I was recently re-watching Geoffrey Giraffe's Animal Alphabet recently, which - as its name suggests, is a video for children where the mascot of Toys-R-Us, Geoffrey Giraffe, takes the viewers through the alphabet with clips of real animals from National Geographic, and some fairly big names doing singing. One sketch seemed to catch my eye though, the penultimate - 'Y' for 'Yak'. In that, some of the animals shown in the clips of the song didn't look somehow as much as yaks as they did perhaps domestic cattle? Perhaps it would be better to show what I am talking about. Song opens on a clip of two calf animals in a field in what appears to be a rural location. If anything, these are perhaps one of the animals of the song which look like they are most likely to be domestic cattle than they are yak. Clip immediately afterwards shows this white calf, which I suspect also is a domestic cattle animal as opposed to yak, though I am uncertain. Next clip - brown-and-white coloured calf in a location which appears similar to the first clip. The patterning looks odd for yak, should it be one ... After clips of dubious animals, we finally see a clip of animals which are, as far as I can tell, definitely yaks. Though I can't help but wonder with the final animal in this scene - possibly a yak x cattle hybrid? Afterwards - a scene of animals led down a mountain path. They do look like yaks, though the quality seems to obscure. Scene of woman leading animals to another location. They also look like yaks, though their brevity on screen makes detailed analysis difficult. Penultimate scene - of scenic mountains with animals and people. The colouration and morphology makes me skeptical of these animals' authenticity as yaks. Final scene - essentially same thoughts, that the colouration and morphology makes me conflicted as to whether these are actually yaks. Though I do understand that the video library used for the animal clips was probably limited to some degree, and so non-yak animals may have been used to pad things out. In the 'U' segment for Unicorn, no real animal footage was used - it was perhaps to be described as a 'collaboration of illustrations'. Though I was wondering what some of you may have thought of my suspicions about the animals shown?
I would say it is likely many or most of these are Dzo(mo) - hybrid yak x domestic cattle as you say. When I was in Nepal some years ago these were everywhere in the 'lower' parts of the Himalaya - more altitude-tolerant than normal cattle but more biddable and productive than yak - but often just called 'yak' for the benefit of tourists.
