麻豆约拍

Brett Westwood investigates the peaceful, hefty, cud-chewing beasts which have been by our side for thousands of years. In Natural Histories we find out what Shakespeare made of this special relationship, hear Dinka songs from the intense cattle-based cultures of South Sudan and travel to a Leicestershire dairy where robots do the milking. It's a pastoral scene and a violent one too: the fearsome virility of the bull in the poetry of Lorca, sacred cows prompting vigilante violence in India, and a Greek tyrant who would bake his victims alive in a giant metal bull, its resonance turning their cries to moos. From all this bovine history it's clear that the domestication of the cow has fundamentally changed human society. Producer: Melvin Rickarby

Picture: 'Jogoth Mata-Go Lukhi, ca. 1960. India' courtesy of Museum of International Folk Art, gift of the Girard Foundation Collection, A.1981.28.574