wishes come true. According to tradition, the cows are worshipped in the village in the morning, and then daredevils lie down on the ground while the cows trample them. People believe that 33 crore (330 million) gods and goddesses reside in cows, and by allowing cows to walk over them, one receives the blessings of the gods.

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Tommy, a 13-year-old Brown Swiss from Cheshire, in Massachusets, was recently crowned the world’s tallest living steer, measuring an impressive 1.87m(6ft 1in).

Tommy the steer has been living with the Balawender family on their farm in Cheshire since he was just one day old, after being bought for just about $10. It’s safe to say that he is worth a bit more than that today, but the Balawender see him more as a member of the family than an asset, so they are not considering selling him. Brown Swiss cattle generally have large bodies for dairy cows, but they are considered a medium-sized breed, which makes Tommy somewhat of a freak of nature. A typical Brown Swiss cow weighs between 1,300 to 1,400 pounds, while bulls can reach 2,000 pounds. Tommy weighs about 3,000 pounds, which makes him heavy even for his breed, and he has the frame to match the weight – 1.87 meters (6ft 1in).

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A Chinese farmer who had recently relocated from his rural home to an urban apartment building in Sichuan Province shocked his new neighbors when he started raising seven calves on his balcony.

Imagine living on the upper floors of an urban residential complex and waking up one morning to the mooing of bovines and the smell of manure. That was the shocking experience of hundreds of people in Sichuan Province who were shocked to find that a new neighbor had started raising cattle on his small 5th-floor apartment balcony. The man had recently relocated from a village and had brought seven bovine calves, weighing between 10 and 20 kilograms, with him to raise as pets. Annoyed by the constant mooing and foul smell of the young bovines, many of the residents called the authorities, and the animals were forcefully removed on the first day in their new home.

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With a recorded history of at least 2,200 years, the Chianina is among the oldest known cattle breeds. But what it is most famous for is being by far the largest cattle breed on Earth.

Remember Nickers, the giant Australian steer that shocked the world a few years back? You should, photos of this bovine giant towering over normal-sized cattle were everywhere online late in 2018, causing many to wonder if it was some kind of bio-engineered mutant. The only ones that didn’t seem impressed were Italy’s Chianina breeders. They had been producing impressive specimens much larger than Nickers for many generations, so this was nothing special. At the time, they even put out a statement that read “ours is a giant breed, while the Australian steer is an anomaly”.

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When his father died, in 2011, Jay Wilde inherited the family cattle farm, in Ashbourne, UK. He has been constantly sending cows to the slaughterhouse ever since, but he recently decided he couldn’t do it anymore, so he gave away his heard of 59 cows to an animal sanctuary, where they will live out the rest of their natural lives in peace.

59-year-old Wilde has been a vegetarian for 25 years, so having to sell animals to be killed for meat was particularly difficult, but he had promised his father that he would take over the family farm. Having to send off the animals to the slaughterhouse after seeing them grow under his eyes and spending time with them was extremely unpleasant, and the farmer recently decided that he couldn’t bear to do it anymore.

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It might sound like a silly idea, but it turns out that drawing eyes on the rumps of cattle might deter lions from attacking and prevent human retaliation against the mighty predators.

It sounds like a strategy to protect the poor cattle, but the idea is actually to protect endangered African lions from human retaliation. The majestic felines are on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with numbers currently in the range of 23,000 to 39,000 and rapidly declining. “As protected conservation areas become smaller, lions are increasingly coming into contact with human populations, which are expanding to the boundaries of these protected areas,” says Dr Neil Jordan, a conservation biologist from UNSW’s Centre for Ecosystem Science. The lions attack livestock, and with no non-lethal way of protecting their livelihood farmers often shoot or poison the predators in retaliation.

To help humans and their cattle coexist with lions, Jordan has come up with a low-cost strategy that he hopes will prevent attacks and retaliatory violence. The idea behind painting a pair of intimidating eyes on the rumps of cows is that they will trick the lions into thinking they’ve been spotted, causing them to abandon the hunt. Scientists know that being seen can deter some species from attacking their prey. For example, Indian woodcutters have long been wearing worn masks on the back of their heads to trick man-eating tigers that they’ve been spotted, and butterflies with eye-patterns on their wings ward off predatory birds.

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For four generations, Sonnen Ranch, in Angleton, Texas, was a place where cattle were raised for dairy and eventually for slaughter, but that tradition ended a few months ago when the place became an animal shelter where cattle and other domestic animals can live out the rest of their lives in peace and comfort.

The story of this unusual transformation – believed to be unique in the country – began six years ago, shortly after owner Tommy Sonnen remarried his wife Renee. She started hanging out with the livestock, naming the cows, talking and even singing to them. Despite Tommy’s warnings not to get too attached to the cattle, she didn’t listen, and soon she became his worst nightmare – a vegan who couldn’t stand to live in the same house with a cattle rancher.

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In villages around the Ujain region, in India’s central state of Madhya Pradesh, men lay down on the ground and have their cattle trample all over them, as part of a bizarre centuries-old ritual.

There are a many things people will do in order to have their prayers answered by their gods, but until today, I didn’t know getting trampled by cattle was one of them. In a weird example of blind faith, dozens of villagers from Bhidawad village and neighboring settlements decorate their cattle with colours and henna in different patterns, then lay down on the ground and get trampled by the confused animals. The ritual takes place on the occasion of Ekadashi, a day after Diwali, the popular Hindu festival of lights, which was celebrated around the world on November 13. The whole village gathers in the streets to witness the painful event that they believe will make Hindu gods answer their prayers. “This is a traditional festival observed during Ekadashi fast after which the entire village’s cows are made to run over men lying on the ground, ” local Rekha Dubey told reporters. “We worship the cows before the ritual and also fast for five days and sing hymns during the festival.”

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Belgian Blue cattle may look like they’ve spent most of their lives pumping iron, but they owe their double muscle characteristics to years of careful breeding and genetics.

Like the name implies, this incredible bred of cattle originated in Belgium. In the second half of the 19th century, Shorthorn bulls from the United Kingdom were sent to Belgium to improve the muscle structure of the native cattle population, which was mostly of the dairy type. Until the 1960s, a balanced animal, which provided average quantities of milk and had averagely lean meat was desired, but in response to the demands of the meat industry and the general economic climate, the Belgian Blue began being bread for its meat. This is when the “double muscling” breakthrough was achieved, after farmers began breeding their most muscular animals to each other. The size of its muscles, low fat and especially the tenderness of the meat made the Belgian Blue a very popular breed.

Some people believe “double muscling” means these cattle have two of every muscle, but that isn’t the case. The term refers only to the size of each muscle, meaning that muscles of Belgian Blue cows and bulls are at least twice as developed as normal cow muscles. Genetic scientists have managed to achieve this by “breaking” the gene that controls the secretion of Myostatin – a protein that inhibits muscle growth after a certain point of development. By suppressing the production of Myostatin, they’ve created a kind of Arnold Schwarzenegger of the animal world.

If you’re having trouble understanding just how big and muscular these animals are, you should know some bulls weigh over a tonne. And to think that’s mostly muscle…Some countries, like Denmark, have advocated eliminating the strain, but considering Belgian Blue is for meat what the Holstein breed is for milk, I doubt breeders will stop raising these animal bodybuilders anytime soon.

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