Anoas are the smallest buffaloes. There are two species: the lowland and the mountain anoa. Both live on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, or Celebes as it was formerly known. Compared to their relatives, their small body size is not a unique phenomenon in the animal world. There are no large predators on many small islands on our planet, so smaller animals are not in danger. Another reason for “dwarfism” is that the amount of food is very limited, so it could not satisfy the nutritional needs of a large body. Dwarf animals once lived on the smaller and larger islands of the Mediterranean Sea. Such were the dwarf elephants living on Cyprus, Malta, Crete, and Mallorca, whose height barely reached 1 meter. This phenomenon is not unknown to the human race: in 2003, evidence of it was found on the island of Flores (in the Indonesian archipelago). The age of the find is estimated at 18,000 years. The dwarf man is about 1 meter tall.

Small buffaloes in great danger

Buffaloes come from the ancient genus Boselaphini (their current representatives are the nilgau antelopes), which developed in Asia and then spread throughout the Old World. African and Asian buffaloes developed separately. The current representatives of the former group are the Kaffir buffalo, while the characteristic species of the latter is the water buffalo, which was domesticated by man. The common ancestor of the anoa and the water buffalo that later grew to be huge was the Proamphibos, which lived more than 2 million years ago, and its close relative was the Hemibos of the Ice Age.