Kting voar

The kting voar, also known as the khting vor, linh dương, or snake-eating cow is a bovid mammal reputed to exist in Cambodia and Vietnam.^{[1][page needed]} The kting voar's existence as a real species should be regarded as questionable, and it is now thought to simply be a hoax made from water buffalo horns.

Characteristics

The kting voar is normally described as a cow-like animal with peculiar twisting horns about 50 cm (20 inches) long and spotted fur. It often has some sort of connection with snakes, varying between stories.

Names

Kting voar is the animal's Khmer name. This was erroneously translated in the West as 'jungle sheep', leading to a mistaken assumption that the animal was related to sheep and goats.

Adding to the confusion, the Vietnamese name linh dương, meaning "antelope" or "gnu", was once reported to refer to this animal. However, this is in fact a local name of the mainland serow.

Other Khmer names possibly include kting sipuoh ("snake-eating cattle")^[2] and khting pôs. The Latinized binomial "Pseudonovibos spiralis" is invalid, given that the holotype for the species was identified as a domesticated cow. However, the name would mean "fake new cattle (with) spiral horns".

Controversy

For Western scientists, the first evidence supporting the kting voar's existence was a set of horns found by biologist Wolfgang Peter in a Ho Chi Minh City market.^{[3][page needed]} The horns were so unusual that Peter believed them to belong to a new species.^{[4][page needed]}

No anatomical information, except for horns and frontlets, is available, so the phylogenetic status of the kting voar has been uncertain. Peter and Feiler proposed the relationships of P. spiralis with Antilopini,^{[3][page needed]} but morphological analyses by Dioli in 1995 and 1997, and Robert Timm and Brandt in 2001 suggest affinities within Bovini,^[5][6][7] while Nadler and others believe P. spiralis to be related to Caprini.^{[8][page needed][9]} Genetic studies using alleged kting voar specimens have produced confusing results.^[10] However, these results from DNA have been demonstrated to be cases of DNA contamination.^[11]

All supposed kting voar specimens that were subject to DNA analysis to date have turned out to be artificially shaped cattle horns.^[12] The most likely explanation, given the DNA testing results and the unusual spotted fur (which is well known in domesticated, but unknown in wild cattle), seem to be that modern specimens at least are cattle horns shaped by a complicated technique in order to serve as anti-snake talismans.^{[citation needed]}

The controversy over the existence of P. spiralis was covered in Nature,^[13] The New York Times,^[14] and Science .^[15] There is also an earlier report of British tiger-hunters in the first part the 20th century, who observed kting voar and shot two as tiger bait.^{[citation needed]}

Skeptical opinion is that the kting voar is a mythical animal. Cow horns are often sold as imitation kting voar horns in Kampuche markets. However, some scientists, notably American mammalogist Robert Timm, consider it probable that the root of the folklore is a real, distinct species of wild bovid, such as the kouprey.^{[1][page needed][16][page needed]} If so, this animal would be highly endangered or more probably recently extinct, because rampant hunting and deforestation decimated populations of other big mammals in the region.^{[citation needed]}

More recently, Feiler et al. established in 2002 that most of the horn sheaths of the kting voar, including the holotype, were superficially embellished, but added that it remains to be seen whether these horns belong to cattle or a distinct species in its own right.^{[17][page needed]}

Until further evidence is obtained, the kting voar's existence as a real species should be regarded as questionable.^{[18][page needed]}