What is the origin of Texas Longhorns?
Unlike most breeds of cattle, no one set out to develop Texas Longhorn cattle as a breed. Instead, they evolved in North America from descendants of cattle brought into the Americas by the Spanish in the late 1400s and early 1500s (the first cattle were brought into Hispaniola in 1493). However, the cattle did not descend directly from Spanish stock. Rather, the first cattle to be imported by the early Spanish explorers were from the Canary Islands. These cattle, in turn, were imported from Portugal, and the closest relatives of Texas Longhorns among existing European breeds are Portuguese cattle breeds (such as the Alentejana and Mertolenga). These early imports of Iberian cattle from the Canary Islands soon became feral in northern Mexico (which included lands that became the Republic of Texas in 1836, and part of the United States in 1845). These wild herds underwent intense natural selection; the only cattle that could survive were highly disease resistant, could live on harsh rang
