Yak
species of mammal
The yak (Bos grunniens) is a species of long-haired domesticated Asian cattle found throughout the Himalayan region, the Tibetan Plateau, Tajikistan, the Pamir Mountains, and as far north as Mongolia and Siberia. It is descended from the wild yak (Bos mutus).
Etymology
The English word Yak originates from the Tibetan: གཡག་, Wylie: g.yag. In Tibetan and Balti it refers only to the male of the species, the female being called Tibetan: འབྲི་, Wylie: 'bri or Tibetan: གནག, Wylie: gnag in Tibetan and Tibetan: ཧཡག་མོ་, Wylie: hYag-mo in Balti. In English, as in most other languages that have borrowed the word, yak is usually used for both sexes, with bull or cow referring to each sex separately.
Taxonomy
Belonging to the genus Bos, yaks are related to cattle and bison. Mitochondrial DNA analyses to determine the evolutionary history of yaks have been inconclusive.
The yak may have diverged from cattle at any point between one and five million years ago, and there is some suggestion that it may be more closely related to bison than to the other members of its designated genus. Apparent close fossil relatives of the yak, such as Bos baikalensis, have been found in eastern Russia, suggesting a possible route by which yak-like ancestors of the modern American bison could have entered the Americas.
The species was originally designated as Bos grunniens ("grunting ox") by Linnaeus in 1766.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Yak” as species of mammal. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of mammal. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13408062. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1766.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yak” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.