🐃
Cape buffalo
Syncerus caffer
Mammals · Near threatened
vs
🐄
Cow
Bos taurus
Mammals
16 clips name both of them
6.7 million views between them.
Cow outweighs Cape buffalo 1.2× — 750 kg against 646 kg.
To scale
Grid at 50 cm
50 cm
1 m
1.5 m
2 m
Silhouettes: PhyloPic — Jan A. Venter, Herbert H. T. Prins, David A. Balfour & Rob Slotow (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) (CC BY), DFoidl (modified by T. Michael Keesey) (CC BY-SA); others CC0.
Cape buffalo
1.35 m
at the shoulder
Human
1.70 m
full standing height
for scale
Cow
1.28 m
at the shoulder
Tale of the tape
Body mass
646 kg
🐃 Cape buffalo · COMBINE
750 kg
🐄 Cow · AnAge
Shoulder height
1.35 m
🐃 Cape buffalo
1.28 m
🐄 Cow
Body length
2.96 m
🐃 Cape buffalo · COMBINE
no figure yet
🐄 Cow
Top speed
55 km/h
🐃 Cape buffalo
no figure yet
🐄 Cow
Maximum lifespan
30 yr
🐃 Cape buffalo · COMBINE
20 yr
🐄 Cow · AnAge
Bars are sized against the larger of the two figures.
Animals caught on camera
Real footage of the animals on this site — hunting, fighting, and getting on with it.
Shared ancestry
The closest group they share is Bovinae (subfamily), home to 81 species.
They last shared an ancestor about 8.2 million years ago.
Estimates range from 5.8 to 10 million years; the figure above is the middle estimate.
About this estimate
Dates from Upham, Esselstyn & Jetz 2019, PLoS Biology 17:e3000494 (CC0).