These cattle were left to survive alone on an Alaskan island; generations later, their DNA was unlike most US breeds

For generations, cattle have roamed Chirikof Island, a remote island in the western Gulf of Alaska where human management became almost irrelevant to their survival.

Cut off from the mainland and living in a harsh environment, the animals persisted as a feral population while generations of domesticated cattle elsewhere were shaped by deliberate breeding.A 2016 study published in Heredity, ‘Origins of cattle on Chirikof Island, Alaska, elucidated from genome-wide SNP genotypes,’ by J.

E.

Decker, J.

F.