The Buffalo

The water buffalo is relatively unfamiliar in the West but the most important bovine in tropical Asia. Bubalus bubalis was domesticated as a draft animal in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE, then taken to the Indus civilizations of present-day Pakistan, and eventually through India and China. This tropical animal is sensitive to heat (it wallows in water to cool down), so it proved adaptable to milder climates. The Arabs brought buffalo to the Middle East around 700 CE, and in the Middle Ages they were introduced throughout Europe. The most notable vestige of that introduction is a population approaching 100,000 in the Campagna region south of Rome, which supplies the milk for true mozzarella cheese, mozzarella di bufala. Buffalo milk is much richer than cow’s milk, so mozzarella and Indian milk dishes are very different when the traditional buffalo milk is replaced with cow’s milk.