Friends, Romans, Water Buffalo...lend me an ear!

Well, hey there! How's it going? Me? Fair to middling, I suppose. The usual aches and pains plus a few more. But anyway, mosey on over to the coffeepot and pour yourself a bull-sized mugful of arabica bean juice. Snag a VT while you're over there. Grab one for me, too if you would. Good thing they are calorie-free, eh! Say...you know I like to keep an eye on what's happening in Thailand. Well here's an interesting science-related one, I noticed in the online edition of the Bangkok Post...

A cloned male Swamp Buffalo, aged three years and four months, weighing in at 400 kilogrammes, is at the Royal Chitralada Projects compound in Bangkok. Looks like a frisky kind of guy, doesn't he?

Given the name Clone Thong, the young bull is the world's first cloned Swamp Buffalo, grown from a skin cell taken from an adult male's ear. Apparently, there are two types of water buffalo - river buffalo and swamp buffalo. 

FYI - The skin of river buffaloes is black, but some

specimens may have dark slate-coloured skin. Swamp buffaloes have a grey skin at birth but become slate blue later.  
There are even some albino water buffalo like the one below in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Water buffaloes are especially suitable for tilling rice fields, and their milk is richer in fat and protein than that of the dairy cow. The large feral population of northern Australia became established in the late 19th century, and there are smaller feral herds in New Guinea, Tunisia and northeastern Argentina. There are at least 130 million domestic water buffalo, and more human beings depend on them than on any other domestic animal.

Water buffalo are generally slow-moving creatures but in Chonburi, Thailand (Nong's home province) they have Water Buffalo Races each fall! Bulls average around 2000 lbs. Cows average around 1000 to 1400 lbs. Once they get moving, they're not easy to stop. 

See ya, eh!

Bob