THE HAIRIEST HIGHLANDERS

Magnificently shaggy Highland cattle, seemingly unperturbed by the frigid days of January, possess a number of cold-coping characteristics, including a pair of long, curved horns: the perfect tool for uncovering food from beneath thick winter snow. They are a hardy breed, a characteristic noted by writer Daniel Defoe in 1724: “These Scots ‘runts’, so they call them, coming out of the cold and barren mountains of the highlands of Scotland, feed so eagerly on the rich pasture in these marshes that they thrive in an unusual manner, and grow monstrously fat.”